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Everybody Thought We Were Crazy: Dennis Hopper, Brooke Hayward, and 1960s Los Angeles
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About This Book
National Bestseller "A landmark and long-overdue cultural history." — Vogue The stylish, wild story of the marriage of Dennis Hopper and Brooke Hayward—a tale of love, art, Hollywood, and heartbreak "Those years in the sixties when I was married to Dennis were the most wonderful and awful of my life." — Brooke Hayward Los Angeles in the 1960 riots in Watts and on the Sunset Strip, wild weekends in Malibu, late nights at The Daisy discotheque, openings at the Ferus Gallery, and the convergence of pop art, rock and roll, and the New Hollywood. At the center of it all, one inspired, improbable, and highly combustible couple—Dennis Hopper and Brooke Hayward—lived out the emblematic love story of '60s L.A. The home these two glamorous young actors created for themselves and their family at 1712 North Crescent Heights Boulevard in the Hollywood Hills became the era's unofficial living room, a kaleidoscopic realm—"furnished like an amusement park," Andy Warhol said—that made an impact on anyone who ever stepped into it. Hopper and Hayward, vanguard collectors of contemporary art, packed the place with pop masterpieces by the likes of Roy Lichtenstein, Ed Ruscha, and Warhol, and welcomed a who's who of visitors, from Jane Fonda to Jasper Johns, Joan Didion to Tina Turner, Hells Angels to Black Panthers. In this house, everything that defined the 1960s went the fun, the decadence, the radical politics, and, ultimately, the danger and instability that Hopper explored in the project that made his career, became the cinematic symbol of the period, and blew their union apart— Easy Rider . Everybody Thought We Were Crazy is at once a fascinating account of the Hopper and Hayward union and a deeply researched, panoramic cultural history. It's the intimate saga of one couple whose own rise and fall—from youthful creative flowering to disorder and chaos—mirrors the very shape of the decade.
Reviews
"Which brings us to Rozzo's greatest authorial gift."
"Film buffs should snatch this up."
"The author wants to take in the entirety of the '60s cultural revolution through the lens of Southern California and two protean people who lived there."
"Rozzo delves deep into his characters' lives, making a strong case for their enduring cultural influence ..."
"What makes Rozzo's book exciting is not just the collective artistic firepower of the various names involved, but the many surprising ways in which these names interact, and the ways in which these interactions occasionally give rise to significant cultural events ..."
"Extensively footnoted and drawing on current interviews and previously published sources, the book paints a detailed picture of the iconic Hopper and his relationship with Hayward, the daughter of legendary producer Leland Hayward and actress Margaret Sullavan."
"At times the book feels unreal because it resembles films like Almost Famous or Forrest Gump, whose hapless protagonists accidentally stumble into every defining event of their generation and fortuitously find themselves at parties with its brightest lights and scions."
"as much a biography of a marriage as it is a microcosm of the chaotic decade of the 1960s."
"Readers of Rozzo's book will come away deeply impressed by the couple's efforts ..."
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