Social Engineer
Oh sure, Courteney Cox and Quentin Tarantino were there. But the life of the party was Jeffrey Best.
As one of the hottest event planners in the Southland, Best and his team are responsible if the food is cold, the speakers blow, the bagpipers get lost or the fire marshal busts the host for overcrowding.
Best, who also owns Habana restaurant in Costa Mesa, is rare among the elite handful of party planners who cater movie studio bashes and other high-profile events.
Why? He lives in Orange County.
“The night life is better in L.A.,” says Best, 37, “but the day life is better in Orange County.”
He lives in a Costa Mesa apartment and drives and drives his big black pickup, puffing his Parliaments. Employing cell phone, walkie-talkies, pager and a team of loyal help, Best commutes to the far-flung events he is coordinating in this season of bashes.
One day he zips between his Cuban restaurant and the huge tent off Newport Coast where a casino night is being created for a party on behalf of Orangewood, the county’s home for abused or neglected children. Another day, he races from the martini lounge a client requested at an Anaheim convention to the Hollywood Colonnade, which he has transformed with “gothic drive-in” movie decor for the “Scream 2” premiere party.
Suffice it to say his good-natured girlfriend, Michel Ward, won’t see him much before Christmas, unless she catches him on cable. The “E!” channel interviewed him outside Mann’s Chinese theater.
Best makes a percentage of an event’s often six-figure cost. He does well enough to maintain a second apartment in Hollywood for the occasional sleepover but demurs on details.
“He’s among the top three--but definitely in the top five--event people around right now,” says Bryan Wark, a Venice designer of flowers and furniture and one of Best’s regular subcontractors.
In the competitive world of food and event planning, Mary Micucci of Along Came Mary is the undisputed queen of L.A. catering, and Colin Cowie the king.
But Best’s Berridge Event Services is listed right after Cowie in the November issue of Los Angeles magazine, which called Best’s food “glorious.”
It adds: “Jeffrey Best puts a hip spin on all his presentations and has a knack for setting a unique scene while cutting budget busters. . . . As a native Angelino and owner of three restaurants [Habana, Culver City’s soon-to-reopen Panini Cafe and Hollywood’s new Lucky Seven], Best is in tight with the industry crowd--Miramax, Rosanna Arquette, the odd Beastie Boy.”
Not bad for a onetime busboy, chauffeur, club musician and bread delivery guy.
Just this month, he planned the Miramax premiere parties for “Good Will Hunting,” “Jackie Brown” and “Scream 2”; a benefit for the Musicians Assistance Program (which helps substance abusers); the neon cigar lounge for Fox Cable TV’s booth at the Western Cable show; and assisted with the $100,000 Orangewood fund-raiser. Best also planned the holiday party for surf/skate/snowboard apparel maker Quiksilver, a smaller hush-hush function, and his own Christmas do--the latter three events on the same day. Add a few expensive weddings, Las Vegas trip with Ward, etc.
“Then,” he says, running his hands through his hair, “I collapse.”
Then he revs up for the coming Academy Awards party season.
Though his biggest budgeted event was the Miramax post-Oscars party in March at the Mondrian Hotel--it celebrated wins for “The English Patient”--Best’s favorite bash was the one after the movie’s premiere.
To re-create the desert atmosphere of the film, Best had 2 1/2 tons of sand poured into the party tent, topped by Persian rugs. Custom-made Moroccan tents housed food stations. Servers wore dog tags, khaki shirts and military medals. Cigars were customized with wrappers named after a hotel in the movie. Best bought out a newsstand’s Moroccan newspapers--an eleventh-hour inspiration and a detail that is trademark Best. There was even a tent styled after an opium den with pillows on the floor. “It was a total schmooze fest,” he says.
In Hollywood, that means success.
“Jeffrey is just amazing,” says Lisa Taback, director of special events and publicity for Miramax.
“He sets up some little touches that are so clever. . . . The owner of our company drove by the brew-pub party after ‘Good Will Hunting’ and he saw the bagpipe players Jeffrey had hired. [The owner] said, ‘I hope those are for our party because those guys are great.’ As creative as he is, he always goes for comfort food, like mashed potatoes or brownies. And he always has servers meet people at the door with a drink.”
Best likes to serve people, says his proud father, Samuel Devore. And his son has always loved parties.
“I remember when Jeffrey was a year and a half old and his brother Steven was 3 and we were having Steven’s birthday party. We had the cake, the candles, the decorations and [we were] singing, and Jeffrey’s eyes were as big as flying saucers. He was like, ‘Wow! This is heaven!’ ” Devore recalls. “And it’s been that way ever since. He’s quiet at a party, but he enjoys being in the world of a party.”
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Best grew up in Hollywood but graduated from Indian Hill High in Ohio, where his mother had moved. Soon after, he returned to L.A. on his own and spent the next several years working in restaurants and bands.
Eight years ago, he decided to get serious about the restaurant business and worked his way up the food chain at top L.A. eateries, eventually managing one. He was also a sous chef. After a stint running Warner Bros. Studio’s executive commissary, Best became director of operations for four restaurants and bars, including Olive and Swingers.
When Olive lost its lease, Best decided to try catering and owning a restaurant. Having created occasional events for the Viper Room and Chateau Marmont, Best realized he had the knack.
His first big client was the Ford modeling agency. How did he land the deal?
“When you start out, you do what you have to. You call in every favor you’ve ever been owed. You keep the price down. You make it the best thing imaginable. Sometimes early on you don’t make money.”
At the Ford event, he learned a lesson: “It didn’t really matter what I served because everyone wants to be at a party with models.”
At the premiere party for “Good Will Hunting,” a movie that’s set in Boston, Best had a last-minute brainstorm. He walked all over Westwood Village to find Red Sox caps. They went on display in restrooms.
At the mobbed “Scream 2” premiere party in Hollywood, red lights with thorny-looking screens cast creepy shadows across the walls. Henna tattoos, manicures and fortunetelling were offered on one of three levels. A giant green mechanical hand from the movie swung a dagger down over the heads of guests. DJ Eugene Gordon spun tunes throughout the affair. Two popular bands--Tonic and Kotton Mouth Kings--rocked the 1,400 or so who shoe-horned into the Colonnade for In-N-Out burgers and martinis passed by vampy looking waitresses.
At the after-party for Tarantino’s “Jackie Brown,” a film about a stewardess laundering money, Best hired go-go dancers and had Arquette’s husband, Jon Sidel, as DJ. Waitresses pushing airline carts mixed drinks out of miniature liquor bottles while waiters wore tuxedo shirts with colored ruffles recalling proms of 1976.
“He’s managed clubs and bars and knows people in those [worlds],” says Miramax’s Taback, “and he knows what’s going to be the next thing to hit.”
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Best assembles a team of subcontractors for each event based on size and need, and he has the indefatigably cool event manager Sherry Abedi on staff.
Still, not everything goes aces for Best.
At the Fox martini lounge he created in the tradition of Dino and Frankie, the cigar girls hired by a subcontractor to pass out $7,000 worth of Dominicans--the cigar wrappers were custom printed with the name of the seven Fox affiliates--failed to show.
Best persuaded the waiters to circulate the primo puffers; he did not dwell on the disappointment.
A great event planner, say those in the field, is like a champion boxer: he or she can take a hit and move to plan B.
“I make 10 times more money in the party business than I do in the restaurant business,” Best says, pushing the antenna down on his cell phone and preparing to issue orders into his walkie-talkie.
“It’s definitely a high-wire act, though,” he says with a grin and the beam of a man who loves the circus.
