DENNIS ANYONE? with Dennis Hensley

For the second part of Dennis's conversation with Matching Minds With Sondheim author Barry Joseph, Dennis invites his old friend Dennis Osborne to join the Zoom. Dennis was a good friend of Stephen Sondheim's for the last 35 years of his life and spent a lot of time playing games with him. In this conversation, Dennis and Barry talk about Sondheim's obsession with computer games like OXYD and Myst, that time Sondheim was on Password and crushed it, Sondheim's feelings about the escape room craze and they both delight each other with show-and-tell moments. Other topics include: Stephen Sondheim's humility and generosity, how Sondheim's love of puzzles and games helped him cope with his chaotic childhood and that time Dennis Osborne gave Sondheim a note about reversing this acts in Sunday In the Park With George and cemented his value as someone who would give honest opinions with Sondheim and not just fawn over him.

www.matchingmindswithsondheim.com

Dennis is joined via Zoom by Barry Joseph, author of the new book Matching Minds with Sondheim, which is all about the legendary Broadway composer and lyricist's love of puzzles and games. Barry talks about being inspired to write the book in 2022, a few months after Sondheim's passing, and how writing the book became like a puzzle for him to solve. He also talks about his love of Sondheim's musicals, from listening to the West Side Story cast recording as a kid to going to see Passion on Broadway during its first previous (and not appreciating it much at the time.) He goes into detail about Sondheim's legendary game nights and treasure hunts and talks about Sondheim's stint as the crossword puzzle editor for New York Magazine in the late 1960's and that time Games magazine did a five-page profile on him, complete with photos of his extensive game collection. Other topics include: Barry's favorite Sondheim musical, the idea of creating order out of chaos, what drives him to do the work that he does and that surreal evening when actor Anthony Perkins ended up being the murderer in a Sondheim party game just a few months after appearing as Norman Bates in Psycho.

https://matchingmindswithsondheim.com

Dennis is joined by his queer sketch comedy queen friend Nora Burns to talk about her new stage show Candied Camera Live!, which is based on a real public access TV show she produced and hosted back in the 1990s. Nora talks about the material on the show that would definitely get her cancelled today, using a sex club with a camera in it as a studio and thinking for decades that the Candied Camera tapes been lost forever only to find they had been donated to a NY library and she could access them Nora also shares her excitement about returning to LA for the first time since before the pandemic and enlisting Dennis to be one of her long-in-the-tooth gogo boys. (He was an immediate yes). Other topics include: how she keeps friendships going for decades by never letting people go, what her grown children think of her gay sketch comedy lifestyle, her first time in a gay club, her obsessions with Dreamgirls,The Poseidon Adventure and disco and the special skill she picked up growing up in Massachusetts that might surprise people.

www.cavernclubtheater.com

Dennis is joined by his friend Steven Reigns to talk about his new collection of poetry, Outliving Michael, which is about a friend of Steven's named Michael Church who died of AIDS in 2000. Steven talks about meeting Michael first as his drag persona Blanche before getting to know him out of drag and becoming close friends. Steven reads several poems and talks about what made Michael so unique, from his withering wit to his love of gay nightlife (Michael was a bottle boy at Studio 54 for a summer) to his support of Steven as a writer. Steven also talks about what it was like to be a caretaker for Michael and why he feels like he would be much better at it today. Other topics include: Steven's ongoing art project The Gay Rub, where he collects rubbings from LGBTQ gravestones and monuments from around the world, how he knows when a poem is finished, whether or not that is cocaine on the coffee table pictured of the book cover and what he thinks Michael would think of Outliving Michael.

https://www.stevenreigns.com/

In this special Birthday Crossover Episode of Dennis Anyone and Dennis Hensley's Happy & Gay, Dennis breaks down his five days of birthday activities, which included two films (Almost Famous & Magnolia), one museum excursion (the Queer Lens exhibit at the Getty Center), one game day at Lawless Brewery and one marvelous outdoor play; Wine in the Wilderness by Alice Childress at the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum. Dennis also sings the praises of the returning TV shows The Morning Show and English Teacher as well as his friend David Kittredge's wonderful new feature film documentary Boorman and the Devil, which is about the director John Boorman and his movie Exorcist 2: Heretic. In the Observation Deck segment, Dennis's recent podcast guest Rob Loveless, host of the A Jaded Gay podcast, recalls a time he felt totally starstruck. Dennis ends the episode with two happiness-related quotes from Andy Warhol and shares a recent experience related to his new game Search Party where he had to put on his big boy pants and lived to tell about it.

