“I thought you should know that thanks to you, I am now searching the net to figure out what a Filthy Sanchez is.”

- Brendan from Los Angeles

“I read Screening Party in one night. Once I started reading it, I couldn’t put it down. I had to get to the last chapter. I felt I wanted to pack my bags, come to L.A., move in with Dennis and all his friends and watch videos. I really did. What I really loved about it is the love of friends in it. Friends are very rarely written about and they’re the ones who see us through our lives.”

- Russell T Davies, creator of the original UK Queer as Folk

“I thought of “Hey Barbra!” line yesterday that made me laugh. Thought I'd share.

Hey Barbra! Larry Kramer is on the phone. He wants to know when you start shooting THE NORMAL HEART.

A little obscure, I know. See what you've started? It's sweeping the land.”

- Jonathan Tolins, playwright, Twilight of the Golds

“A few nights later, I attended the release of Dennis "Misadventures in the 213" Hensley's latest book, "Screening Party". I'll write more about the book after I read the whole thing (gimme a break - I'm still unpacking from my summer back east). What I can tell you is that it's about Dennis and his wacky friends - they get together to watch bad movies (the ones that are so bad that they're good - like "Glitter" - not the ones that are so bad that they're bad - like "The English Patient") and rip them apart. Along the way, they eat, drink, have sex, and rip each other apart. Welcome to my life, people. Some of Dennis' famous friends dropped in for the festivities, including Bob Smith, Dirk Shafer, Kevin Williamson, Jack Plotnick, David Pevsner, moi, and a bunch of other good-looking nobodies. It was a WeHo party, after all.”

- Billy Masters from his syndicated column Filth.

“This has to be one of the most entertaining books I have ever read and I am in love with absolutely everyone of you.

What follows is a punch list of a few of the phrases and concepts which will become part of my vernacular:

1) Shitheap
2) The definitions of the three major fits
3) Twitchy
4) Spade & Farley
5) Bea-ing
6) St Olaf moments
7) Ho-jack
8) Streisand's desire to sing likened to asking for a
ride to the airport (which I still cannot say without
laughing)
9) Her wardrobe credit in Star is Born being likened
to admitting to farting in an elevator
10) Hoo-Hah
11) Say goodnight fisty
12) The unexplained silver stripe ever present on
Mariah in Glitter

Just a short list... there are many more.”

- Bryan from New York City

“I had a friend who was an extra in Cruising, made the year I moved to New York, and he had great stories. William Friedkin must have one great porn movie to watch in his spare time from all the cut footage.”

- Larry from New York City

“Your book is hilarious but I can't believe after all my bitching to you over the years, you still chose to include the evil trashing of Barbra. She is our queen. Why can't you accept that?”

- Lifelong Barbra lover John from Los Angeles

“OK, Dennis, your book initiated a whole filthy conversation with my brother and sister in law. According to my brother, who is a tattoo artist in San Francisco (www.everlastingtattoo.com) and has discussed this at length at tattoo conventions around the world, apparently -- says the Filthy Sanchez is anal sex with an unclean partner immediately followed by the man taking his dirty penis and drawing a mustache on his partner before getting it cleaned up with a blow job.

But no, my brother couldn't leave it there. He rattled off a full list of other names and disgusting sex acts. The most offensive was, I think, a Donkey Punch.

And the book on CD is getting me through my sick days. Thanks!”

- Mark from Los Angeles

“ Reading your book reminded me of a brush I had with the foul-mouthed Captain von Trapp, Christopher Plummer, several years ago:

I was a sophomore in college at the University of Pittsburgh, and I heard that PBS was filming a show with Christopher Plummer. Plummer was portraying Vladimir Nabokov for their "Artists in Residence" series, and Pitt was standing in for Cornell University, circa 1956. Friends and I were chosen as extras, to be students in the auditorium listening to this mock lecture.

At one point, Plummer is to walk up the aisle and address the students. While the shot was being blocked, it was clear that Plummer was going to walk right down the row I was sitting in, and have a seat on the edge of my desk. The shot was run-through several times, and it was obvious that Plummer was running out of patience. (He muttered "Assholes" several times under his breath.) I was not the ringleader in this next part - a friend of mine who was a huge "Sound of Music" fan began to hum "Edelweiss." Soon, we
all joined in. Why I was singled out I don't know, but the good captain looked directly at he and said, "Please to Christ, will you shut the fuck up?" My musical-loving friend was crushed, but since I hate that movie, I had a new respect for Plummer.

