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Steve Olive was my white whale.
For two years I wrote the profile of Olive, a California co-founder. He is co-founder of Event Carpet Pro, and is responsible for custom-making in California.
I learned about Olive in 2023 and reported on the article about why Oscar organizers were rolling out champagne-colored carpets that year. My editor, Katie Van Sickle and I found the Event Carpet Pro website. Finally, Katie connected with Mr. Olive and briefly interviewed him.
But this mysterious and truthful, modest man was at the heart of glamour and the charm of awards, trapped in my heart. I wanted to know more about him. How do you become a rug man? When he grew up, what did he want to be? Has he ever attended an awards show himself?
Last year, when Oscar returned to the classic red carpet, Katie and I agreed again that I should pursue Mr. Olive's story, but he hesitated. However, this year, with encouragement from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, he agreed. It was three weeks before the ceremony.
Mission: Steve was officially starting, as I called it.
I sent a barrage of desperate texts and made several calls to the Academy's spokesperson, Brook Brunberg, when carpets manufactured at a factory in Dalton, Georgia, arrived at a warehouse in Lamirada, California, a city in Los Angeles County.
My goal was to be there when a 30 roll of about 630 pounds each was dropped off from the truck that was driving around 35 hours from Dalton in a carpet pro car park. I thought the scene I imagined was similar to the arrival of a Rockefeller Center Christmas tree in New York City.
Despite my lasting overture, Mr. Blumberg informed me that I had missed my chance. The truck had arrived at the warehouse in the afternoon before I planned to fly to Los Angeles.
“Yeah!” I texted her. “Hopefully we can get the installation!” (The 50,000-square-foot carpet will be caught in place by a crew of 20 workers on Hollywood Boulevard.
My next priority was to meet Mr. Olive in his office. However, he was told that since he had the flu, it might be necessary for an interview to occur on a video call. Still, Katie and I thought we should go to California to capture the scene. And I wanted to meet his colleagues and talk to people who order red carpets from Mr. Oscar every year.
When I finally decided to board the plane, I had the opportunity to talk to Mr. Olive in person or maybe not have the opportunity to see the red carpet. But I bought a seat on my Wednesday afternoon flight and wanted the best.
On my first day at La Mirada, I scouted the Event Carpet Pro Warehouse, a 36,000-square-foot white structure surrounded by palm trees. Then on Thursday night I interviewed Joe Louis, the producer of Oscar, who had ordered Mr. Olive for the past 16 years to the red carpet for the awards show.
On Friday morning, wearing a mask as a precaution, I visited Mr. Olive – now energetic, in his office in the warehouse, his match with the flu, a clearly distant memory.
I had been thinking in his head for two years and wanted to know if it would match the guy. At 6 feet-2, bald, completely black dressed, he was exactly as I imagined. He was the former bodyguard for Mötley Crüe.
He joined the red carpet business in 1992, with his brother-in-law setting up tents nationwide. I met Mr. Olive's 26-year-old son, Nick and his colleagues, and they all said the same to me. This is a guy who doesn't want or need the spotlight. He is happy just to make others happy.
“I'm not good at this,” he awkwardly said as he awkwardly tried to follow the instructions of our photographer, Jennel Fong, who must have been his first photo shoot, while standing on the Oscar red carpet.
A little shy, it took him a while to open. And he wasn't really keen to discuss himself as a bodyguard or his days for some of the hottest '80s bands. “I'm not funny,” he told me.
But I observed him becoming more comfortable as he changed towards his lifeline, the carpet. He loved talking about his favourite collaborations for many years – all meticulously documented on the company's Instagram account he created in 2013, sharing photos of his dog olives.
“You make me look good, right?” he asked an hour and a half later as we parted ways. I promised to send him a copy of it after it was published to him.
On the weekend, writing my article was a desperate scramble. I wanted to capture not only Olive's personality, but also the scope and scale of the modern “red carpet” not only as a fashion platform, but also as an opportunity for personal branding for celebrities. I wanted people to understand what Olive was doing.
I submitted the article on Monday morning. Fong filmed the installation of a red carpet on Hollywood Boulevard on Tuesday. And we were ready to go on a Wednesday afternoon when the carpet was unfolding.
There was no moment when the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree arrived. But I witnessed something even better. One modest man did not want to share his joy over his decades of passion and required recognition.
