The stylish, wild story of the marriage of Dennis Hopper and Brooke Haywardâa tale of love, art, Hollywood, and heartbreak
âThose years in the sixties when I was married to Dennis were the most wonderful and awful of my life.â âBrooke 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 coupleâDennis Hopper and Brooke Haywardâlived out the emblematic love story of â60s 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 eraâs unofficial living room, a kaleidoscopic realmââfurnished like an amusement park,â Andy Warhol saidâthat 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 whoâs 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 apartâEasy 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. Itâs the intimate saga of one couple whose own rise and fallâfrom youthful creative flowering to disorder and chaosâmirrors the very shape of the decade.
Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.