Dennis is joined via Zoom by Rob Loveless, host of the A Jaded Gay podcast and one of Dennis's fellow nominees for Best LGBTQ Podcast at this Sunday's Podcast Awards. Rob talks about what inspired him to start the podcast, why he loves doing it and how he balances it with going to grad school and working full time in the corporate world. He also talks about deciding how open to be when it comes to sharing details about his life. Other topics include: crying on the pod, having killer seats to Kylie Minogue, the difference between a Demon Twink and a Chaotic Twink, why he starts every episode by drawing tarot card, the book The Velvet Rage and how he always seems to go for guys with tattoos, snapbacks and bad attitudes.

www.ajadedgay.com

Dennis is joined via Zoom from Boston, MA by writer-director Spencer Cohen to talk about his film The Compatriots, which is about young undocumented gay man from Peru named Javi and his quest to be who he is. Spencer talks about how he based the story on his real life best friend since middle school Beto, who is a gay, Peruvian and undocumented Dreamer, just like Javi in the film. Spencer recalls not knowing Beto's immigration status until several years into their friendship and how that knowledge explained so much about Beto's behavior and the things he was not able to do. He also talks movingly about suffering a personal loss during the shooting of the film and how he was able to get through it. Other topics include: the film's timeliness in the era of Trump 2.0, having an I.C.E. raid in the film but not knowing to put the agents in masks, having people at film festivals share their own immigration stories and how his friend Beto is doing now.

https://www.thecompatriotsfilm.com/

Dennis is join via Zoom from Sitges, Spain by writer Jon Kinnally to talk about his new memoir I'm Prancing as Fast as I Can, which features stories about his life, from his childhood in Syracuse, New York through his career in Hollywood as a longtime writer on Will & Grace, the original incarnation and the reboot. Jon talks about where his title comes from, having "book envy" over other writers who've had books published and trying to communicate to younger generations what it was like for gay people in the 70's, 80's and 90's. Jon also talks finding out he and his writing partner, Tracy Proust, had gotten hired on Will & Grace on the same day he learned that the bankruptcy that he had applied for had gone through. He recalls writing a "lost episode" of Will & Grace called "Will Works Out" that was too edgy for syndication. He also discusses co-writing an episode from the reboot that he's particularly proud of, where Grace reveals that she never read the letters Will wrote her after first coming out to her as gay. Other topics include: moving to Spain with his husband Chris, losing his previous boyfriend Luis to leukemia at the height of the AIDS crisis in New York City, being part of a chunky Chorus Line in college and the enchanting private Madonna moment he got to witness when the pop icon was guest-starring on Will & Grace.

Dennis is joined via Zoom by author Stephanie Elizondo Griest to discuss her latest book Art Above Everything: One Woman's Global Exploration of the Joys and Torments of a Creative Life, which is so up Dennis's alley. (Actually, a listener reached out to Dennis and said, "You need to check out this book. It's what you talk about all the time.") Stephanie talks about the through line that many of the women she profiled share, how the big things that happened in world while she was working on the book--COVID, her own cancer diagnosis, the #metoo movement, Trumpism--impacted her work and the question for artists that lies at the heart of the book; Is it worth it? Stephanie also talks about the alternative paths she could have chosen, how even the safe roads in life aren't safe anymore and what she's observed about young people since she started working as a writing professor in North Carolina. Other topics include: the boyfriend she had when she was living in Russia who was given an offer to kill someone for money, her complicated relationship to belly dancing, getting to spend time with one of her heroes. author Sandra Cisneros, the Ugandan playwright she interviewed who saw where Trumpism was heading way back in 2015, how various foreign countries support their artists and how American's Karen-esque sense of entitlement may be what ends up saving us all.

https://stephanieelizondogriest.com

This week, Dennis shares his thoughts on the finale of And Just Like That...and also sharing quotes from an interview he did with Carrie Bradshaw herself Sarah Jessica Parker for British Premier magazine in 1995. He also talks about his recent day trip to the Film Out San Diego LGBT Film Festival where he caught two very different movies; Sauna from Denmark and #300Letters from Argentina. He also shares some movie-related Observation Deck questions from his recent guest, Cinecon producer Bryan Cooper. Dennis also talks about Saturday's bonkers MisMatch Game: Future Shock Edition and shares some good news around dance auditions. Finally, in the Happiness segment, Dennis sings the praises of the book Into the Magic Shop by James R. Doty M.D. and the Alphabet of the Heart that Doty came up with to remind himself of his values.