EVERYBODY THOUGHT WE WERE CRAZY: Dennis Hopper, Brooke Hayward, and 1960s Los Angeles

“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 1960s: 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 down: 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 first telling of Hopper’s life to benefit from access to his personal archives. And 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. 

Advance Praise

"If there was one couple who epitomized the craziness and creativity of L.A. in the sixties, it was Dennis Hopper and Brooke Hayward. Mark Rozzo tells the story of their relationship, and their era, in this can’t-put-it-down history. Compulsively readable.”
—Peter Biskind, author of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls

“A delicious peek into the private world of two wildly creative (if volatile) tastemakers whose galaxy of friends and collaborators redefined modern art and pop culture forever, yielding up revelations and secret histories on virtually every page. A breathtaking achievement in research written in the cool and confident style of an expert storyteller.”—Joe Hagan, author of Sticky Fingers

“An utterly compelling portrait of an unlikely marriage which encompassed the creative fecundity and cultural upheaval of a special time and place.”—Jay McInerney, author of Bright, Precious Days

“A fascinating couple, in a great city, at a thrilling moment: Dennis Hopper and Brooke Hayward, in Los Angeles, in the 1960s. Mark Rozzo lets us see the amazing creativity that came about because of that coincidence of people, place, and era. He also lets us see the pain that underlay the art and that tore Hopper and Hayward—and the decade—apart.”—Blake Gopnik, author of Warhol

“Mark Rozzo, an electric and virtuoso storyteller, resurrects the relationship between icons Dennis Hopper and Brooke Hayward, and takes many fabulous detours along the way with the artists and stars who crossed paths with them.”
—Gay Talese, author of The Kingdom and the Power 

"Everybody had good reason to think they were crazy. But, as Mark Rozzo shows vividly and thrillingly, a lot of people around Dennis Hopper and Brooke Hayward in the the sixties—and everyone who mattered then seemed to be around them—had good reason to think they there geniuses, radicals, ciphers, intellectuals, demons, and poseurs. Rozzo reveals all to be impossibly true."
—David Hajdu, author of Positively 4th Street