Behind the Scenes of Evan's "Chaos Dinner 2.0"
Or, as one commenter called it, “The Met Gala for chronically online people.”
Oops, we did it again.
Six months after the Chaos Dinner made its maiden voyage, so to say, she/her returned with a vengeance on Thursday evening for a second round of delightfully askew shenanigans. Nora Ephron once wrote a list for the Guardian titled: “What I'll miss, what I won't miss.” At the top of the things she won’t miss, right below dry skin, was bad dinners, “like the one we went to last night.” I never want to be someone who throws a bad dinner party, especially one Nora Ephron wouldn’t posthumously miss!
The initial idea for the Chaos Dinner, the brainchild of my friend, co-conspirator and Public Figure Programs Lead at Meta, Michael Hoffman, was to bring some of the most important figures in pop culture together over a meal. It’s hardly novel or never-been-done-before, but we had an inkling that with the right line-up and with an eye toward celebrating the culture they help generate and fuel, we could create something truly audacious. This wasn’t meant to be an industry event, which are often stuffy and mechanical, but rather one with an intention of merriment and an aim toward iconography. We achieved this back in November, with a room full of notables including Sarah Michelle Gellar and Jonathan Anderson, and this time we set out to do it again… but bigger — whatever that means.
It starts, of course, with the guest list, as any good dinner party does. One of our key learnings from Version 1.0 is that it’s not necessarily about packing the room with a “who’s who?” but rather having a few anchors and building out from there. I’ll give you a glimpse into my thought pattern. We needed a Mother, as we called it in our planning meetings. We’re chock full of them in pop culture from Jean Smart to Julianne Moore to Michelle Yeoh. When Katie Couric RSVP’d yes, we knew the role had been fulfilled. Next, we needed a Daddy; someone that got the Internet in a pool of sweat from a mere photo of them at the gym. Hence: Morgan Spector. We also began thinking about what the zeitgeist was talking about. Baby Reindeer, for instance! Or Bridgerton, which was premiering its third season on the scheduled date. So we got Nava Mau, Nicola Coughlan and Luke Newton.
Planning began in February and we continued to build out the room for the next few months, always thinking about the list, but also the seating chart. We knew it wasn’t just the sum of the parts, but the configuration, too — a key learning from the first go-round! But our criteria for a good guest wasn’t just that the person be trending. That alone, I know well, can amount to just smoke and mirrors. I remember going to a recent gathering of Hollywood elites and leaving with a distinct feeling that everybody was there and nobody was having fun. That stuck with me. From this, another key learning: We knew the room needed to be occupied by people that wanted to be there. If this felt at all obligatory, the energy would suffer. And if there’s one thing I learned from Waiting for Guffman: It’s energy energy energy! The final guest list included Jenna Lyons, Rebecca Hall, Lukas Gage, Busy Philipps, Nicole Ari Parker, Princess Nokia, Alison Roman, Julio Torres, Brynn Whitfield, Brandon Flynn, Sabrina Brier, Fernando Garcia, Rosé, Ismael Enrique Cruz Córdova, Constantine Rousouli & Phoebe Fisher.
“Why wasn’t I invited?” an A-listish actress DM’d me on Friday evening after I shared photos from the event. “Oh, you were,” I told her, then produced a screenshot of the invitation. She had never seen it. In my Instagram caption about the event, I included yet another key learning: no publicists, no handlers, no +1s. “Don’t hate us publicists,” commented one individual, who I’m going to go out on a limb and guess was a publicist. I don’t! I’ve worked with hundreds of skilled publicists over the years who turn talent into stars, who skillfully strategize around the business that can be an entity and who shield and protect their talent from the bullshit — of which there’s often, in my observation, a lot. Especially in Hollywood. On many an occasion, I’ve had to work with a publicist who prioritizes their own self-interest above their clients. See, sometimes what gets shielded or protected from their client is information or opportunities relevant to their client’s goals or interests. Not always, but sometimes! Far too many times, I’ve watched a friend start to become the kind of person who relies on a publicist only to, from my vantage point, see how they’ve created an obstacle for themselves in unknowingly limiting access to opportunity.
The way I see it, there are all kinds of fame but only two kinds of famous people: those who do and those who get done for. When I have dinner with a certain Emmy-winning friend of mine, she picks me up in her SUV and we drive to the venue. When I hang with another friend of mine, we are relegated to a hotel room for security reasons. The former friend grocery shops (I think!) and the latter friend is shopped for. I wanted both kinds of famous people there, but I needed those among the “those who get done for” crowd to be willing to be “those who do” for the night. It needed that energy in order to lift off. And no +1s! Plus-ones create comfort and ease. Fabulous! But not for this event. This event hinged on people being a bit off their social access and relying on one another to carry the night.
