Simon Doonan - The First Elf

 

 

Jackie Kennedy's crystal balls were up here, Nancy Reagan's luscious red ribbons were down here, Barbara Bush's dangling orbs were over here. [audience laughter] Yes, you've guessed it probably, right? I was in the White House holiday storage facility, where they [audience laughter] keep all the holiday décor from White House Pass. Oh, it was just beyond Pat Nixon's little beaded orbs. It was amazing. So, how did I get there? 

 

In January 2009, I get a phone call from Desirée Rogers. “Hello, Bonjour, Desirée Rogers.” And Ellie dropped the phone, and I thought it was one of my friends pretending to be Desirée Rogers. [audience laughter] So, she said, “We want you to come and decorate the White House for the holidays.” I hope you noted the we want you. I couldn't believe it. I thought, my God, I came to this country when I was 25 years old in the 1970s. I just had a little Dorothy bag and a dream and [audience laughter] a little bit of cash. And now, I clawed my way up through the cutthroat world of window dressing. [audience laughter] 

 

Clawed my way up, and wow, at the age of 57, I'm getting a call from the White House press secretary, “Come and decorate the White House.” I couldn't believe it. I thought well, I just become a citizen, actually, about two months before the election, and I pulled the lever for Barack Obama, and I thought, finally, I'm a citizen. I pulled the lever, and now I'm going to decorate the White House. I had visions of myself showing Sasha and Malia how to thread popcorn. [audience laughter] 

 

I got really carried away really quickly. [audience laughter] I saw myself in the organic garden clutching Bo the water dog [audience laughter] as the first flakes of snow fell [audience laughter] in the coming fall. So, my fantasy was interrupted when Desirée said, “Of course, we're going to have to vet you first, and look through your background, and everything.” 

 

That's when I thought, well, forget it then. [audience laughter] Because with my rap sheet, that reckless driving conviction and the getting arrested on a railway station in 1968, going to a pop festival, yada-yada, plus my reputation as a provocateur in the field of window dressing. [audience laughter] I'd done all these insane things they only have to hit Google Image, Simon Doonan, and up it's going to come all this banana stuff. I'm never going to get this job if they're going to vet me. 

 

So, somehow, miraculously, I think the vetting machine must have been at the repair shop that day. [audience laughter] But I got the job. So, I went down to Washington in the spring of 2009, and went to the warehouse, rummaged around, met all my collaborators, spent days measuring things in the White House. It's so huge. I had to measure mantelpieces and windows. I had great collaborators, Kimberly and Sally. We measured things and went back and forth to the warehouse and unearthed things that we thought, we'll reuse some of these things, because why not? Hello, recycling. Why not? 

 

So, [chuckles] I'm getting more and more wound up about this project, because it's so huge, it's such a responsibility. But I'm determined to do the Obama's proud, because it's not about me, it's about them. It's their house. [audience laughter] [audience applause] 

 

In the warehouse, I find these crates and crates and crates of these huge plastic silver balls that are so tacky and horrible. I can only imagine that Betty Ford, bless her heart-- [audience laughter] This must have been her era, because she was going to Studio 54 and she probably thought, I want some sparkle, I want some silver. But there they were, these hideous plastic orbs. In 100 million years, would you ever think, “Oh yes, White House holiday decor if you looked at them”?

 

So, I thought, this will be great. There's so many of them. There's 500 of them. We'll take them all, and ship them to community centers all over America, and people can decoupage them, and it'll involve America and yada-yada. So, along with all the pine berries and pepper berries and larch things and Douglas fir this, that and the other, all the incredible things we were speccing and ordering and designing, we thought we'd have this participation component and all these 500 balls would go on the blue room tree. 

 

So, obviously, really wound up flying back and forth to Washington, etc. And Desirée says, we have to go and present all your ideas to Mrs. Obama. So, I have a meeting with her, which is sort of like this. “Hello.” [audience laughter] And then, with Desirée, “Hello.” Staring up in the air, because they are literally twice my height. [audience laughter] As I stood there between Mrs. Obama, so beautiful, so chic, so fun, intelligent, and Desirée, so wonderful, incredible, given me this job, J'adore. [audience laughter] 

 

So, I'm between the two of them, and I realize at that moment, “Oh my God, I am the first elf.” [audience laughter] I'm the first elf. [audience laughter] [chuckles] The fall goes by in a blur of anticipation. I have to do all my stuff at Barney's and then I get ready, because obviously, being in retail, we install the holiday decorations on about August 15th, something like that. [audience laughter] But actually, the White House is very chic and restrained, and they wait till after Thanksgiving. So, after Thanksgiving, I'm all revved up, ready to go to actually install all the stuff we've been prepping and blah, blah, blah. 

