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Steve Olive was my white whale.
I had been attempting for 2 years to put in writing a profile of Mr. Olive, the co-founder of Occasion Carpet Professionals, the California-based firm accountable for custom-making the colourful, although not all the time purple, carpets for 1000’s of film premieres, the Golden Globes, the Grammy Awards, the Tremendous Bowl and, since 1997, the Academy Awards.
I realized about Mr. Olive in 2023, whereas reporting an article about why the organizers of the Oscars have been rolling out a champagne-colored carpet that 12 months. My editor, Katie Van Syckle, and I had discovered the Occasion Carpet Professionals web site and we took turns calling the listed quantity in an effort to achieve somebody. Lastly, Katie linked with Mr. Olive, and briefly interviewed him.
However this mysterious, matter-of-fact, low-key man on the coronary heart of the glitz and glamour of awards season caught in my thoughts. I wished to know extra about him. How does one develop into a rug man? What had he wished to be when he grew up? Had he ever attended an award present himself?
Final 12 months, when the Oscars returned to a traditional purple carpet, Katie and I once more agreed that I ought to pursue a narrative on Mr. Olive, however he was hesitant. However this 12 months, with the encouragement of the Academy of Movement Image Arts and Sciences, he agreed. It was three weeks earlier than the ceremony.
Mission: 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, attempting to nail down when the carpet, which was manufactured at a mill in Dalton, Ga., would arrive on the firm’s warehouse in La Mirada, Calif., a metropolis in Los Angeles County.
My purpose was to be there when the roughly 30 rolls, every weighing 630 kilos, have been unloaded within the Occasion Carpet Professionals parking zone, from a truck that had been pushed about 35 hours, from Dalton. The scene, I imagined, could be akin to the arrival of the Rockefeller Middle Christmas tree in New York Metropolis.
Regardless of my persistent overtures, Ms. Blumberg knowledgeable me that I had missed my likelihood. The truck had arrived on the warehouse the afternoon earlier than I used to be planning to fly to Los Angeles.
“Oh darn!” I texted her. “We will hopefully get the set up, although!” (The week earlier than the ceremony, the 50,000-square-foot carpet is rolled into place by a crew of 20-some employees on Hollywood Boulevard.)
My subsequent precedence was assembly Mr. Olive at his workplace. However he had the flu, so I used to be advised the interview may must occur over a video name. Nonetheless, Katie and I believed I ought to go to California to seize the scene. And I wished to satisfy his co-workers, in addition to discuss to the one who orders the purple carpet for the Oscars from Mr. Olive every year.
After I lastly made the choice to get on a aircraft, there was an opportunity that I might need neither the chance to speak to Mr. Olive in particular person nor to see the purple carpet. However I purchased a seat on a Wednesday afternoon flight and hoped for the most effective.
On my first day in La Mirada, I scouted out the Occasion Carpet Professionals warehouse, a 36,000-square-foot white construction tucked amongst palm timber. Then, on Thursday evening, I interviewed Joe Lewis, a producer for the Oscars who has ordered the awards present’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 energetic, his bout with the flu evidently a distant reminiscence — at his workplace contained in the warehouse.
I’d had an thought of him in my head for 2 years, and I used to be curious to see if it matched the person. At 6-foot-2, bald and dressed completely in black, he was one way or the other precisely as I’d imagined. He was, I realized, a former bodyguard for Mötley Crüe.
He had gotten into the purple carpet enterprise in 1992, along 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 advised me the identical factor: It is a man who doesn’t need, or want, the highlight; he’s simply glad making different individuals glad.
“I’m not good at this,” mentioned Mr. Olive, as he awkwardly tried to observe the directions of our photographer, Jennelle Fong, at what will need to have been his first-ever photograph shoot, whereas standing on the Oscars purple carpet.
A bit media shy, it took him a while to open up. And he was by no means actually eager to debate himself or his days as a bodyguard, for among the hottest ’80s bands. “I’m not attention-grabbing,” he advised me.
However I noticed him turning into extra snug because the discuss turned to his lifeblood: carpets. He cherished speaking about his favourite collaborations through the years — all meticulously documented on the corporate’s Instagram account, which he created in 2013 — and sharing photographs of his canine, Olive.
“You’ll make me look good, proper?” he requested an hour and a half later, as we parted methods. I promised to ship him a duplicate of the article after it was printed.
Over the weekend, it was a frantic scramble to put in writing my article. I wished to seize not simply Mr. Olive’s persona, but additionally the scope and scale of the trendy “purple carpet,” not simply as a platform for vogue, however as a private branding alternative for celebrities. I wished individuals to know why what Mr. Olive was doing mattered.
I submitted my article on Monday morning; Ms. Fong photographed the set up of the purple carpet on Hollywood Boulevard on Tuesday; and we had the story able to go for Wednesday afternoon, when the carpet could be rolled out.
I didn’t get my Rockefeller Middle Christmas tree arrival second. However I witnessed one thing even higher: One unassuming man, who neither wished nor wanted recognition, sharing his pleasure over his decades-long ardour.
