Everyone Thought We Were Crazy [book review]

Mark Rozzo’s fascinating new book is not quite a bio / not quite a historical look back on an entire era, but rather a very tight focus on how Dennis Hopper and his then wife Brooke Hayward provided the nexus of Los Angeles extremely vibrant 1960s art scene. 

As interesting a read as it is, one wishes the publisher, Ecco, provided more examples of the art of the era, not just the few examples seen in the numerous photos of Hopper and Hayward and friends.

Dennis Hopper everyone knows, of course; Brooke Hayward was the fashion model / actress daughter of golden age Hollywood star Margaret Sullivan.  Hopper came from a fairly stable middle class / middle American background, Hayward from a loving but volatile Hollywood royalty family marked by extreme emotional outbursts and suicide, yet of the two Hopper was the notorious loose cannon and Hayward the practical, pragmatic partner in their marriage.

They met in 1961 when both appeared in an off-Broadway play.  Hopper announced his intent to marry her at their first encounter and from there they plunged into an intense relationship that appropriately burned itself out by 1969 when they divorced.

It was very much a marriage made in the Sixties, and as the decade drew to a close, so did it, and ironically for many of the same reasons.

Let the record show Hopper was a wife beater and at the time of their divorce an extremely unstable drunk / drug addict.  Credit to him for sobering up and straightening out and being a markedly better person in his latter years, but if you’ve seen him in Easy Rider, Apocalypse Now, and Blue Velvet, he wasn’t acting, that was him the way he typically behaved in the late 1960s.

While Hopper did serve as the primary bread winner for the family (and they lived well in the 1960s, hobnobbing not just with old school Hollywood but the flower generation springing up around them), Hayward’s inheritance proved to be the backbone on which the family depended.  While an accomplished model and actress (she was best friends with Jane Fonda growing up and everyone who knew them assumed Hayward would be the breakout star of that pair), Hayward gave up her professional career over Hopper’s jealous outbursts, focusing on her family like with their daughter and her two sons from a previous marriage.

Well…kinda…  Neither Hopper nor Hayward seemed cut out for the dutiful parent role and while they certainly provided for their children and gave them a stimulating home environment (perhaps too stimulating in some circumstances; how many ten-year olds can brag they sampled their first marijuana by passing a joint around with the Grateful Dead as Michael Hayward can?) but in truth they felt more at home among the art scene and typically tucked the kids in with their Scottish nanny while they attending gallery openings and plays.

Rozzo offers a streamlined dual biography of Hopper and Hayward, hitting all the high and low points but at a fast clip, not dwelling on the personal turmoil as much as some might (Hayward wrote her own story of growing up with her erratic mother in Haywire, which I have not yet read; she declined to follow that book up with a tome on her marriage to Hopper).  He covers the radical changes going on in America, both in pop culture and politics, and of course ends the book with an examination of the impact Easy Rider (which Hopper directed and co-starred in) had on Hollywood and the country.

(Personally I find his two earliest features -- Easy Rider and The Last Movie -- to be messy, overly ambitious works that don’t live up to their reputations; his later films show him settling down as a more journeyman like director and are well done, with Colors deserving a special mention for its frank yet humane look at the gang problem in Los Angeles.)

All that’s just a backdrop for what really interests Rozzo, namely the virtual modern art museum that Hopper and Hayward lived in where Andy Warhol and Hell’s Angels were equally welcomed.  As mentioned, here’s where the book could have served its readership better by providing more examples of the 1960s L.A. art scene, especially since so many works (such as Edward Kienholz’ notorious Back Seat Dodge ’38 which caused much pearl clutching among conservative donors to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art) proved pivotal to modern art not just in America but around the world.

And while it will never challenge Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon books, Everyone Thought We Were Crazy also delivers enough juicy gossip and delightful Hollywood anecdotes to amuse our prurient interests without going overboard on details (well, not too often that is…).

Despite his despicable behavior as described in the book, Hopper remains an fascinating figure in American pop culture, a restless creative soul who dipped his metaphorical paint brush into several different media.  He arrived just after the flowering of the Beat movement and at the tail end of James Dean’s meteoric career (he appeared with Dean in small roles in Rebel Without A Cause and Giant).  Picking up Dean’s fallen torch, he carried it through the Summer of Love to ignite the New Hollywood movement with Easy Rider.  

Ironic that he went on to play King Koopa in 1993’s Super Mario Bros., no?  (But, damn, he gave that performance all he had!)

While his career often seems incoherent, there is no denying he proved to be a pivotal player in the sea change that swept the nation and the world in that decade.

© Buzz Dixon

Everyone Thought We Were Crazy
by Mark Rozzo