Everybody Thought We Were Crazy: Dennis Hopper, Brooke Hayward, and 1960s Los Angeles

This is a New Yorker article with a bibliography. The topic covered in the subtitle is too broad to capture in 350 pages.Instead, the book hits the familiar beats of Dennis Hopper and Brooke Hayward’s bios, a smattering of 60’s Hollywood history, and a Freedom Rock encapsulation of the era’s music.If you’re unfamiliar with any of this history, the book is a readable, if inch-deep, primer. Otherwise, it is a pleasant diversion at best.

It was a great book, so hard to put down, so incredibly researched with 222 pages of bibliography/footnotes. I found it well worth the price, most informative about the 1960s Los Angeles Pop Art era populated with many now famous artists. I'm glad I read Brooke Hayward's "Haywire" first a few weeks ago to have more background information on her life leading up to the eight-year marriage to Dennis Hopper, about whom I learned so much new history about his own life and early experiences. I immensely enjoyed Rozzo's writing, his detailed data regarding the many artists in the LA and NYC Pop Art milieu from its inception and future amazing fame. The later information about the development of "Easy Rider" with Peter Fonda (and its aftermath), along with Hopper's friendships with actors like Vincent Price and his film work with Roger Corman was fascinating. Like many biographies the ending is not necessarily a happy one, but the detail Rozzo provided about so many famous artists, musicians, and film luminaries was a real page-turner. I was a bit sad to finish the book this morning, having stayed up all night, unable to put it down, and look forward to passing it on to my art teacher son-in-law to read as I'm certain he'll find it as captivating as I have. I greatly respect the author's painstaking research and writing style. There was never a dull moment in his work that brought back so many of my own fond memories of the explosive creativity of the Sixties! There are numerous cool photographs also included in the volume!I highly recommend this amazing work for anyone interested in the 1960s era of Los Angeles and Pop Art!

A quintessential Hollywood couple was immersed in the culture and lifestyle and their house was the epicenter.It was rock and roll, pop art, drugs, making movies, and what a wild ride. Dennis Hopper, an actor who lived hard, had some extraordinary roles on the big screen, an art collector, and married to a descendant of Hollywood royalty. Brooke Hayward, the daughter of a famous agent/producer and a big-time actress, whose own career didn’t take off as planned after marriage and children. Theirs was a tumultuous relationship filled with his drug and alcohol abuse and violence too. Everyone who was anyone gravitated to the Hopper/Hayward’s eclectic house where a party was always happening. Guests ranged from Andy Warhol to Jane Fonda and her brother to the Hell’s Angels.They were the life of the party. Until they weren’t.It’s a deep dive into a period as seen through a celebrity marriage gone awry.

Very well written book detailing life amongst the bohemian crowd in LA in the sixties and in particular the art scene surrounding Dennis Hopper and Brooke Hayward. A very pleasurable read for those of us who lived through that era as well as those who did not but are interested in the history of that period where the culture was being reshaped

A lot of this book originally appeared as articles in Vanity Fair, but it's still a fine, sometimes frenzied account of how the marriage of Brooke Hayward and Dennis Hopper didn't survive amidst the turmoil of the 1960s. What a cast of characters and what lives they led.