That’s what Bang Bang, the tattoo artist famous for his work on Rihanna, Cara Delevingne, and Katy Perry, told us when we asked about the most ridiculous request he’d ever received. But it wasn’t any of those names who made him fly to Panama for an impulse tattoo session, rather a young pop star whose identity you can probably guess by now.
9 comments:
It must be crazy working in an industry like that, but the weed thing seems to be the perfect demonstration of the attitude you have to have. Client lost his weed while people were in the house, so the planner replaces it no questions asked. When you are dealing with high end clients and running a high end business the small deal financially it must have been to fix that problem is crazy. I guess the only thing that really seemed to stand out was that a lot of these things do not allow for preparation. If Justin Bieber calls you to get a tattoo you just fly out to the middle of nowhere to get on a plane with him.
I feel like its stories like these that fuel the celebrity craze. People with that kind of money get to do whatever they want, and no-one will ask any questions. It would be hard to stop that from going to your head, especially if you have tons of fans cheering you on.
I absolutely loved this article. I think it says a lot about the absolute ridiculousness of the events industry in general. There must be a lot of questions for yourself when your involved in an industry where it's part of your job to figure out how exactly you're going to get that white grand piano craned into a location, or how you're going to build a stage across the world where there are none of the proper resources for building a stage. I can see it being very rewarding, because you just HAVE to be proud of yourself when you figure out how to make it snow at P. Diddy's birthday party an hour before it starts. It also must be incredibly rewarding, because everything happens so quickly. It's very appealing to be involved in a situation which is so high-risk high-reward like the events industry is.
This is incredibly insane and I love it. However, the thing is I'm really against the diva-ness of all these parties and people just spending their money to spend their money and show off their affluence. It can be rather nauseating and yet all I want to do is find more examples of this. It's a uncomfortable dichotomy between lusting after the rich and being disgusted with what they choose to do with their hard earned money. As far as the specifics in the article, the tattoo artist example really threw me for a loop. Chalk it up to my own opinion, but having artists tattoo you forty thousand feet up makes me awfully nervous. One pocket of turbulence and your tattoo is ruined forever. I guess you join some kind of version of the "mile high club" if you get tattooed in the air, but as someone who wants their tattoos to be precise and sharp, I would never, not in a million years, not for all the cred in the world, get a tattoo done on an airplane. Not even if you paid me to do it.
Some of these stories, like the Katy Perry tattoo one, were actually really cool. Those were the stories that seemed to show how rewarding it can be to work in the entertainment industry. Some of the other stories on the other hand showed just how insane some of the requests you get can be. Sure its entertaining after the fact but I’d imagine it can be hugely stressful to deal with the kinds of fame/power/ego/money that lead to people making requests like “come live in Italy for a month and create my 2.5 million euro party.” I’m sure that on one level its rewarding to be able to make people with request this precise happy. But at the same time I don’t know how long I would be able to stand getting crazy requests at the last minute. At the beginning of the process sure, but an hour before something is supposed to start? That’s cutting things a little close.
Some of these requests are just sooooo absurd. I feel like when people have lots of many, that’s when the crazy and seemingly impossible things start to happen. I’ve worked some events in my life that ended with me executing some pretty odd requests. I was working a food and wine festival once, I was on a team that staffed a VIP lounge as well as took care of doing some of the more important wine and drink tastings. On Friday nights we typically had some sort of liquor tasting. Usually the distiller or crafter (whatever you want to call them) would be presenting three signature cocktails that showcased the flavors and nuisances of their particular liquor. Normally, we would get the recipes earlier that day and make them in what were classic restaurant juice machines. Instead of pouring something like orange juice concentrate into the machine, we were making signature cocktails in them. Then one weekend we had this very particular Master Distiller come in. He threw a fit that we were making his three signature cocktails in juice machines. We were all thinking to ourselves- =’Come on dude, how else do you pre-make cocktails for 150 people?’ This gentleman then insisted that his small batch liquor was meant to be hand crafted from the distilling process all the way down to the creation of each individual cocktail. We ended up having to make 3 individual cocktails, one at a time, for all 150 people at the tasting. Thankfully he allowed us to prepare them in advance of the tasting and not “Fresh.”
This is insane. I thought designers had crazy ideas, these stories are ridiculous. I have to think about these clients in the context of a world that still has rampant hunger and suffering. If these people even thought about putting their money towards that instead of these ridiculous events many of our world’s problems would probably be over. I think that event planning is very closely related to putting on a show. People are always surprised how much planning goes into a well organized and fun wedding. Theatre people know how to make things like weddings work because that’s what we do every day. Also it’s just weird to think about being spoon fed food at a gallery as an adult, much less drinking cocktails out of bottles. Weird. Also I would never peg Justin Bieber as someone who calls people. Tattoo artists are a weird combo of not your friend but get really close to your body, so yeah.
This article just goes to show how crazy things can get when people have an excessive amount of money to spend. Like Sharon said it's a little ridiculous to think that so many people have so little while others can afford to fly out their tattoo artist to Panama on a whim. It's kind of sad to think that some of these celebrities try to market themselves as charitable and are so willingly to blindly blow their money like this. Some of these requests seem completely unbelievable, like flying a chef out for a month for one wedding for 90 people. I can't really understand the thought process that goes behind wanting this something this big. Though I guess I can't really speak because if I was this rich I might also be tempted to spend my money on lavish things. It all just depends on your perspective, and your financial situation.
This was such a cool article. I absolutely love how ridiculous some people's requests can be, and as a potential event manager, it really cracks me up. These were all examples of very rich and famous people making requests, but people with less money I'm sure tend to be just as demanding, only with lower budgets. Events is such a high-risk profession, and I think that's what makes it so appealing. One of my favorite parts of this article was definitely the P. Diddy birthday party. The best stories always start with "And an hour before the event...!" and this one did not disappoint. I love the way the author describes the feeling she had when she saw how happy he was that they made it snow for him. That, I think, is what makes these silly requests really worth it: to see the hard work pay off.
Ahh I love it! I mean, people are ridiculous, and I'm sure there is a hefty amount of eye rolling that happens in the couture event planning business, but there's something kind of freeing about being asked to do something so ridiculous and being given credit carte blanche to do it.
Having dabbled very briefly in smaller scale events, the challenge comes when people think they're budgets are huge and expect anything to be possible with that amount of money, but there are still constraints. I think, in a lot of ways, where event planning differs from theater is the relative understanding of what things costs. Even our most out-of-touch designers, directors, and producers have some sort of touchstone for how much sets, costumes, and effects may costs. The public has absolutely no idea. Sometimes I play a game where I make my father watch a show, then ask him how much he thinks it all costs. He's almost always at least 50% under, because he has absolutely no frame of reference. I can't imagine the tedium of having to explain that yes, your event REALLY DOES cost $XXX,XXX to produce.
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