i’m still here doing stuff

DeNNIs HeNSLEY

  • Photos by Christopher Jon

YOU KNOW IN THAT MOVIE XANADU…

…where Danny (Gene Kelly) convinces Sonny (Michael Beck) to open up a roller disco with him? I used to think that plot point was preposterous.

Sonny was an artist, damnit!

He would never give up his art, his passion, to pursue something as frivolous as opening a roller disco.

Now, thirty some-odd years into my creative career in LA, I get why Sonny said yes. I’ve had to pivot so many f-ing times that if a cool, old rich guy came along and “Hey kid, screw your dreams, let’s open a roller disco!” I would be ALL OVER IT…especially if he called me “kid.”

Still, I’m really proud of the fact that I’ve made a lot of somethings out of nothing. And I’m still here.

Read on to see some of the stuff I’ve done and might still be doing…assuming I haven’t packed it all in to open a roller disco.

DENNIS ANYONE?

a podcast about making things up and making things happen.

I believe art and creativity make and make live worth living and I love talking to people who do it.

Some of my guests are well-known, like actress Julie Hagerty and the late great Leslie Jordan. Some are beautiful strugglers.

But they’ve all made the decision to live creative lives and our lives are so much the better for it.

you don’t know my life!

GAME NIGHT JUST GOT PERSONAL.

You Don’t Know My Life! is a get-to-know-ya party game I co-created with my friend Jeb Havens based on the offbeat questions I developed over my years of interviewing people.

It started as a boxed game and spun-off into a virtual game that I host like a game show over Zoom. It’s a total blast!

Learn more about the boxed game HERE.

And book a Virtual Game HERE.

LIFECAST

BECAUSE EVERYONE’S GOT A STORY

LIFECAST by DENNIS HENSLEY is a service I created to capture people’s life stories before they get away.

I interview people about their lives, like a podcast, then edit it together with music to create an auditory heirloom that can be enjoyed by loved ones for years to come.

I also cover milestone events like weddings and birthday parties. I’ve even created Lifecasts over Zoom.

Learn more HERE.

IT’S A WONDERY LIFE

I started writing scripts for the Wondery podcast company in 2018. First, for the immersive Who-am-I show Imagined Life and more recently for the breakout hit Even the Rich.

I’ve written about everyone from Jessica Simpson to James Baldwin to Audrey Hepburn to RuPaul. I’d spend weeks researching and writing about a specific person and I would order a coffee mug of them to drink from during that process. I have quite a mug collection and whenever I drink from one, I remember the lessons I took from that person’s life story.

Learn more and LISTEN HERE.

FILMS

dance …seriously

So here's a plot twist I didn't see coming for 2024.

In my 38 years in Los Angeles, no talent agent has ever looked at me and thought, 'I could make money off that guy.'  Until now.

I just signed with a big Hollywood agency...for dance! I know, crazy...but actually not that crazy.

I've always loved to dance. It was one of the things I was pursuing when I arrived in LA in 1986. It led to me working for Princess Cruises for five years in my 20's. But when my writing career started to blossom, I let dancing go...for like 30 years.

And then 2011, I discovered Benji Allen's GROOV3 hip-hop class and fell in love with dancing again. I went at least once a week. I even did recitals in my late 40's and I was an excited as a teenage ballerina. I call Benji my Ambassador of Joy because his class has been such a gift in my life.

Cut to earlier this year, I learned from my longtime friend Fred Talleksen, who happens to be an Emmy-nominated choreographer, that a teacher that I took back in the late 80's, Michael Rooney, was teaching a really fun Jazz class for folks over 40...ten minutes from my condo in Noho.

So I started taking it a few months ago and it's become my Saturday morning sanity break. About a month ago, Michael announced the the class that a former assistant of his, Stephanie Landwehr, is now a dance agent and she was going to come and observe next week's class because her agency Bloc is looking to add some "mature dancers" to their roster. 

So Stephanie comes to class and she must have liked my moves because I just signed with Bloc, which represents dancers and choreographers I've admired from afar for years, like Mandy Moore (LaLa Land, Taylor Swift's Eras tour) and Robert Roldan from So You Think You Can Dance and most recently, Hacks.

Some day I might be a dancing Boniva bottle in a pharmaceutical commercial that plays incessantly on MSNBC and you'll be able to say you knew me when.

To say I'm delighted by this surprising development in my life is an understatement. After hustling and trying for years to make things happen in my career, to have a dream meet me halfway is so heartening. Sometimes in Michael's class, I'll look in the mirror and this strange, surreal feeling comes over me. It's like it's 1990 all over again and I'm day dreaming about how awesome it would be to tour with Madonna or Paula or Janet...all of whom are still killing it. Dancing is the best thing ever and I feel so happy and grateful that I can still kind of do it.

