Author Dennis Hensley
Dennis Hensley is an L.A.-based writer and performer who has written for Hollywood Life, In Style, Us Weekly, TV Guide, Total Film, Esquire, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Gotham, Hampton's, Out, The Advocate and The Face. As a travel writer, Dennis has written about such destinations as Thailand, New Zealand, Zurich, Montreal, Toronto, Prague, Budapest, Vienna, Dubai, Peru, Brazil and Phoenix, AZ. His widely read Detour Magazine column, Misadventures in the (213), became a bestselling book. He’s also a singer/songwriter, has written for the Independent Spirit Awards and numerous TV shows and was one of the “main gays” on Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D List. He released his second book, Screening Party, in 2002 and from 2010 to 2013, worked as a staff writer on the hit E! comedy show Fashion Police.
In today’s “interview,” I asked him how he got started as a writer.
I used to be a dancer on cruise ships, he told me, and I auditioned for Madonna’s Blond Ambition Tour and the experience was so rich and funny and real that I wrote a story about it and sent it to all these magazines. I was really methodical and sent query letters everywhere and Movieline magazine…there was an editor there that liked my voice in the letter and he called me up and he said, ‘If your piece is as funny as your letter, then we’re interested’ and they ended up running the piece. Ed Margolis was the editor and he started giving me assignments and my first interview was with the late great Florence Henderson who we just lost.
I just went back and read that piece because you know she passed away and I remembered how outrageous and bawdy she was. She did me a great favor by being really provocative and I was able to turn in a story that was edgy and funny and it got me going and I kept getting more assignments from there and I just kept building it up.
I think one of my strengths as an interviewer is that I get where people are coming from and I think they sense that and so they feel like, ‘Oh if I go this way, I’m not going to be misinterpreted, he gets it.’ Those stories are really two skills: you probably get the assignments because they like the way you string words together. But that doesn’t mean you can sit down and talk to people and interview them. Interviewing is actually my favorite part.
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