Gatsbies and the Wannabes

At around 3:30 a.m., Rob Perry’s members-only party at a cavernous Hollywood soundstage was going full tilt.

Bikini-clad go-go girls emerged from bathtubs onstage into a mist of soapy bubbles sprayed from a machine. Couples locked lips in a darkened sofa area. Skinny women on a densely packed dance floor hoisted their cocktails into the air and rocked their heads to Bon Jovi’s 20-year-old hit, “You Give Love a Bad Name,” without a shred of nostalgia.

Perry’s Blackberry vibrated and it was once again time to vet the celebrities who wanted to come in.

“How about Sean Salisbury of ESPN?” a doorman wrote, asking if the football analyst could come in as a guest. The answer was no. “He’s free to join” as a member, Perry wrote back, before acknowledging, “He was a good quarterback.”

New York Giants linebacker Antonio Pierce? “He has to join,” responded Perry.

Perry was more welcoming when some bigger names showed up. Actor Vin Diesel? Show him in. Producer-director Michael Bay and guests? Lead them to the VIP area. When cyclist Lance Armstrong arrived, the staff scrambled to arrange private tables.

It’s this sort of exclusivity -- where the A-listers are separated from the lesser-listers -- that has helped fuel a following for Perry’s weekly soirees known as Xenii (pronounced x-ee-nee, a Latin word meaning a gift from a host to a guest).

Each week for the last 10 months, Perry has thrown lavish parties at secret locations that have attracted a scattering of celebrities and many more well-heeled “civilians” who pay hefty prices to rub shoulders with them, or at the very least, their entourages.

The parties have been held in places like the Jim Henson Studios on La Brea Avenue and at Union Station downtown. A recent event drew 800 people to the Sunset-Gower Studios.

It’s perhaps the ultimate expression of hype in Hollywood’s overheated night scene. It costs men between $650 and $4,500 a month for membership -- and that’s only after passing a screening process that requires references and employment information. For women, memberships start at $250 a month, but they represent only 10% of Xenii’s 575 paying subscribers.

The most expensive memberships offer a variety of perks, including priority access to events, reserved tables, valet parking, backstage passes to concerts and extra guest passes to Xenii.

Xenii acts much like a mobile country club, offering summer pool parties, charity nights, dinner get-togethers, movie screenings and concierge service for trendy restaurants and sporting events.

The biggest draw, however, is the evening parties on the weekends. Members are alerted to the event’s location every Wednesday through an online newsletter. Once there, visitors are served free food and drinks.

“What we’re doing is totally different,” said Perry, 43, a former sports agent who resembles Iggy Pop, if Iggy Pop led a life of exercise and tanning. “Other clubs are open to the public. We’re a private party. We provide elite, cutting-edge events. We’ve created a community. Like a modern-day Gatsby.”

Xenii offers members another perk: It serves free liquor until festivities end at 5 a.m. Perry and his business partner and promoter, Michael Sutton, note that Xenii is a private, members-only party and therefore not restricted by a California Department of Alcohol and Beverage Control license, which requires public bars to stop serving alcohol at 2 a.m.

The LAPD says it’s still reviewing Xenii with the help of the city attorney’s office, but has allowed the parties to go on with little scrutiny so far.

“Our concerns, obviously, are whether we’re going to have these roving clubs that are here essentially to intoxicate people,” said LAPD Vice Division Capt. Kris Pitcher.

Xenii made the gossip pages earlier this year when police arrested Sutton on suspicion of possessing an open container of alcohol after 2 a.m. at his Hollywood restaurant, Memphis. Sutton, who was later released, insisted he was arrested because the officers thought he was using Memphis as the site of a Xenii party. Police deny that.

But that’s nothing compared to the press coverage the group received in the last few weeks after Paula Abdul alleged that she was attacked by a man during an Xenii party at the Sunset-Gower Studios on April 2.

Two days later, the “American Idol” judge went to the LAPD’s Hollywood division and told detectives she had been thrown against a wall and had sustained spinal injuries and a concussion. The alleged assailant, Jim Lefkowitz, a 46-year-old Xenii member and agent with Creative Artists Agency, denied any wrongdoing through his attorney. Detectives are still investigating.

Despite the flood of media inquiries, Perry and Sutton are circumspect about the Abdul incident and other gossip.

As Sutton told the TV entertainment show “Extra”: “The first rule of Xenii is that you can’t talk about Xenii.”

*

Xenii partygoers must be paying members or guests of paying members. It’s why the entrance to Xenii parties often ends up being a somber meeting point for a collection of would-be revelers.

Xenii says the locations of parties are transmitted only to members. But by the time the parties get going around 10 p.m. each Saturday, word has usually leaked to both would-be crashers as well as the paparazzi, some of whom lurk outside well into the morning, waiting to catch a glimpse of the likes of Lindsay Lohan, who attended an Xenii party once with her mother.

“They said I’m not on the list,” a frustrated and shivering Sara Digiovanni said on her cellphone while waiting in a hallway that led into the Sunset-Gower Studios around midnight on a recent Saturday. Her friend, a member, had failed to give her name and another friend’s name to the door people, Digiovanni said.

“I’ve been here a million times,” Digiovanni, a Sherman Oaks resident, told a reporter. “We usually come at around 3 in the morning after going to Cabana [Club].”

Christian Anderson, a doorman and, to no one’s astonishment, an actor during the day, said his job is strict and particularly difficult when he has to turn away friends or attractive women, most of whom are used to gliding past bouncers and doormen with ease.

