500 episodes listed below
Warm shop talk for creative strugglers.
Dennis Hensley talks with playwrights, filmmakers, authors, critics, performers, and entrepreneurial artists about projects in motion. The mood is warm and roomy, with enough banter for movie tangents, theater memories, personal detours, and honest talk about keeping a creative life going.
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Dennis Hensley’s show is built around the lives of creative people, especially the parts that rarely fit into a clean publicity answer. The format is usually conversational and interview-driven, but it leaves room for check-ins, side stories, pop-culture riffs, and updates from Hensley’s own creative projects. A playwright can talk about a stage work involving a trans girl, a video-game world, family struggle, grief, and a dog puppet. Filmmakers can explain how a sweet relationship story took shape, why grandparents matter to the plot, and how chemistry changes what a movie can do. Authors and performers can move from craft to obsession to the practical business of getting work seen. The show has a strong queer arts current, especially in its film conversations, theater references, comedy circles, and mentions of DNR Studios, Derek and Romaine, Outfest, Substack, and Patreon. It also has a fond, lived-in relationship with L.A. venues, screenings, readings, and performance spaces. Hensley’s questions often come from having actually watched, read, or attended the thing under discussion, which gives the interviews a specific texture. He notices the puppet. He remembers the venue. He follows the emotional beat that caught him off guard. The result is less polished industry profile than warm creative debrief. The guest gets space to wander, but the conversation usually circles back to what the work is trying to do. Recurring movie roundup episodes bring in critic and performer perspectives, turning the feed into a lively queer cinephile hangout for a while. Gift guide episodes widen the frame to creative entrepreneurship, from ceramics to family history books. The show can be sentimental, funny, campy, and bluntly practical in the same stretch. It also makes visible the economics of independent creative life: tip jars, side projects, full-time jobs, festival runs, live shows, and small audiences that still matter. The best fit is a listener who enjoys artists talking at human speed, with digressions kept because they reveal personality. It is especially strong for theater people, film lovers, queer-culture followers, and anyone who likes hearing how a creative project really gets from impulse to stage, screen, page, or table.
Made for: Best for listeners who like theater, queer film culture, comedy, memoir-ish artist interviews, and relaxed conversations about how creative work gets made. It also suits people who enjoy L.A. arts-world specificity without needing every reference explained.
What sets it apart: The show’s strength is its mix of affectionate fandom and working-artist realism. Hensley brings enough personal context to make the conversations intimate, while still keeping the focus on the guest’s choices, projects, and survival tactics.
"A podcast about making things up and making things happen." L.A.-based writer-performer Dennis Hensley believes that art and creativity make the world go around and make life worth living. Each week, he interviews a different creative person each about what they do, why they do it, and how they manage the ups and downs of a creative life. Some guests are famous, some are less so...all are what Dennis describes as "beautiful strugglers." Past guests have included authors, actors, photographers, musicians, screenwriters, acrobats and one visual artist who makes cartoons centered around dead houseflies.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Dennis Hensley pairs candid screen criticism with craft-focused interviews that reveal how films and plays take shape.
Dennis Hensley treats conversation as a way into how screen work gets made, performed, and received. The annual movie roundup with Glenn Gaylord and Drew Droege moves easily from firm critical judgments to overlooked recommendations, while interviews with Gabe Rivas Gomez, Noam…
A stage dog's puppet has Dennis Hensley asking the question you had from the audience.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A moving conversation about Level Up, centered on a trans tween’s split worlds and the play’s earned emotional turns.
Dennis Hensley’s conversation with playwright Gabe Rivas Gomez makes a strong case for Level Up, now playing at the Latino Theater Company in Los Angeles.
A loose, grounded film chat that finds the feeling after the setup.
Bookends offers a thoughtful, lightly loose conversation with Dennis Hensley, Noam Ash, and Mike Doyle as they trace a young writer in New York whose life starts to go sideways and sends him back to his grandparents.
A canceled interview becomes a candid creative detour, moving from a hoped-for theater reading to the pleasures of Grease 2.
Dennis Hensley turns a canceled interview into a warmer, looser detour through the world around Happy and Gay, where a demanding full-time job sits beside his hope to keep developing a project that drew encouraging response at a reading.
Loose, chatty movie talk that turns year-end picks into a lively conversation.
Dennis Hensley keeps this Movies of 2025 roundup relaxed and conversational with Glenn Gaylord and Drew Droege, and the exchange moves easily from a Paul Rudd and Tim Robinson friendship bit to a British gay sleeper, A Night Like This, before landing on a documentary that hits…
Year-end movie talk that keeps finding better reasons to add films to the list.
Dennis Hensley's annual movie wrap-up returns as part one, with Oscar season drawing near and Glenn Gaylord and Drew Droege back in the mix. Glenn, a senior film critic at The Queer Review, and Drew, fresh from his New York run in Messy White Gaze, keep the conversation loose,…
A warm Bookends conversation about romantic certainty, actor chemistry, and a Georgia shoot remembered as adult summer camp.
Bookends gives Dennis Hensley a clean path into a familiar but knotty question: what makes someone a good partner, and what happens when certainty meets surprise. The conversation follows Nate's fixed criteria, the disruption brought by Dr.
Jackie Beat's visual mischief and Brian Griffin's Oracle-style cards give this holiday guide its offbeat spark.
A holiday gift guide turns into a compact tour of visual mischief, as Jackie Beat talks through the bastardized prints people bring into their homes and Brian Griffin shows off cool cards, including Oracle-style decks.
Host Dennis Hensley interviews filmmaker Noam Ash and director Mike Doyle about their new movie 'Bookends'.
Dennis Hensley hosts part one of his 2025 holiday gift guide, featuring interviews with two creative guests.
Dennis Hensley interviews playwright-director Howard Skora about Texas Sodomy and the Lawrence v.
Dennis Hensley talks with playwright Gabe Rivas Gomez about Level Up.
Dennis Hensley opens by talking about why artists matter and how creativity helps people get through hard times.
Dennis Hensley turns a canceled Dennis Anyone?
Dennis Hensley interviews author Mark Malkoff about his book 'Love, Johnny Carson', which is based on his podcast interviews and research as a super fan of Johnny Carson.
Dennis Hensley interviews writer-performer Mike Albo about his audio original 'Hologram Boyfriends' and his comedy trio Unitard, exploring themes of desire and technology in modern dating.
Dennis Hensley returns for part two of the show’s Movies of 2025 roundup.
Dennis Hensley opens part one of the annual movie wrap-up as Oscar season looms in a few weeks.
This episode is part two of an annual holiday gift guide featuring interviews with creative entrepreneurs Scott Williams, who runs a ceramic lamp business, and Cam Clarke, who created a book about the King family.
This episode is part one of the host's annual holiday gift guide, featuring interviews with visual artist and drag queen Jackie Beat about her home decor prints and graphic designer Brian Gryphon about his creative card decks.
This episode features an interview with writer Dennis Osborne and author Barry Joseph discussing Stephen Sondheim's love of puzzles and games, based on Barry's book 'Matching Minds with Sondheim' and Dennis's personal memories of playing games with Sondheim.
Author Barry Joseph discusses his book 'Matching Minds with Sondheim', which explores Stephen Sondheim's passion for puzzles and games, in an interview that includes insights from Sondheim's friend Dennis Osborne.
This episode features an interview with Kellie Maloney about her documentary 'Knockout Blonde,' which explores her life as boxing manager Frank Maloney and her transition to living authentically as Kellie.