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AE: Testosterone also focuses on the destructive downward spiral of obsession. Do you have any obsessions, Dennis?
DH: I’m pretty obsessed with The Amazing Race. Every week as I’m watching it and it’s coming down to the wire I think, ‘This is going to be over in a few minutes and then I’ll have to go back to my humdrum life.’ I also, in the last year, had a romantic relationship that cut surprisingly deep and then didn’t work out, so the themes of the movie really resonate with me. I’m sort of obsessed with the idea of love, lately, and its place in gay culture. Having actually experienced it, I do think that it’s the big fish that a lot of us are after, whether we admit it or not. But I’ve been in gay environments—clubs or parties—where everyone’s talking about who they’ve banged or who they’d like to bang and if I were to point to someone and say, "He’s attractive and seems interesting…I think I’ll try to ask him on a date," people would have looked at me like I was crazy or weak or naive.

AE: As someone who now has experience in both the publishing world (as an author) and the movie world (as a screenwriter), would you rather have your work scrutinized by literary critics or film critics?
DH: It's a toss up. I didn't read that many of the reviews of Testosterone. They forwarded me a few of the nicer ones, but I didn't actively seek out the reviews. With a book, it's just you, so there's no one else to blame anything on. A movie's more collaborative, so if the critics aren't kind you can pass the buck a bit. For whatever reason, I don't take much stock in reviews. It's really flattering to get nice reviews but I learned with my first book not to take them too personally, good or bad. I usually look at a review in marketing terms. I think, "Okay, is this going to help me sell this puppy or not?"

AE: Were you pleased with the audience responses to Testosterone?
DH: Audiences tended to be more positive about the movie than critics. It was thrilling to sit in audiences and hear people laughing. They got all the stuff that we wanted to be funny. I haven't heard a whole lot from people about it. I haven't gotten a single e-mail about it, for example. I think it's one of those movies that you either dig or you don't. It's not a reassuring, feel-good movie, so I think people are less apt to say things like, "That was me up there...thank you for telling my story!" Like nobody stood up at a Q & A at a gay festival in tears, but we knew that was what it was going to be like going in.

AE: Were there any reactions that you didn’t expect?
DH: There were a couple of people who thought we were racist because the Argentineans behaved rather duplicitously, but everyone in the movie was shady; Americans too. The people working on the movie in Argentina were fine with the script and thought it was fun.
AE: Do you feel like you have expanded your audience, reached people you wouldn’t have otherwise as an author?
DH: The personal experience for me was amazing, but it hasn't really opened any doors for me so far. I've heard from not one single person I didn't know before, thanks to the movie. And David and I still can't get anyone in the business to represent us or read our new script. Maybe the DVD release will change things.

AE: What kinds of special treats will viewers find on the DVD?
DH: There's an excellent making-of documentary called Raging Hormones that I worked on that I'm really proud of. It's slick and interesting and funny, I hope. And there are three deleted sequences: one where Dean (David Sutcliffe) visits a bathhouse in search of Pablo and fantasizes about Pablo stripping, one where Dean happens upon two gay American tourists in the cemetery. I play one of the gay tourists but I insisted I get credited as "Tourist Who Happens To be Gay" because I felt like "gay tourist" pigeonholed me. I'm so much more than that. The last deleted scene is something really surprising that we cut from the end of the movie with Antonio Sabato Jr. and David Sutcliffe. I don't want to give away what happens but it's taken straight from the book and it's really out there and fun to watch.

Get Testosterone on DVD

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