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HOLBROOK — When Dennis Hensley breezed into Holbrook from Los Angeles over the Christmas holiday, Matthew and Debbie Barger, owners of The Tribune, got a visit from their friend and a new game hot of the press, “You Don’t Know My Life!.”
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While the visit was a total surprise, the game created by Dennis was not. Matthew said that Hensley was always into games as a kid. “We spent hours playing games and a lot of them were ones that Dennis made up from the TV game shows and from life around us. So it just makes sense that he would put one together.”
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The game came from the list of off-beat interview questions Hensley developed over his years as an entertainment journalist profiling celebrities for magazines like Movieline, TV Guide, Out, In Style,Detour, The Advocate, Marie Claire and Cosmopolitan.
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Believing that a more structured party game could be at play, Hensley contacted Jeb Havens, an award winning game designer, who has worked with Maxis, Google, Disney, YouTube and Marvel, and has three professionally published board games of his own. The two put their ideas together and a game was born.
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The questions include ones like, “What’s the coolest thing you’ve ever gotten for free?” or “If there was a doll of you that talked, what would it say when you pulled the string?” Each person playing the game then writes down the answer to their question card. The answers are shuffled and dealt back out. The player reads the card and creates a hashtag and then tries to guess who belongs to the answer.
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“Our mission is to save the world, one mildly embarrassing story at a time,” wrote Hensley on the game website. “Don’t know if you have noticed, but things are a little intense out in the world right now and it seems like we are more divided than ever. ‘You Don’t Know My Life!’ is a game about the things we all share…we all have hopes, we all have fears, we all have mortifying things that happened to us when we were 13, and we all have stories.”
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Born at the Holbrook Hospital, Hensley spent his childhood in Holbrook. He still remembers playing kick the can in the neighborhood streets, going to double features at the Roxie Theater and getting involved in every play and musical that the school system offered.
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“I remember spending a lot of time at Matthew’s house,” shared Hensley. “One game we loved to play was restaurant, where we would set up a room, take orders and ring things up. I also remember that Matthew was the first one to get an Atari video game.
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“I used to love driving around Holbrook with my friends, going to the Dairy Queen and the dances at the Mormon Church,” Hensley recounted. “I have a lot of great memories of going to the movies at the Roxie because that was the world I wanted to pursue. I do remember once watching a double feature of “Grease 2” and “Xanadu.” In the second movie, the power went out shutting down the theater. They let everyone outside but wouldn’t give us our money back because they said it was an act of God. I know “Xanadu” wasn’t a great movie, but honestly I didn’t think it was that bad,” he joked.
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Upon graduation from Holbrook High School, Hensley knew he wanted to continue working in the arts and media as a career. He studied broadcasting at Arizona State University where he earned the lead role in the stage musical “Snoopy!,” which was the sequel to “You Are a Good Man, Charlie Brown.” “I was in a full white dog suit as the director was trying to make it as animated as possible on stage,” recalled Hensley. “It was hot and hard to sing and project through the suit. The reviews weren’t great. But I remember the one that said my big singing number came off ‘like day-old Alpo’. The review didn’t really hurt, even though it was a horrible review.”
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After college, Hensley made his way to Los Angeles. One of his first jobs was as a performer on the Princess Cruise Lines, where he spent the next five years singing and dancing at night, while exploring the world.
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After leaving the cruise lines, Hensley pursued a successful career as an entertainment journalist interviewing celebrities. Of all the celebrities Hensley has interviewed over the years, his favorite was Carrie Fisher who among other roles played Princess Leia in the original “Star Wars Trilogy.”
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“I found out that Carrie had a novel coming out, so I approached my editor about doing an interview with her,” Hensley reminisced. “I remember going to her house. I asked her where she wanted to do the interview. Carrie looked at me and said, ‘In bed.’ Sitting on the edge of her bed, talking with her was everything I had ever fantasized it would be.” As Hensley was finishing the interview with Fisher, her mother Debbie Reynolds walked in. “It was magical watching those two together.”
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Today, Hensley has taken his writing to a new adventure working with “Imagined Life,” a podcast where each episode is about a well-know person who is not revealed until the end of the podcast. “The writing is in second person,” said Hensley. “People watching the podcast are led through the person’s life as though they were living it for that moment. It is really challenging to write, but I think it puts people into a person’s life in a way that is very moving.”
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Beyond writing and creating the game, Hensley still loves to travel. “I have been to a lot of places. I want to go to Iceland and visit Spain again and this time go to Madrid.” His love of the arts has never died, but dance and yoga have replaced the neighborhood games of kick the can.
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Locally, “You Don’t Know My Life!” is sold by Hensley’s sister, Donna Hatch, at the Hatch Quick Stop in Holbrook. It can also be purchased online at the website www.youdontknowmylifegame.com or on Amazon.
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