 

And so I go down to Washington two days before the installation. The Salahis, yes, the chick with the sari and the iron blonde hair allegedly crashed that party. It changes everything. Suddenly, there is going to be no publicité. [audience laughter] There's a total lockdown on any kind of publicity. Not that I cared about that or anything. [audience laughter] The cover of People magazine with me, and Bo the water dog, and the snow falling. [audience laughter] So, there's a total lockdown on publicity. 

 

So, me and all the incredible volunteers, which was many, many women in Christmas sweaters, and me, [audience laughter] and incredible people, fabulous volunteers, we pile into the White House, we start installing. Oprah's film crew comes through, and we all have to hide in a cupboard, [audience laughter] because they don't want any publicity. And then, HGTV comes through and we have to sneak in behind a fireplace. So, at one point, I'm on a scaffolding in the blue room, and we're throwing these balls on the tree. All the ones have come in from all the community centers. And they're incredible. People have used theme that we gave them was American monuments. 

 

So, there's the Grand Canyon and Niagara Falls. People have done these fantastic Indian reservations. Amazing, amazing stuff that has come in. We're throwing it quickly. We have a day to do this whole installation. I get a call from this journalist and he says, “I just spoke to the press office, and they're denying that you're involved.” You know what? This is a time to show that elves can take the high road. [audience laughter] As I trudged through the snow that night back to the W hotel across the street with my little elf boots on through the snow, I thought, I don't care that much. You know, what's important is we knocked it out of the park. The whole White House Looked unbelievable. It was so chic, so gorgeous and beyond. I felt really, really good. Who needs publicity when you've done such a fantastic job? [audience laughter] 

 

So, cut to December 20th. A conservative blogger, who has a major conservative site, sends a mole into the White House with an iPhone, and takes some little tiny pictures of some of these decoupaged balls that have come in from various community centers, to wit, a picture of a Pittsburgh ball. As we all know, Pittsburgh is the birthplace of Andy Warhol. And on this ball is a tiny postage sized stamp of Andy Warhol, Chairman Mao. So, that's one ball. Then somehow or other, this clever little mole gets their little iPhone and finds another ball with a drag queen on it. They find a ball with Hedda Lettuce on it. [audience laughter] So, Hedda Lettuce. Yeah, you know those old jokes. Birth of a nation, anchovy. 

 

And then, they find a ball with Mount Rushmore, and somebody has cleverly, creatively decoupaged Barack Obama's head onto one of the presidents. So, these pictures are then blown up on this website. And the headline is, Simon Doonan Introduces Communist Agenda and Anti-Family Values into the White House. [audience laughter] And suddenly, there's banging on the door. The doorman says, “You're on Fox News.” There's streaming that thing. [audience laughter] Like, crazy window dresser introduces communist agenda. Nothing could be further from. I'm such a relentless capitalist shopping lunatic. [audience laughter] 

 

So, streaming, introducing communist agenda. Then it explodes on the Internet. It's on a million websites. Communist agenda. [audience laughter] So, at this point, I'm in the fetal position under my toadstool. [audience laughter] It was horrifying. And then, the death threat started. “Yes, hello, madam. It's not that funny, is it?” [audience laughter] 

The death threat started. “Somebody should bash your brains out with a baseball bat,” blah, blah. I forwarded a few of these to the White House and they responded, “Buy a helmet.” [audience laughter] So, fortunately, this had a finite ending because Christmas ends. So, this horrible nightmare of unwanted publicity ended, because there was a finite ending. It's called December 25th. Anyway. [audience laughter] 

 

My takeaway from all this is that there are really two types of people in the world. There are little elves that go around and make everything fabulous and brilliant and gorgeous and wonderful, and then there are people who sit blogging and tweeting about the efforts of the first group on their ever-widening asses. [audience laughter] And my other takeaway from it is that really no holiday is complete without at least one drag Queen and a bunch of elves. Thank you.