Thanks again for the great time! I hope "Screening Party" is the huge success it deserves to be.”

- Rocky from Pittsburgh

“Thoroughly enjoyed THE SCREENING ROOM -- MAZELTOV --! and I have to insist that you add SUMMER LOVERS to your future screening list.

SUMMER LOVERS (1982), directed by Randall Kleiser. Darryl Hannah, Peter Gallagher and an incomprehensible and hence-forth-forgotten French actress in an uninhibted thong-fest of menage-a-trois bliss in the Greek Islands.

I have the distinct pleasure of remembering when this movie played the theaters -- and my friends and I approached the box office after burning down a thick joint of Sensimillian in the parking lot and uttered the words, "Three for Summer Lovers, please."

- Doug from Los Angeles

“Here's my own movie story for you: My pal Gina and I went to see "Crossroads" IN THE THEATRE thank you very much. Before the movie began, we decided to start naming every plot device they'd use and then give ourselves points throughout the movie for making correct guesses:

Here's a sample WITH scoring:

1. Opening Scene: Young Britney writing in a diary - Steve's call. Gina called: Britney sings to someone else's song - which so happened in the SECOND scene. (Opening Scene - it was a TIME CAPSULE - damn it all to hell - NO points - but I wish you were there to see me and Gina turn to each other, so disappointed, saying LOUDLY, "Time capsule!" at the exact same time).
2. High school graduation. (One point for Steve).
3. At some point in the film, someone would get to a payphone, make the call, and just as the person on the other end - either an exboyfriend or a parent - said, "Hello? Helllllooo?," this someone would hang up. (One point for Steve).
4. Number 3 would happen just moments after this someone "gave up on their dream" and left the others behind, only to change her mind and rejoin the gang. (One point for Gina)
5. Makeshift outfits. Reason obscure. (One point for Gina)
6. Kareoke contest - extra credit if Britney is singing backup and lead singer chickens out, "I can't...I just can't," and Britney has to take the reigns and sing lead. (One point EACH)
7. "I'm sorry, (insert Mom/Dad), I've got to prove I can make it on my own" speech. (One point EACH)
8. Abortion. (One point Gina)
9. American dollar stronger in film than in reality - ie: They'll have $40, but they'll still be able to get that top-floor suite with adjoining alcove and balconies. (One point Steve)
10. Eating on the floor. (Two points Gina - GOOD CALL, gave her an extra point).
11. Makeovers and/or "Beauty Night!" (One point Gina)
12. Unexpected actor (TWO points Steve - for Dan Akkroyd as Brit's dad - Gina was very impressed - AND I didn't read any press about it in advance).
13. "I can't run away forever" speech. (One point EACH)
14. Britney makes allusion to Justin Timberlake (Gina's call - judges still out on this one cause in the promos they CLEARLY show her singing "Bye Bye Bye" - Gina demands recount).

There's more - too MUCH more - but you get the idea...”

- Steve from Los Angeles

“As you had Christopher Atkins and Gregory Harrison, my adolescent movie crush was Hugh O’Brian. Here’s a picture of him when he was filming Love Has Many Faces. The film was also the last of the great Lana Turner films of the 60's. It's pure camp, but I love Lana, and the guys are great to look at...Cliff Robertson too. Rent it sometime and let me know.

- Bill from San Diego

This next note was about Misadventures in the (213), but it’s still kinda fun…

Hey, Dennis -

Here I am reading Misadventures at work and get to the chapter where Craig stumbles onto the Sabrina shrine. I laugh aloud at the line about Melissa Joan Hart being a cock block. I share this line of dialogue with one of my coworkers (who overheard me laughing) when who should walk by? Melissa and her mom. See... my company shares an office building with Melissa's family-operated production company.

Fortunately, the Harts regard us with that blank if-I-don't-see-them-they-can't-see-me stare people usually reserve for the crazies and the homeless, so we managed to avoid a Misadventures-esque moment.

But I thought I'd share. Great book, by the way. Besides getting me to laugh my ass off, it helped me to realize how badly I want a (pre-fame) Godfrey of my own... someone to use the McDonald's Playland with me!