I want to say — because I didn’t know this for a long, long time — that often when you see a celebrity at an event, particularly an event you’ve never heard of before, it’s because they’re getting a paycheck to be there. Someone throwing the event understood that the press coverage brought about by having that person, or a slew of that kind of person, present would give the evening some stature. I get it! As I said at the top of my speech, I used to be the kind of person that was so excited to be invited anywhere that I’d say yes yes yes yes yes exclamation point. Then, years passed, I got older and wiser — or more cynical (you decide) — and realized that leaving the house is seldom the desirable option. I so appreciate these guests for taking time out of what I know for certain are incredibly busy schedules to be with me. That willingness was a necessary ingredient in the energy for sure.
And then, of course, there was the set! Chaos Dinner 1.0 was done at the home of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills’s Crystal Kung-Minkoff in Bel Air. This time, we opted for Saint Theo’s in the West Village. Critical from the jump was the fact that it be one long table that everyone sat at. This needed big Carrie Bradshaw’s Last Supper energy. We brought in Barwon Productions, led by Nate Whitton, who came up with and executed an idea to create something akin to a meme museum. It began when guests walked in and were handed their drinks: Morgan Spector’s Bathwater, Mamala, Hot One or a “That’s That Me Espresso” Martini.
They were then given a selection of napkins with even more memes on them.
(Did the actual Morgan Spector sip on a Morgan Spector’s Bathwater? He did. Did Rebecca Hall, his wife, leave the event with a stack of Morgan Spector napkins? She did.)
Throughout the tablescape we paid homage to Dakota Johnson in Madame Web, the churro in Challengers, Lisa Barlow’s $65K ring and more.
They even hid a meme under the first course plate that revealed Sabrina Brier saying, “Oh… wait, there’s more!!!” No detail was overlooked.
Lastly, since the invitation said, “The night will be a celebration of Evan and bring together personalities across fashion, entertainment and icon-ography that continue to stay on his lips,” I needed to explicitly state the night’s intention in my speech.
Here’s my speech (after I thanked everyone for leaving the house):
So I've loved pop culture since I came out of the womb. It's been an integral part of who I am. When I was 12 years-old, I had my Bar Mitzvah. It was right around the corner and my parents asked me what I wanted the theme to be and I said, "Well, Sarah Michelle Geller." It was the year of cardboard cutouts, so my parents tried to get me one. Sarah Michelle Geller cardboard cutouts were very popular in the 1990s, and they were sold out, so my parents went on eBay and got me one from Japan. I still have it today. It was present at my wedding several weeks ago. Because if you have a wedding, you should bring your Sarah Michelle Geller cardboard cutout — just personal advice.
This to say, pop culture is something I truly love, and you all in this room define pop culture, which makes this so incredible. Nava [Mau], for instance, is a part of Baby Reindeer right now, and everyone is talking about it. And then you have Ilana [Glazer], who has her new film, Babes. It's so good. It's so good. It's so good! It is literally going to top all of the best of 2024 lists. Just you wait until you see it. And then you have Nicola [Coughlan] and Luke [Newton] here. Bridgerton Season Three premieres today. This is just to say this is a room full of powerhouses and I am so incredibly grateful.
On that note, I want to thank Charles [Porch] and Eva [Chen] and Michael Hoffman and Meta and Threads, all of whom have played a critical role in my success professionally. I was going to use air quotes, but I'm going to own it. Success professionally! But also, I want to say that this is a team that leads with joy. And when I do any of the work that I do, I really try and be intentional about filling the spaces that I'm in with joy. And this is a team that allows me to bring that joy and infuses me with that same joy.
Last, what is the Chaos Dinner? Because this is a question so many of you have asked. The idea of a Chaos Dinner was: What if we brought the Internet to life in a room? What if we brought the people that fuel the culture into a room? That is all of you! And I'm kind of like the meme guy; that's how a lot of people know me. But I want to say something about meme culture because I take it really seriously, which is that oftentimes when I post these memes about the work that you all are in, I have people that message me and say, "I watched this show because you recommended it," or "I binged this," or "I listened to this," or "I discovered this fashion brand." This is to say that meme culture is frivolous, yes, but it matters. There's consumption; there's conversion. People actually find content through memes. So it matters and you all matter. You are what fuel the memes. So yes, this is a celebration of me, but it's a celebration of you all. So I just wanted to thank you all from the bottom of my heart. I am in awe that you all are here.
And now for some photos!