Now for the first time ever, when I'm out with friends and my phone rings, I get to say, 'I have to take this, it might be my agent.'

I plan to be insufferable.

JOURNALISM

In 1990, I sold my first story as a writer, Confessions of a Boy Toy Wannabe—a first-person account of my dance audition for Madonna’s Blonde Ambition tour—to Movieline magazine.

When I told Madonna, in a round-table interview in '95, that if it weren't for her rejecting me, I wouldn't have a writing career, she replied, "Good for you, you took a negative and turned it into a positive." Which is exactly the kind of thing you want Madonna to say to you.

Since selling that first story, I’ve written for Hollywood Life, In Style, Us Weekly, TV Guide, Total Film, Esquire, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Gotham, Hampton's, Out, The Advocate, The Face and many more.

I’ve had Charlize Theron in a bowling alley, Celine Dion in a limo and Carrie Fisher in her own bed.   In 2006, I penned the Ashlee Simpson Marie Claire cover where she encouraged teenage girls to love themselves the way they were, the promptly went out and got a nose job like that same week.  I should have known something was up when a team of anesthesiologists showed up at the end of the interview.

I loved those days so much and I am so so grateful that I got to be a magazine writer at the time when it was a thing you could be.

Read the story that started it all HERE.

THE MISMATCH GAME

before there was snatch game… there was the mismatch game

Dennis Hensley’s The MisMatch Game is a staged comedy game show benefit I’ve been emceeing and producing at the LA LGBT Center since 2004. To date, raised over $200,000 for the Center’s Homeless Youth Program & had a ton o’ fun.

Learn more HERE.

INSTAGRAM

Follow @themismatchgame

We sincerely apologize. We are 100% certain that things would have gone completely differently if we had posted this sooner. #FakeBeaArthur #FakeRicardoMaltaban #FakeLucilleBall
Flashback Friday to March 2015, when Ms @annsusskind was our big winner! She knew rto fill those blank with sordid answers! #RealRebaAreba #FakeCharlesNelsonReilly #DennisHensley #FakeTanyaRoberts #FakeSophiaPatrillo #FakeJessicaSimpson #FakeRosieODo
Did you know you can bid on your favorite answer card? It's true! You can take home a card like this and display it on your refrigerator for all to ponder. It's a great conversation starter, and really, you're actually taking that moment of joy hom
No, we didn't dream it... #MrT made it to our 20th anniversary performance! He also brought the famous #ATeam van filled with ___________! #20Years
A huge _______-ING THANK YOU to everyone who took part, came out, donated prizes and otherwise supported last night mismatch Game 20th anniversary edition. We raised over $5800 for the @lalgbtcenter and had a ton of laughs. And we got to relive the l
#FakePattyDukeAstin and #FakeHerveVillechaize found their stockings stuffed with ________ December of 2008. #20Years
Do you believe that #FakeCher knows how to make #FakeBeaArthur laugh? ...And that they both refused a sip of #FakeBillCosby's Coca-Cola? Theese history events occurred in March 2015. #20Years
Back in November 2005, the #MisMatchGame crew loaded up the cardboard set and filled blank & hearts in Palm Springs! #FakeCharlesNelsonReilly, #EvieHarris, #FakeElaineJoyce, #FakeHerveVillechaize #DennisHensley and #FakeShellyWinters are still fi
Remember when we refused to let a pandemic stop our blank filling? In December 2020 #FakeDonaldSutherland, #RebaAreba, #FakeStevieNicks, #FakeZooeyDechanel, #DennisHensley, #FakeGregEvigan, #FakeWendyWilliams and #FakeElizabethTaylor took to Zoom and

BOOKS

THE water’s fine

In 2000, I put out an album of original pop songs called The Water’s Fine. Most of the songs I wrote while I was on my last contract as a dancer for Princess Cruises. I would go into the show lounge late at night and sit at the piano and write songs. AfterI left the ships in 1992, I met a producer named Norman Arnold and we started laying down demos.

By 2000, I had enough songs I was happy with to make an album. I look back and I kind of can’t believe I did it. It was a lot of work over a lot of years and I spent my own money to make it.

In the Spring of 2024, after going maybe a decade, without listening to it at all., I brought it up on Spotify. First of all, I had never seen the cover on my iPhone like that so that was surreal.

I thought I would find it a bit cringe to listen to, as the kids would say. But I didn’t. I was actually really proud. I remembered different moments of recording, bringing in different artists to contribute…and renting an old fashion bathtub for the cover, which was shot by my friend Mike Ruiz.

Some songs hold up better than others but there’s an sincerity to it I find really moving.

That kid I was in the 1990’s fucking meant it.

You can listen to it on Spotify HERE.

Another fun musical thing I did was a cover of John Mayer’s “St. Patrick’s Day” with friends Tom Goss, Jeb Havens and Matt Zarley. Watch it HERE.