TOTAL
MOVIE
EYES PEELED He Likes to Watch
Dennis Hensley joins the peanut gallery
Dennis Hensley, an L.A. scribe with just a little
too much pop culture trivia buzzing in his head, is
the person you want sitting next to you at the movies.
Hensley’s hysterical new book Screening Party (Alyson
Books) chronicles his viewing-and-bitching sessions
of classic—and classically bad—movies. “I wonder if
Erin Brockovich saw Pretty Woman when it came out and
thought, ‘I should dress like that whore,’” Hensley
muses while watching Julia Roberts strut on screen
in thigh-high boots and a miniskirt. “[Dolled up in
a page-boy wig and a sailor’s cap] she looks like the
Captain and Tennille rolled into one unfortunate person,”
adds Lauren, one of the book’s characters. Another
chimes in, “What every john wants…a theme skank.”
The book began as an article for a British magazine.
Hensley was assigned to write about Jaws, and--to the
horror of his editor--he admitted he had never seen
the legendary chomper. So he rented the flick and invited
his friends over for an interactive experience. “There’s
a whole subculture of observers,” says Hensley, referring
to commentators like Joan and Melissa, Beavis and Butthead
and the “MST3K” crew. “People who act in plays talk
about how the audience adds a magical dimension to
the theatre experience. But that can be true of watching
TV or movies, too.”
That’s especially true with Hensley’s jaded crew of
L.A. characters: There’s his bitchy gay roommate, a
nerdy video-store clerk, a psychologist who never met
a phallic symbol she didn’t like, and a commitment-hungry
single girl (among others). What emerges in the screening
parties and in the real-life events surrounding them
is a soap opera that runs like a modern-day Tales
of the City.
Though the catty comments crack you up, there are
touching moments when characters describe how scenes
in Basic Instinct and Flashdance actually changed their
lives. You may laugh, but wasn’t there a time when
you also based your look, accent or dreams on movies
you saw?
“I was surprised at the anecdotes came out how during
the parties, and how influential movies are,” Hensley
says. “And not necessarily good ones; the right movie
at the right time can really hit you. St. Elmo’s
Fire was college to me even though it isn’t that good. It
made me feel bad about my life. I walked out of that
film saying ‘I want to be glamorous like that. I want
to have sex in a coffin. Why doesn’t that shit happen
to me?’”
Ironically, Hensley now leads the glamorous life he
always dreamed of; in between interviewing celebs for
magazine articles, he’s planning his Screening
Party book tour and, natch, working on a couple of scripts.
But nothing gives him a bigger glamourgasm than thinking
up films for the next installment of Screening
Party.
“I’ve been wondering which Madonna movie is the best
for a party,” he says with glee. “After The Next
Best Thing, I thought, ‘The gloves are coming off. I am
not going to enable her any longer. She needs a dialogue
coach for her native language!’ I bet every director
who does a movie with her thinks he’ll be the one to
get something out of her. Then after the first day
of filming, he comes back and says, ‘We are so fucked.’”
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