- Juan Carlos from Hollywood

Your book reminded me so much of my own friends, and the way we watch TV, despising it and loving it at the same time. My friend Paul often comes round to my house and we watch episodes of soaps that we made together, and we cry laughing until three in the morning, unable to believe that we got away with it for so long. (I invented a soap called Revelations back in '95, and it has to be seen to be believed. The episode where the philandering Bishop murders his pregnant mistress by pushing her downstairs is truly a camp classic. The aforementioned Bishop also had a bisexual heroin-addict son, a nymphomaniac daughter, and a lesbian vicar on his staff. It was two years of joy, I tell you, joy.)

My favourite screening-party-type thing is to sit in the cinema after a film has finished, and if it hasn't got a Whitney Houston/Mariah Carey ballad over the end credits, then I make one up. The more serious the film, the better. Gods And Monsters was my favourite, it went something like "Gods and monsters/Are only in your mind/But if God was real/He'd make the monsters kind." Oh, maybe you had to be there. But that's what your novel tapped into, the fun and passion for that stuff. People talk about inventing interactive TV and interactive drama - don't they realise it's *already* interactive?! No one sits there passively, we all join in, and that's why I think the book will strike a chord with everyone. Plus, as I said, its celebration of friendship is a rare and lovely thing.

I thought of you a while back when a friend and I sat down on a Sunday afternoon and had a Screening Party of our very own, watching The Poseidon Adventure. Deep joy. At one point, they're arguing about whether to escape from the ballroom by climbing up the Christmas tree (of course!) or staying put (fools!); Gene Hackman says climb, the purser says stay, and at one point in the background, a woman shouts out, "The purser's right!" I'm mildly obsessed with that woman, now. Imagine being the woman whose career consisted solely of saying "The purser's right!" in The Poseidon Adventure. D'you think her friends got her to do it at parties? Imagine, she took her mum and dad and kids and husband and neighbours to the cinema, just so they could see her saying "The purser's right!" She could still be alive. Dennis, find her for me.”

- Russell from Manchester, UK

“Thanks for your reading last night at the LGBT Center in NYC. Maev and I spent the rest of the night reliving Flashdance and the Gregory Harrison oeuvre and giggling like schoolgirls. I swear I will never think of Chapstick in the same way ever again. I'll stick to my little tub of Carmex.”

- C. Brian from New York City

“Here's a recommendation for your follow-up book...'Falling In Love'. The movie with Meryl Streep & Robert de Niro. It's not a film that would immediately come to mind, I'm sure...but it's hilarious to watch with funny friends.

Also, back in the '70's, Joan Collins made two sexy (in fact they were soft porn, as far as I'm concerned) movies...one was entitled The Stud & the follow on was called 'The Bitch'...Joan gets fucked in a stalled elevator & on a moving swing...ALSO, more importantly: JOAN DANCES!”

- Peter from London

“I just wanted to tell you how HILARIOUS you book was. I love "Showgirls" and Denise Richards too! (is there anything better than "Drop Dead Gorgeous" & "Wild Things" when your feeling a little blue?)”

- Scott from USA

“Bizarre coincidence, but I've also been hosting one of these for the past few months. It sort of started as an accident. I had a birthday party a while back that kind of degenerated into a double feature of Coffy and an episode of the Brady Bunch Variety Hour. I've sort of moved into screening only 70s TV movies. This past weekend we had a Linda Purl double feature- Black Market Babies and Little Ladies of the Night. I'm a sucker for anything with a "special guest star".

- Kieran from USA

“Like you, I was obsessed with The Poseidon Adventure as a child and I would always wonder how I would escape from a building, like say the Astrodome, if it were suddenly turned upside down. I’d stare at the ceiling and try to figure my path out. We had a half-finished basement where I grew up, and I actually nailed some old furniture to the unfinished ceiling so I could hang from it, like Pamela Sue Martin. I also used to take old boxes and make the dining room sets out of them...I'd spend hours cutting out little tables, little plates, little pianos, only to spend more hours flipping the damn thing upside down. Over and over. I was a lonely child.”

