Screening Party (edit title)

Shelfari edited the description of Screening Party Saturday, August 1 2009.

• Mare’s still P.O.-ed at Rob in the next scene, in which the gang shows up at St. Elmo’s on Halloween night sporting Groucho Marx-style nose glasses. "This is the one night a year where Judd Nelson feels normal," says Tony. In this scene, Rob’s sax-synching is so powerhouse that Demi, who's newly crimped hair makes her look like an albino Pointer Sister, is compelled to dry hump the jukebox. "I’m obsessed with this moment coming up," says Marcus, "where Rob starts clapping and says, ‘Let's rock!’ I think he looks so awkward." Just then, his wife traipses in looking like Pat Benatar from the "Love Is a Battlefield" video. When Rob notices she’s with another man, all hell breaks loose. "Get your hands off of my wife!" threatens Rob. "With narcissists," explains Dr. Beaverman, "everything belongs to them. They see everything as an extension of themselves. They are not independent objects." Dr. B takes a swig of Snapple and adds, ". . . .unlike whatever Demi’s got stuffed into her bra which seems to have a mind of its own." "And check out that metallic lip gloss," says Tony. "It looks like she just went down on C3PO in the bathroom." — Screening Party on St. Elmo’s Fire For years Dennis Hensley, author of the best-seller Misadventures in the (213) , has been getting his friends together to watch and crack wise about movies we all know and love, movies like Taxi Driver, Jaws , and The Sound of Music , movies that had an impact on the world we live in. They also watched Glitter . Though each film endures its share of cheap shots (“Whitney Houston’s wig in The Bodyguard is like a tricornered hat. I keep waiting for her to cross the Delaware.”), Hensley and Company are just as likely to talk seriously about what the films mean to them. “The thing that killed me about Saturday Night Fever when I first saw it,” recalls one party regular, “is that I knew I was desperate like Donna Pescow, but I wanted to be glamorous like Karen Lynn Gorney. That struggle has stayed with me my whole life.” Screening Party also explores the lives of its “characters” outside of the parties—their hopes and dreams, fortunes and foibles, and how the ritual of getting together once a month to lust after Gregory Harrison in For Ladies Only or make fun of Barbra Streisand in A Star Is Born comes to mean more to them than they’d ever have imagined. So if you’re the kind of person who drops everything when you happen upon St. Elmo’s Fire on cable, if you can’t bite into a strawberry without thinking of Kim Basinger and Mickey Rourke making a mess of the kitchen in 91/2 Weeks, if you’ve always wanted to watch Al Pacino get leathered up and go Cruising but aren’t man enough to do it alone, this book’s for you. So grab a seat on the couch. The party’s just beginning. Dennis Hensley is a Los Angeles–based journalist whose writing has appeared in Movieline, Premiere, The Advocate , and other publications. He is the author of the novel Misadventures in the (213) .

Shelfari edited the contributors of Screening Party Friday, July 31 2009.

• Added a contributor: Dennis Hensley: (Primary Author)

Shelfari edited the first sentence of Screening Party Friday, July 17 2009.

• If it's true that most of our adult hang-ups and predilections can be traced back to childhood, then I think I know the moment I became someone who loves to talk back to the television.