MARK ROZZO

Edited by Kate Orne  Photographs Martin Crook

Archival photography by Dennis Hopper, Courtesy of Hopper Art Trust.

Published in No 14

The same week that the United States conducted a high-altitude nuclear test over the Pacific Ocean in July 1962, Andy Warhol had his first solo show, exhibiting The Campbell Soup Cans at Ferus Gallery, a little-known gallery in Los Angeles. It was an event, and a time, which would define and transform LA’s sleepy art scene which ended up, decades later, rivaling that of New York. Actor and director Griffin Dunne speaks with culture writer Mark Rozzo about family; Pop Art; Dennis Hopper and his wife actress, author and art patron, Brooke Hayward; and their art collection; one the era’s greatest collections of contemporary art. In true UD spirit, Rozzo retreated to a former dairy farm in Vermont for some quiet time to write his fascinating book, Everybody Thought We Were Crazy: Dennis Hopper, Brook Hayward, and 1960s Los Angeles.

GRIFFIN DUNNE: I’ve known Brooke and Dennis since my childhood and from the times I worked with Dennis in my adult life. How did you become interested in them and writing this book?

MARK ROZZO: We know a lot about swinging London, Haight Ashbury, and the Warhol Factory but Los Angeles in the ‘60s was a unique moment of three separate revolutions all happening at one time on the West Coast: the Ferus gallery art gang doing their thing, New Hollywood is starting to explode, and then the Sunset Strip scene, The Byrds, principally, being America’s answer to the Beatles, planting the seeds of this counterculture — all happening in this one place, at this one time. I mean, that was absolutely fascinating to me. I do think that Dennis Hopper and Brooke Hayward were very uniquely positioned, at that time, in that place, to just cross a lot of boundaries. And then I have to say, it was fun writing about your parents, your uncle and aunt, Joan Didion, because they just had such a cool way of living, as well.

GD: You know, my family was not … while Brooke and Dennis were at the Ferus Gallery, in the La Cienega art show walks on Sundays, that really wasn’t my parents’ world. They were much more of an older Hollywood society, with David Selznick and all the people that Brooke grew up with. But as you so beautifully described in the book, Brooke and Dennis straddled both worlds. Both an emerging art scene that Old Hollywood would never understand, and yet able to socialize with Old Hollywood, and have genuine friendships with people from an entirely different generation.

MR: It’s wild. Did your parents stay pals with Brooke and Dennis? You know, beyond the time that we’re talking about in the book?

GD: Yes, I think socially, when my father rose from the ashes and became a well-known novelist and journalist, he was able to go back to Hollywood, and he was welcomed and embraced where he hadn’t been, decades earlier. And their paths crossed socially a great deal. And then I made Search and Destroy (1995) with Dennis, which was such a trip. Because I remember him from being a little kid summoned downstairs to say goodnight to the dinner guests. And he was one. You’re fortunate that Brooke is still with us, since so many of the people in the book are not. Irving Blum [Pioneering Los Angeles art dealer.] must have been helpful.

MR: Irving is indestructible.

GD: You’ve really captured the beginning of an art movement, which ended up rivaling New York. Dennis brought attention not just to Andy Warhol but also introduced the art world to Ed Ruscha. Having Dennis as an actor, director, photographer and artist — and a discoverer of artists.

MR: And when he teamed up with Brooke they seemed like an unstoppable force, for a while, in terms of collecting the art of their moment. And really, having the vision to recognize the talent in those early years. The Ed Ruscha painting that they had in their den, Standard Station, Amarillo, Texas, 1963 was purchased for $780. If that came up for auction, that’s got to be somewhere around $60 million or something like that. [The painting was sold at Christie's, in 2019, for $52.5 million.]

GD: And the Campbell’s Soup Cans by Warhol.

MR: Irving and I talked about when he persuaded Andy to come to LA to unveil Warhol’s first ever solo show at Ferus Gallery, in July ’62, with the Soup Cans paintings. It is, to me, the moment when Andy Warhol becomes Andy Warhol. And how Dennis and Brooke bought one for like $75 — Brooke had that painting until the ‘80s, when she sold it to buy a Steinway piano for her third husband, Peter Duchin, the band leader.