- Dave from Los Angeles

“Lately, it seems I can't watch a really bad movie without thinking of you and imagining how it would fit into Screening Party 2 (or perhaps the TV show?) Here are some that I've been thinking that you really need to check out:

The Bride -- I love Sting and will watch him do anything so I ordered up The Bride on my TiVO. Have you seen this? It's an 80s take on The Bride of Frankenstein with Jennifer Beals (!) as the bride and Sting as Dr. F. Unbelievably, unimaginably bad! It suffers from my favorite period piece foible -- letting the fashion of the time in which the film is being made seep into the costume, makeup and hair styling choices. Literally, J. Beals hair when she comes to life is just a big 80s poof. It's actually coiffed to look like she's the bad cheerleader who just tumbled out of the backseat of her boyfriends' 86 K Car -- big, aqua-netted sex hair. And there's a great scene where Jen and Sting are at a big, fancy soiree (maybe New Years? can't remember) and suddenly a ton of glitter is dropped from the ceiling on all the guests. The glitter coats everything. I mean, there's so much that it's like when Peter Brady just dumped the whole carton of white cornflakes on the family when filming the Pilgrim movie in the backyard. I'm convinced that 50 extras died instantly of suffocation as soon as the glitter hit the air. But, doesn't our Ms. Beals look so glamrific 80s with the silver dust coating her huge eyebrows? Absolutely. Sadly the Sting/Jen storyline is pretty stultifying (the bad acting provides plenty of entertainment though) but there is a subplot that is so ludicrous that you actually wonder if you're on Candid Camera as you watch it. I was wishing for a hidden intruder in my house -- practically looking underneath my couch and in my closet -- for undying want of anyone to exchange disbelieving glances with. You see, Sting creates Jen so that the male monster he created previously can have a companion. Well, once Sting sets his eyes on Jen there's no way he can bare to share her with anyone else. (The gyrations she performs while being electrocuted to life on the slab put the Flashdance chair dance to shame. And she does it all herself!) So, the male monster gets mad and leaves town. He ends up hooking up with a little person who is walking to Budapest (I think) to join the circus. Needless to say, the male monster would be perfect for the circus and being that he barely can speak or feed himself, he hooks up with the little guy. The hijinks that ensue as these two fools try to navigate life as circus folk is more than I can even begin to explain here. The best part is that the little guy is full of wisdom that he's always imparting to the monster about why learning to love himself is the greatest love of all. The weird part is that the subplot is the only part of the story that goes anywhere. The Sting/J. Beals part just meanders along (with nary a sex scene, by the unfreakinbelievable way) while our circus friends are left to carry the whole movie. I'll stop here but really, you need to check it out.

Secondly, I rented a cabin for the weekend with some friends a couple of weeks ago and found myself in a full-on Screening Party type Disbelief Fest while watching an edited-for-TV version of Disclosure starring the still-sleazy Michael Douglas and freshly implanted Demi Moore. You've seen this one, right? I thought it was bad when I rented it as a new release. I had no idea how poorly it would age. The "high-tech" plotline is so absurd and embarrassing that I can't even believe Michael Douglas hasn't ordered all copies destroyed. I can see all of the writers sitting around thinking, "Gee, what is the business application for virtual reality?" Um, there isn't one! I suppose hindsight vision is 20/20 but I fail to comprehend how a virtual database made sense even in1992. "It'll be great! Instead of getting up from your desk and walking into a file room to get a file from the file cabinet, you can put on this virtual reality mask and gloves and pantomime going into a file room and retrieving a folder from a file cabinet!" EMBARASSING! Not to mention, the entire sexual harassment plotline, Michael Douglas's corporate mullet, his excruciatingly bland and mannish wife, Demi Moore being simply unlikable in every way imaginable. This one is just begging to be picked apart. I swear, it's the only reason it was even made.

Okay, it felt really good to rant like that!”

- Jennifer from Pittsburgh

“I literally just finished reading your book after picking it up last night. I couldn't get enough of it. It's 8 a.m. in Manhattan right now and I haven't slept. By the time I finished, I wanted to hang out with you guys.

I also loved the "St. Elmo's Fire" chapter. I'm 25 and I recently rediscovered the movie and even gave it to my writing partner as a gag gift one Christmas. I was hoping you would've shed some light on the obnoxious "A bulla-bulla-bulla oh-oh-oh!" thing but I guess we'll have to wait for the DVD. (Yeah, like I'm gonna blow perfectly good Pez money for digital sound and clearer picture of Ally Sheedy as Prince Valiant and Demi Moore riding the jukebox like Kirstie Alley on X).

