'Screening
Party' dishes the movies
By Kevin Riordan
PGN Contributing Writer
© 2002 Kevin Riordan
As Dennis Hensley concluded a recent reading of his new
book about the movies, an older gentleman in the audience
raised his hand.
"He asked me, 'How do you get invited to these screening
parties?' " the author recalled. "I told him to put his name on my
mailing list."
The
list is likely to grow, because it's tough to imagine
that anyone who reads Hensley's deliciously dishy "Screening Party" (Alyson
Publications) won't want to be present the next time
the author and his film fanatic friends
fire up the DVD player.
Hensley
will speak and sign books Oct. 14 at Giovanni's Room.
"The book was super fun to write," the author said during a telephone
interview from his North Hollywood home.
It's
super fun to read, too: "Screening Party" dubs starlet Leelee
Sobieski "Helen Hunt Jr.," evaluates various James Bonds by how sporty
they look in swimsuits, and observes that the writers and producers who perpetrated "Flashdance'
possess perhaps "a single soul" among them.
Everything
from "Armageddon" to "The Sound of Music," from "Jaws" to "Saturday
Night Fever" is on the bill, along with entire genres such as James Bond
films and male stripper flicks.
"I may have been a little overly ambitious," Hensley observed.
Perhaps best known for his comic novel "Misadventures in the (213)," the
affable, 30-something author works in, as well as writes about, the
movies.
His
short film, "Evie Harris: Shining Star" was shown during last
summer's Philadelphia International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. And with
David Morton, the director of the indie gay feature "Edge of Seventeen," Hensley
has co-written what he describes as a "darkly comic thriller" that's
now in pre-production.
"Screening Party" began
as a series of stories Hensley was commissioned to write
for British Premiere magazine. The resulting book is
an unusual but
engaging hybrid, one that merrily mixes elements of journalism,
film criticism and the short story as it recounts the
movie-watching adventures of the author/narrator
and his (somewhat fictionalized) friends.
There's
Tony, Hensley's dashing housemate; Dr. Beaverman, a cerebral
yet earthy psychotherapist; Lauren, an aspiring stand-up comic;
Marcus, a lawyer
who
bakes special treats for each screening (don't ask what's on
the "9 1/2 Weeks" menu);
and Ross, a video-store clerk and the sole straight guy in
the group - although you wouldn't know it from his wicked
way with words.
In
addition to providing a howlingly funny play-by-play
of each film, "Screening
Party" offers glimpses into the lives of its gregarious gang of movie
buffs. Boyfriends come and go, jobs begin and end, and chances are taken and
lost. Even the narrator himself gets into the act, beginning an unlikely love
affair - or something akin to one, anyway.
"My goal from the beginning was to have the book kind of be like a novel,
within the framework of the screening parties," Hensley said. "I didn't
want readers to feel excluded, or that we all feel we're so hot."
Not
to worry: While the characters in "Screening Party" are experts
in the field of sassy one-liners, saucy comebacks and savvy insights, they're
also endearingly quirky.
"Every one of them has their insecurities," Hensley observed, accurately. "I
sort of realized toward the end that I really cherished these rituals of getting
together with these people ... and laughing so hard we thought we might die."
Despite
what can only be called the gay (and particularly, gay
male) sensibility at work in its pages, "Screening Party" isn't
a parade of homo hits from the camp canon.
In
other words, no "Valley of the Dolls" or "Mildred Pierce."
No Judy, no Bette, no "Boys in the Band."
Perhaps
inevitably, there is Barbra - albeit, the implausible
rock 'n' roll version. Streisand's
stupendously ill-advised
remake of "A Star is Born" inspires
some of the book's best dish; Hensley imagines Babs' African-American backup
singers thinking, "we marched in Atlanta for this?"
But
the narrator and his pals are equal-opportunity diva-destroyers:
Whitney Houston in "The Bodyguard" and Sharon Stone in "Basic Instinct" also
get the full treatment.
"I'm interested in huge hits that weren't very good," said Hensley,
describing "Pretty Woman" as one film "that was always asking
for it." His love of big-yet-bad movies explains why "Flashdance" is
on the bill; his desire to screen at least one unequivocally great film accounts
for "Taxi Driver"; and "Saturday Night Fever" (which
inspires some of the book's finest insights)
is a personal favorite.
Hensley
is also interested in cinematic controversies. Hence
his screening party for "Cruising," director William Friedkin's ludicrously lurid,
or luridly ludicrous, fantasy of the homosexual "underworld."
Hensley
was fascinated by the fact that some gay activists sought
to stop the movie
from
being made.
"I don't have in me the gene that says, 'You shouldn't be allowed to do
that,' " he said, pointing out the postmodern irony in the fact that the
film "probably wouldn't be made today."
Fortunately,
as he also pointed out, Hollywood continues to make plenty
of
other terrible
movies.
One
of which provides "Screening Party" with a festive conclusion.
"Even before the movie was released, the end of my book was going to be
'Glitter,' " Hensley said. "Sometimes, you just know it's going to
be your kind of movie." Kevin Riordan is a New Jersey journalist.
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