GD: My parents once gave a party, in 1964, called the Black and White Ball, that Dennis and Brooke came to. And I believe Peter Duchin was the orchestra leader. So, she was dancing to her future husband’s music. [The ball is said to have been an inspiration for Truman Capote’s 1966 Black and White Ball in New York.]

MR: It’s wild, the interconnections.

GD: One of the things that I was not aware of was how desperate Dennis was, as an actor, when he got the reputation of being difficult. A period where he goes for an audition and there’s a monologue preceding two lines. He’s waiting for the casting director, to read the monologue so he can get to the two lines. And the director goes, “No, no, no. You’re the one with the monologue.” And it just killed me, that someone like Dennis Hopper, who had worked with Nicholas Ray in Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Giant (1956), and Hathaway’s From Hell to Texas (1958), who was poised to take over from James Dean — in terms of stardom — had fallen so far that he’s assuming he’s reading for two lines in a Twilight Zone episode and auditioning for shows like Petticoat Junction. I didn’t realize he went through such a deeply humbling period in his career. We all remember him starring in and directing Easy Rider (1969). When that came out, it was off to the races.

MR: It was very difficult period for Dennis, you know, in his Dennis way, he did a lot of self-mythologizing about his being blackballed from Hollywood. I mean, there is a grain of truth to that, no doubt. He wasn’t being cast in the hugest Hollywood movies, but he was still working. But as you say, sometimes that work was sporadic, and not very satisfying to him.

GD: He had a remarkable ability to self-destruct, particularly when things were good. He didn’t know a good thing when he saw it. Which made him both a genius and a tortured man. Yeah. it just struck me, that two struggling actors, going out to audition for Green Acres, or something and then coming home to a house filled the most fascinating artists and rock stars of the period and surrounded with art that will one day be worth tens of millions of dollars.

MR: After Blue Velvet, he embraced sobriety for the rest of his life. I mean, maybe he was California sober, let’s say.

GD: Well, he would roll those joints and keep 'em on a steady puff. But sober from booze.

MR: His grandfather, a farmer in Kansas, was a guy who kind of didn’t believe in things like land speculation, and his best friend was a Black sharecropper. And Dennis often said, “the only thing we were taught in Kansas to be prejudiced against was prejudice itself.” So, he had this kind of lefty thing going, from birth. And then of course, Dennis became very passionate about civil rights. At one point he said, something like, “I never really met a march I didn’t like.”And then after he walks out of rehab or detox, as his brother David put it, “It was so weird. It was like, when he was in there, they removed his brain and put in Ronald Reagan’s.” Apparently at the end of his life, he had another change of heart and voted for Obama. You once told me about how striking you found Brooke to be when you were a boy.

GD: Yeah. She was so beautiful. And so was my mother. And their physical similarities at that time were very close. And I remember seeing them with my mom in front of the carousel on Santa Monica Pier. My mom told me, incorrectly, that Dennis and Brooke lived in an apartment above the carousel. That was my image in my head, of this beautiful couple living in an apartment above a carousel on the Santa Monica Pier. Which turned out not to be true, but it always stayed with me.

MR: It’s fabulous, though. I became fascinated by the Santa Monica Pier, and the carousel, in writing this book. I didn’t realize how often the narrative of LA art and bohemia comes back to the carousel, from Dennis being cast in Night Tide, the crazy Curtis Harrington movie, all of which is shot right there, to Jim Elliott, who was one of the big curators at LACMA having an apartment above the carousel. And Warhol and his gang had a party in that spot when they came out to LA in ’63. But I was just amazed at the role the carousel played through all of that. It was wild to me.

GD: Very wild indeed. Well, hang in there. It’s gonna be big.

Everybody Thought We Were Crazy: Dennis Hopper, Brook Hayward, and 1960s Los Angeles is published by Ecco / HarpersCollins.

Mark Rozzo is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair @mrchampale / Griffin Dunne is an actor, director, and writer. @griffindunne / Martin Crook is a regular contributor to UD. martincrook.com and @martincrook