You have to expand this into a series. And next time please, PLEASE include "Showgirls." You could probably write an entire book. "Deconstructing G-Strings" or something like that. I am also obsessed with the audacious Verhoeven/Esterhas pairings and "Showgirls" is now my all-time favorite film (I'm weird that way).

I found myself watching it and studying it. With such a large cast, I was able to go back each time and focus on a different lead character and/or extra and ponder: What the hell is going through their mind while reciting this piece-of-shit dialogue? I'm eager to know what you and your colleagues think as well, 'cause for the life of me that Henrietta chick with the "boob dress" was the most frightening thing I've ever seen on film.

As I read your book, I thought of friends and fellow aspiring screenwriters I'm acquainted with who would definitely get a kick out of the book. We too attended a screening of "Glitter" probably around the same date you guys went, because the 11th was still fresh on everyone's minds and the words "Mariah Carey's
starring role" was just the thing to lift our spirits for a little while. I always thought Dice reminded me of Stephen Dorff from "Blade." I also thought he was the only salvageable character in the movie and they mercilessly took him out in the end. The marimba scene I will never understand. I agree that Sylk and Ann Magnuson should solve mysteries in the sequel, though.

Stay cool and keep watching those shitheaps.”

- Brian from New York

P.S. - The Jeanne Tripplehorn "mustache" comments have
officially ruined "Basic Instinct" for me.

That's so wrong. :)

“I LOVED your book Screening Room! I couldn't put it down. I read the entire thing in one day - but I haven't read Glitter yet - because I feel like I'm going to be leaving a group of friends and never hear from them again. Alas, I think I'll have to say goodbye to everyone tonight.

By the way, I have a huge moral problem with The Lord of the Rings. It's a 12 hour epic about a gaggle of goblins or hoblits or whateverthefuck and they have to destroy a ring. And there are rumors that two of them are gay. Froda and Sean Astin. They are so obviously straight. For no gay man would EVER destroy an accessory. Especially if it's inscribed.”

- Chad from Los Angeles, part 1

“I finally read Glitter and had to say goodbye to everyone. A bunch of my friends from Crossing Jordan went to watch Glitter and we had about the same experience. Though most of the audience at Universal got up and left.

Glitter made Crossroads look like Schindler's List. Actually, Swept Away made Glitter look like Schindler's List. I wish they would remake "The Women" with Brit, Mariah, and Madonna. Hopefully a role could be found for Elizabeth Berkley.”

- Chad from Los Angeles, part 2

“Oh by the way I listened to the commentary on my COYOTE UGLY (note: caps!) Kinda funny... I love Maria Bello thanking Jerry Bruckheimer for good womens roles.... that was from the heart, and not a ploy to have her own major starring vehicle ala Jerry! (Good womens roles...aren't they all skanks???)”

- Dan from Australia

“ I just finished reading your book, The Screening Party, and I had to tell you how much I enjoyed your movie review parties! My favorite chapter was "Glitter", mostly because it was such a relief to find out that I wasn't the only queer in America who came up with the idea to have friends sit around for a good wallow in it's mysterious Mariah Scarey-ness. Unfortunately, our local theatres (we live in Toledo, Ohio) did not share our opinion on the cinematic importance of Ms. Carey's Herculean thespian efforts. As a result, we had to wait for video, but oh god, was it worth it. (As an aside, it was also pleasing to know that someone else noticed the mystery of the moving side pony-tail. What a relief! I thought some one spiked the cocktails with acid or something...)

By the way, were you aware that esteemed star of the stage and screen Lesley Ann Warren recently mentioned on the Wayne Brady Show that "A Night in Heaven" is the one movie that she doesn't list on her resume and regrets making. She mentioned the title of the movie during her interview segment and stated emphatically that no one saw it, although many members of the studio audience loudly disagreed with applause. "You're all lying," she said, but we just think that they all read your book. On a side note, video rentals for "A Night in Heaven" tripled after her television appearance. (Just kidding, sort of.)

Well, I have to go now because Donna Summer's "On The Radio" just came on the cable music service and I have to go and turn on the mirrored disco ball in the living room. Thanks for letting us all into your living room.”

