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Steve Olive used to be my white whale.
I have been making an attempt for 2 years to write down a profile of Mr. Olive, the co-founder of Event Carpet Pros, the California-based corporate answerable for custom-making the colourful, though not always red, carpets for thousands of movie premieres, the Golden Globes, the Grammy Awards, the Tremendous Bowl and, since 1997, the Academy Awards.
I discovered about Mr. Olive in 2023, whilst reporting an article about why the organizers of the Oscars have been rolling out a champagne-colored carpet that yr. My editor, Katie Van Syckle, and I had discovered the Match Carpet Execs website online and we took turns calling the indexed quantity so that you could achieve anyone. In the end, Katie attached with Mr. Olive, and in brief interviewed him.
However this mysterious, matter-of-fact, low-key guy on the center of the glitz and glamour of awards season caught in my thoughts. I sought after to understand extra about him. How does one grow to be a rug man? What had he sought after to be when he grew up? Had he ever attended an award display himself?
Ultimate yr, when the Oscars returned to a classic red carpet, Katie and I once more agreed that I will have to pursue a tale on Mr. Olive, however he used to be hesitant. However this yr, with the encouragement of the Academy of Movement Image Arts and Sciences, he agreed. It used to be 3 weeks prior to the rite.
Challenge: Steve, as I termed it, had formally begun.
I despatched a barrage of frantic texts and positioned a number of calls to Brooke Blumberg, a publicist for the academy, seeking to nail down when the carpet, which used to be manufactured at a mill in Dalton, Ga., would arrive on the corporate’s warehouse in Los angeles Mirada, Calif., a town in Los Angeles County.
My function used to be to be there when the roughly 30 rolls, each and every weighing 630 kilos, have been unloaded within the Match Carpet Execs automobile parking space, from a truck that have been pushed about 35 hours, from Dalton. The scene, I imagined, could be comparable to the coming of the Rockefeller Heart Christmas tree in New York Town.
In spite of my power overtures, Ms. Blumberg knowledgeable me that I had overlooked my likelihood. The truck had arrived on the warehouse the afternoon prior to I used to be making plans to fly to Los Angeles.
“Oh darn!” I texted her. “We will be able to confidently get the set up, although!” (The week prior to the rite, the 50,000-square-foot carpet is rolled into position by way of a group of 20-some employees on Hollywood Street.)
My subsequent precedence used to be assembly Mr. Olive at his place of job. However he had the flu, so I used to be informed the interview would possibly want to occur over a video name. Nonetheless, Katie and I believed I will have to cross to California to seize the scene. And I sought after to fulfill his co-workers, in addition to communicate to the one who orders the purple carpet for the Oscars from Mr. Olive each and every yr.
Once I in the end made the verdict to get on a airplane, there used to be an opportunity that I would possibly have neither the chance to speak to Mr. Olive in particular person nor to peer the purple carpet. However I purchased a seat on a Wednesday afternoon flight and was hoping for the most efficient.
On my first day in Los angeles Mirada, I scouted out the Match Carpet Execs warehouse, a 36,000-square-foot white construction tucked amongst palm bushes. Then, on Thursday night time, I interviewed Joe Lewis, a manufacturer for the Oscars who has ordered the awards display’s purple carpet from Mr. Olive for the previous 16 years.
On Friday morning, face masks on as a precaution, I visited Mr. Olive — now lively, his bout with the flu it appears that evidently reminiscence — at his place of job throughout the warehouse.
I’d had an concept of him in my head for 2 years, and I used to be curious to peer if it matched the person. At 6-foot-2, bald and dressed completely in black, he used to be in some way precisely as I’d imagined. He used to be, I discovered, a former bodyguard for Mötley Crüe.
He had gotten into the purple carpet trade in 1992, together with his brother-in-law, who put in tents across the nation. I met Mr. Olive’s 26-year-old son, Nick, and his co-workers, all of whom informed me the similar factor: This can be a guy who doesn’t need, or want, the highlight; he’s simply glad making other folks glad.
“I’m now not just right at this,” mentioned Mr. Olive, as he awkwardly attempted to apply the directions of our photographer, Jennelle Fong, at what will have to had been his first-ever picture shoot, whilst status at the Oscars purple carpet.
A little media shy, it took him a while to open up. And he used to be by no means actually willing to speak about himself or his days as a bodyguard, for a few of the freshest ’80s bands. “I’m now not fascinating,” he informed me.
However I seen him changing into extra relaxed as the controversy became to his lifeblood: carpets. He beloved speaking about his favourite collaborations through the years — all meticulously documented at the corporate’s Instagram account, which he created in 2013 — and sharing pictures of his canine, Olive.
“You’ll make me glance just right, proper?” he requested an hour and a part later, as we parted techniques. I promised to ship him a replica of the item after it used to be revealed.
Over the weekend, it used to be a frantic scramble to write down my article. I sought after to seize now not simply Mr. Olive’s persona, but in addition the scope and scale of the fashionable “purple carpet,” now not simply as a platform for style, however as a private branding alternative for celebrities. I sought after folks to grasp why what Mr. Olive used to be doing mattered.
I submitted my article on Monday morning; Ms. Fong photographed the set up of the purple carpet on Hollywood Street on Tuesday; and we had the story ready to go for Wednesday afternoon, when the carpet could be rolled out.
I didn’t get my Rockefeller Heart Christmas tree arrival second. However I witnessed one thing even higher: One unassuming guy, who neither sought after nor wanted reputation, sharing his pleasure over his decades-long pastime.
