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Steve Olive was my white whale.
I had tried for two years to write a profile of Mr. Olive, the co -founder of Carpet Pros professionals, the company based in California responsible for the custom that manufactures colorful, though not always red, carpets for thousands Academy Awards.
I learned about Mr Olive in 2023, and I mentioned an article on why the Oscars were running a champagne carpet that year. My author, Katie Van Syckle, and I found the event of the Event Carpet Pros and we turned around by calling the listed number in an attempt to get to someone. Finally, Katie was associated with Mr. Olive and the interview.
But this mysterious, essential, low -key man in the heart of Glitz and Glamor of Awards Season stuck in my mind. I wanted to know more about him. How can one become a type of carpet? What did he want to be when he grew up? Has he ever watched himself a prize?
Last year, when the Oscars returned to a classic red carpet, Katie and I again agreed that I had to follow a story about Mr. Olive, but he was hesitant. But this year, with the encouragement of the Academy of Film Arts and Sciences, he agreed. It was three weeks before the ceremony.
Mission: Steve, as I described it, had officially begun.
I sent a barrier from frantic texts and made several calls to Brooke Blumberg, a journalist for the Academy, trying to nail down when the carpet, built in a mill in Dalton, GA.
My goal was to be there when the approximately 30 cylinders, each weighing 630 kg, were unloaded in the carpet pros, by a truck that had driven about 35 hours by Dalton. The scene, I imagined, would be similar to the arrival of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree in New York.
Despite my persistent intentions, Ms Blumberg informed me that I had missed my opportunity. The truck had reached the warehouse in the afternoon before planning to fly to Los Angeles.
“Oh, dirty!” I wrote it. “We can get the installation, though!” (The week before the ceremony, the 50,000-square-foot carpet is wrapped in place with a crew of 20-part-time Hollywood avenues.)
My next priority was to meet Mr. Olive in his office. But he had the flu, so I was told that the interview may need to happen in a video call. Still, Katie and I thought I had to go to California to capture the scene. And I wanted to meet his colleagues, as well as to talk to the person who orders the red carpet for the Oscars by Mr. Olive every year.
When I finally made the decision to get on a plane, there was a chance that I didn’t even have the opportunity to talk to Mr Olive in person or see the red carpet. But I bought a place on a flight on Wednesday afternoon and I hope for the best.
On my first day at La Mirada, I took out the event warehouse of the event, a white 36,000 -square -foot structure that was located between palm trees. Then, on Thursday night, an interview by Joe Lewis, an Oscar producer ordered by the Red Carpet by Mr. Olive for the last 16 years.
On Friday morning, the face of a mask as a precaution, I visited Mr. Olive – now energetic, his fight with the flu apparently a distant memory – in his office in the warehouse.
I had an idea of ​​him in my head for two years, and I was curious to see if he fits man. At 6-foot-2, bald and dressed completely in black, it was a bit like I had imagined. He was, I learned, a former bodyguard for Mötley Crüe.
He had entered the red carpet operation in 1992, with his groom, who installed scenes across the country. I met his 26 -year -old son Olive, Nick, and his colleagues, everyone told me the same thing: he is a man who does not want or does not need the focus. He is happy to make other people happy.
“I’m not good at that,” Mr Olive said, as he attempted to follow the instructions of our photographer, Jennelle Fong, to what he should have been his first photography while standing on the Oscar red carpet.
A little shy, it took him some time to open. And he was never really willing to discuss himself or his days as a bodyguard, for some of the hottest bands of the 80s. “I’m not interesting,” he told me.
But I noticed him to become more comfortable as the conversation turned to his soul: carpets. He liked to talk about his favorite partnerships over the years – all documented meticulously on the company’s Instagram account, which he created in 2013 – and sharing photos of his dog, Olive.
“Will you make me look good, right?” He asked an hour and a half later, as we split ways. I promised to send him a copy of the article after he was published.
During the weekend, it was a frantic race to write my article. I wanted to conceive not only Mr. Olive’s personality, but also the scope and scale of the modern “red carpet”, not only as a platform for fashion, but as a personal opportunity for celebrities. I wanted people to understand why Mr. Olive did.
I submitted my article on Monday morning. Ms. Fong was photographed the red carpet installation on Hollywood Avenue on Tuesday. And we had the story ready to go for Wednesday afternoon, when the carpet was released.
I didn’t get my Rockefeller Center my Christmas arrival tree. But I saw something even better: an unaffected man who neither wanted nor recognition, sharing his joy for the passion of decades.