- Ed and John from Toledo

“I read the Sound of Music essay to an old boyfriend this morning and he was tearing up he was laughing so hard. I also had to confess to him that I actually had a slight victory in reading your book. I always thought I was the only person in the world OTHER than Cybil that owned her classic jazz cd... Which this frmr-boyfriend used to bring up as evidence every time I said that I had good taste in music. Thankfully, you fell for that same CD. Didn't she have two?

On the Whitney note, I think they should play that show live in all airports and gay bars when Whitney is on Diane. She's going to fall apart. I love those spoofs of her on Mad TV. It's hard to separate the real Whitney from the sketches in my mind now. After the show they could have the woman from Mad TV come and do fake out-takes of Mrs. Brown stumbling through "My name is not Susan. I don't know what the hell it is, but it's not Susan" could be her first number.

- Jim from Washington, DC

“A funny thing happened about half way through your book, right about in the middle of the 9 1/2 Weeks review, so right at 4.75 weeks. I started to noticed that the ink the book was pretty strong and making me sick. Really, I would get a headache every time I started to read more than 10 pages or so. It was a moldy kind of smell. Has this happened to anyone else? Is it just me? Am I just a sensitive guy? So, I finished the rest of the book(as much as I could) with my head outside my apartment window and then lent it to a friend.

- Ken from Chicago

“I just bought the cd version of screening party in atlanta yesterday and listened to it all the way home to southeast ga last night....great stuff....laughed my ass off and had to keep rewinding to hear it again....overheated my damn cd player but it was worth it... i particularly think the references to obscure 70's and 80's movie and tv factoids to be one of the best parts in all your work....when i saw the "shields and yarnell" bit in evie harris i thought about that damn show all day long....and then when you had "for ladies only" on the screening room cd that was another great time in my life....shit....gregory harrison was HOT as fucking hell....i also liked that hunky guy with the mustache on "flamingo road"....morgan fairchild was one lucky bitch..<g>.....i am going to start my own screening room parties here in southeast ga and see if i can't get something printed in "field and stream"....

thanks for the laughs.”

- Kevin from Georgia

“Can I just say that a friend gave me your book 'Screening Party' for my birthday last week, and it actually hurt my throat I was laughing so much. Judi Dench as a kleptomaniac, shagging Ally Sheedy is like shagging an armchair, and the Sean Connery / Pierce Brosnan bubble in the avalanche comparison - wonderful!

If you could review 'Romancing The Stone' - my favourite film, for reasons I don't even understand, it would be a wonderful thing.

Please don't let your friend shit in my letter box, I have been nothing but complementary, and I maintain that Rutherford Shelton is a ridiculous made-up name, nobody in England is called that, and I know somebody called Rufus, so I should know.”

- Louise from London

“Last week I was browsing---oh, have it your way, cruising---the film section of "world-famous Powell's Books" (as its ads never tire of reminding us) here in Granolaville (aka Portland) when I came across this bootylicious slice of Gen-Y heaven, locked in what those French-fried deconstruction types call a "readerly embrace" with Screening Party. Actually, "embrace" doesn't quite say it: given the kid's slightly crazed smile and rapidly glazing eyes, he was obviously getting ready to cop a literary nut that could have outgushered Old Faithful. What was that crack that Roland Barthes, the late frog prince of pretentiousness, always made about "the pleasures of the text" being not unlike getting yr freak on? Fuck if I know, but whatever, Hensley, you Svengalian perv: mindwise, Jr. Mints here was clearly frolicking wantonly through some v.r. playroom of your depraved making and would no doubt have reenacted every frame of the entire Bel Ami catalogue at the flick of your decadent little pinkie had I not staged an emergency intervention, thrusting myself into the middle of this Hensley-induced humpfest with a display of Coward-ly wit: "Um, good book?" This recklessly inventive bon mot elicited a faintly irritated "Uh, yeah" rather than the sparkling riposte I had hoped for. A moment later, though still dazed, little Mr. Chewable he managed a few more semi-coherent syllables: "It's really. . .funny, you know?"

"Actually, no." Which was true--then. But---long histoire short---I ended up taking home your leetle opus instead of Junior Mints.

