Allan Carr was Hollywood’s premier party-thrower during the town’s most hedonistic era—the cocaine-addled, sexually indulgent 1970s. Hosting outrageous soirees with names like the Mick Jagger/Cycle Sluts Party and masterminding such lavishly themed opening nights as the Tommy/New York City subway premiere, it was Carr, an obese, caftan-wearing producer—the ultimate outsider—who first brought movie stars and rock stars, gays and straights, Old and New Hollywood together. From the stunning success of Grease and La Cage aux Folles to the spectacular failure of the Village People’s Can’t Stop the Music, as a producer Carr’s was a rollercoaster of a career punctuated by major hits and phenomenal flops—none more disastrous than the Academy Awards show he produced featuring a tone-deaf Rob Lowe serenading Snow White, a fiasco that made Carr an outcast, and is still widely considered to be the worst...

After the sexual revolution came the sexual explosionThe six years between 1968 and 1973 saw more sexual taboos challenged than ever before. Film, literature, and theater simultaneously broke through barriers previously unimagined, giving birth to what we still consider to be the height of sexual expression in our pop culture: Portnoy's Complaint, Myra Breckinridge, Hair, The Boys in the Band, Midnight Cowboy, Last Tango in Paris, and Deep Throat.In Sexplosion, Robert Hofler weaves a lively narrative linking many of the writers, producers, and actors responsible for creating these and other controversial works, placing them within their cultural and social frameworks. During the time the Stonewall Riots were shaking Greenwich Village and Roe v. Wade was making its way to the Supreme Court, a group of daring artists was challenging the status quo and defining the country's concept of sexual liberation. Hofler follows the creation of and...

Dominick Dunne seemed to live his entire adult life in the public eye, but in this biography Robert Hofler reveals a conflicted, enigmatic man who reinvented himself again and again. As a television and film producer in the 1950s–1970s, hobnobbing with Humphrey Bogart and Natalie Wood, he found success and crushing failure in a pitiless Hollywood. As a Vanity Fair journalist covering the lives of the rich and powerful, he mesmerized readers with his detailed coverage of spectacular murder cases—O.J. Simpson, the Menendez brothers, Michael Skakel, Phil Spector, and Claus von Bülow. He had his own television show, Dominick Dunne's Power, Privilege, and Justic. His five best-selling novels, including The Two Mrs. Grenvilles, People Like Us, and An Inconvenient Woman, were inspired by real lives and scandals. The brother of John Gregory Dunne and brother-in-law of Joan Didion, he was a friend and confidante of many literary luminaries. Dunne also had the ear of some of the world's most famous women, among them Princess Diana, Nancy Reagan, Liz Smith, Barbara Walters, and Elizabeth Taylor. Dunne admitted to inventing himself, and it was that public persona he wrote about in his own memoir, The Way We Lived Then. Left out of that account, but brought to light here, were his intense rivalry with his brother John Gregory, the gay affairs and relationships he had throughout his marriage and beyond, and his fights with editors at Vanity Fair. Robert Hofler also reveals the painful rift in the family after the murder of Dominick's daughter, Dominique—compounded by his coverage of her killer's trial, which launched his career as a reporter.**Review"You've met the two Mrs. Grenvilles. Now meet the two Dominick Dunnes, or three, or four. Robert Hofler stunningly captures all of them." —Stephen M. Silverman,author of David Lean"Dominick Dunne had a front-row seat at the birth of our current celebrity culture. He chronicled its rise with an unsparing eye to detail and an emotional intensity that often said as much about him as it did those he wrote about. Robert Hofler has captured the wit, charm, pomposity, strength, and vulnerability that made Dunne such a complex and fascinating man." —William J. Mann,author of Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn“Sweeping in scope and intimate in tone, this biography of Dominick Dunne is truly a life and times story, filled to bursting with notorious crimes and glam parties, high-society doyens and spats, Hollywood celebrities minor and major, and, beneath it all, the tragedies and mysteries that made this singular man tick.”—Patrick McGilligan, author of Young Orson“The life of Dominick Dunne as recounted by Robert Hofler is as entertaining as it is tragic. Hofler digs in to reveal each telling detail and scandalous anecdote, which no one would appreciate more than Dunne himself. It’s a knowing read about fame, the upper class, sexuality, and the struggle for immortality.”—Sharon Waxman, author of Rebels on the Backlot“With clear-eyed precision, Hofler cuts through Dunne’s love of hyperbole and drama to reveal the man: his sometimes charming, sometimes chilling mix of humanity and harmfulness. A probing, fascinating dissection of ambition and American privilege.”—Tracy Daugherty, author of The Last Love Song: A Biography of Joan Didion“A skillfully crafted story of a vivid character who was a master of self-destruction and reinvention.”—Peter Bart, author of Fade Out“Hofler proves to be an apt and entertaining chronicler of Dunne's eventful, turbulent, and often sorrowful life. . . . A spirited biography of a complicated, combative, self-aggrandizing, and tormented man.“—Kirkus ReviewsAbout the Author Robert Hofler has been an entertainment editor for decades at several publications, including Life, Us, and Variety. He is the author of The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson and Party Animals, as well as Sexplosion: How a Generation of Pop Rebels Broke All the Taboos. The lead theater critic for TheWrap, Hofler lives in New York City.