Which turned out to be a pretty good trade-off, since Junior Mints was right: Screening Party is funny. Very. In fact, Screening Party is the funniest book I've read since. . .well, Misadventures in the (213). (Yes, after recovering from J.M.'s premature bailing---although mentally I'd already given us a week, tops---I actually managed to register the author's name on the cover of Party and deja-vued on the spot: "Oh, yeah: him." "Him" being "you." "You" being one of the reasons my ex probably dumped me several years back because I insisted on reading Misadventures in bed late at night and kept waking the poor guy up with repeated explosions of laughter----as loud as they were irrepressible---whenever one of your jaundiced takes on the freaklore of Glitter City (where I also did time as a humble scrivener) produced some long-repressed but delighted shock of recognition.

Screening Party is even better, and I plan to make it mandatory reading for the Gay Men's Filmtalk group I facilitate here. Although the group spends a lot of time bitching and moaning about some of the lesser flix we slate for review, they've clearly never learned your secret: namely, that bad movies can be as big a source of fun as good ones. But that's because Portland---despite its unearned reputation for "livability" (the criteria for which apparently excludes anything as vulgar as a sense of humor)---is a repressed and repressive backwater that is almost pathologically afraid of violating its sense of itself as a refuge for civilized Quiet Good Taste. Hereabouts, your hilarious running commentary on Glitter would probably have landed you an overnight in our hideously expensive slammer---sorry, detention center----on some public-nuisance charge, and I regret to say that too many of the home showings we've organized have been attended by the likes of that bowel-bound snobbyboots Tad at your Basic Instinct screening.

But what I love about the book is that it's not only often full-on hysterical---it's also smart. It has a genius grasp of the cat's cradle of competing and often contradictory forces that make for the pleasures and absurdities of movies (and the movie business) in particular and pop culture generally. But the book doesn't lay on its clearly hard-won sophistication with Tad-ish solemnity. The seemingly throwaway wit of Dr. Beaverman's comparison of Whitney Houston's hair in The Bodyguard to a tricornered hat and her remark that "I keep waiting for her to cross the Delaware" is actually not only a startling act of attention---it takes a fairly sophisticated visual sense to produce that kind of simile---it's also a rather bold example of the historical imagination at wok. But I'd better stop now before I lapse into more Tadisms. Enough to say the book was a hoot and a half , and I'm looking forward to your next.”

- A Super Funny Guy from Portland

“I found myself reading your book much more slowly than I normally do because I did not want the book to be over. I found myself aching to be a part of your group, a longing equaled only by the time when Jeremy Gelbawks was leaving THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY and I just knew that if only my obviously blind parents could see the bundle of talent standing before them they would realize that they just had to take me to LA so I could be the newest Partridge! Alas, their vision remained impaired and to this day I cannot hear the name Brian Foster without being filled with absolute jealousy and certainty that had I been in LA, he would never have seen a drum set.

Anyway, I hope you are busily meeting and prepping the sequel. Remember: you need a higher body count! And I hope you will not overlook such gems as VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, SHOWGIRLS and something from the John Hughes oeuvre.

I also am a writer and have a column on the net @www.theglamorouslife. net.

It is a serial about a fictional Broadway touring company- think "Tales of the City" crossed with "Waiting For Guffman." Oh! What about "CAN'T STOP THE MUSIC" for a viewing of your club?”

- Scott from New York

“I enjoyed Screening Party for the obvious reasons (slamming/ celebrating movies we love for the wrong reasons) but also loved it because it is also a testament to friendship. You guys really like each other despite your different views and backrounds.
Its refreshing. Living as a big ol' homo in the post-irony age, I sometimes find it hard to admit that I love the things I love (Mama's Family, Sextette, , figure skating, etc....you get the picture).

Again, let me congratulate you on the book and on knowing good friends when you find them. They are to be treasured.

- Scott from Who Knows Where

PS- Whenever I see "Sound of Music", I think of Maya Angelou. Heres why. During the wedding scene I can't help but think that had she seen this movie first, we would all be talking about her opus "I Know Why the Caged Nun Sings".

Had Screening Party imported here to Switzerland and couldn't put it down.

Three comments.

Comments:

1. It's Fahrvergnügen - only mention it 'cause it's the one really useful thing I've learned in my "German for Foreigners" class.

2. Your "Bodyguard" story touched me so deeply. I read it on Saturday night right before I went out, and immediately after I realized I was singing the Whitney Houston version of "I Will Always Love You" out loud while I waited for the tram on a public street – which is unusual because I usually sing one of Dolly's versions.

3. I think I am in love with Dr. Beaverman. But then I suppose everyone is.

- Steve from Switzerland

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