“People will say anything to get in,” Anderson said. “I get stuff like, ‘I was Lindsay Lohan’s co-star’ and ‘I’m a supermodel.’ Someone said, ‘I was Heath Ledger’s body double.’ ”

Once someone has demonstrated that they exist on Anderson’s or one of his colleagues’ clipboards, men and women are sent to separate lines that lead to Xenii employees behind computer terminals. Identification is checked and the member and guests are given wristbands, whose different colors grant various degrees of access, such as to the VIP area.

Women coming for the first time are assigned a number in the database. They are photographed, often without their knowledge, when waiting in line. Perry says they like to keep track of who comes in.

Xenii has “not just the prettiest, but the highest-quality women,” Perry said matter-of-factly.

The bulk of Xenii’s roster consists of male professionals -- lawyers, doctors, agents, bankers, Realtors and entrepreneurs, among others -- who want a taste of the Hollywood lifestyle as seen on “Entourage,” the HBO show about a young movie star and his friends gallivanting through L.A.

“When you watch ‘Entourage,’ you see all the things they do, and Xenii is it,” said Michael Friedman, a 38-year-old anesthesiologist and Xenii member at a recent party who shared bottle service at a table with half a dozen women. “I tell my friends back East that it’s just like the show here, and they still don’t believe me.”

Stars such as Jamie Foxx and the recent Oscar-winning group Three 6 Mafia have hopped on stage unannounced to sing and rap. Paris Hilton lip-synched her soon-to-be released single and members often brush shoulders with models and professional athletes such as Cuttino Mobley of the Clippers.

Almost all the women at Xenii events are guests of members or guests of Perry. Quotas are decided upon minute-by-minute depending on how the event is going.

At two recent events, towering soundstages the size of airplane hangars were transformed into nightclubs outfitted with sofas, bars, coat checks, strobe lights and a DJ booth from which a melange of rock, hip-hop, pop, house and perhaps a little too much Michael Jackson emanated.

Men dressed almost uniformly in blazers and jeans. Women not in knee-high boots braved the cold in short skirts, low-cut tops and slinky high heels. Mortgage banker Steve Pirt, 28, said he pays $1,000 a month to be a member. One of his top Xenii highlights was talking to actress Jessica Alba, whom he described as “friendly” after he encouraged her to venture onto the dance floor. “Not to be an elitist, but let’s be honest, I want to be with the same demographic,” Pirt said. He was invited to one of Xenii’s earliest parties by a promoter friend and was impressed to see that drinks were on the house and that he was allowed to bring 12 friends.

Oh, and he saw cast members from “Entourage.”

“Everyone wants to do something more than just go to the same venues and just drink” and pick up women, said Pirt, who was neatly dressed in a crisp white shirt and a dark blazer at the party. “They’ve created a country club in a nightclub setting.”

Earlier that night, Pirt was puffing a cigar with a guest, a childhood friend from Sacramento and former Marine who could not believe his luck when he entered the soundstage filled with women.

But Pirt insisted that Xenii is not just about partying. At a meeting where select members get together with Perry to discuss ways to improve Xenii, Pirt said he met a future client who borrowed through his firm.

One of the hottest topics being discussed by members now is how to reduce guest quotas -- “the quality of people was down,” Perry said of one party -- and alter the women-to-men ratio since it’s not uncommon to see groups of women dancing with each other because there are so few men.

Member Amir Tehrani said he enjoys gaining an entree into a world usually reserved for sports, film and television stars.

“The celebrity factor is huge. I love it,” said Tehrani, 28. “I got to see Talib Kweli, Jamie Foxx and Coolio.”

Tehrani, the owner of cafes that specialize in gourmet chocolates, continued, “It’s like all the beautiful women in the city want to be in here. It would be tough to be in a relationship. I’m not going to meet the woman I’m going to marry here, but I’m OK with that.”

Several women interviewed at the Sunset-Gower party said the exclusivity -- and the heavy security -- at Xenii made them comfortable about partying until dawn.

Perry was more blunt.

“The average high-quality woman comes here because she doesn’t want a 22-year-old with $20 in his pocket pinching her butt,” he said.

*

With the gossip items about celebrity sightings and media coverage of the Paula Abdul incident, some in the club scene -- and on nightlife-related blogs -- are already wondering whether Xenii is overexposed.

Ten months, after all, can be like 10 years in the club world.

The club promoters, club owners and scenesters who privately bash Xenii say it’s a refuge for the sorts of men who wouldn’t get past many velvet ropes or couldn’t charm the pretty girls if they didn’t have money.

“If you are the kind of person who needs to name-drop B-celebrity names in order to validate your existence, then this is the place for you,” wrote “Lordy,” an anonymous poster on the nightlife and L.A.-centric website “Caroline on Crack.” “It’s about as socially rewarding as a monster truck rally.”

Perry rejects the criticism and likes to compare Xenii to Andy Warhol’s Factory and Studio 54, both exclusive clubs in Manhattan three decades ago.

But even some Xenii regulars aren’t sure whether all the hype is true.

Susan Blackman, a publicist and self-proclaimed “tastemaker” was not impressed by the males on view on a recent Saturday while enjoying cocktails in the cordoned-off VIP area at the Hollywood Ren-Mar Studios.

“There are no hot guys here,” the 28-year-old said.

She and a girlfriend then recognized actor Michael Bellisario from the TV show “JAG,” in a mesh trucker baseball cap, and rushed to talk to him.

Bellisario, 26, started coming to Xenii parties last June. He said he did not need to pay for membership because Perry “wants Hollywood here. I spread the word.”

As his guests networked, flirted, drank and stargazed, Perry was stationed at a sofa continuing to field Blackberry calls from the door. This time, it was the Los Angeles fire marshal, waiting in the studio’s courtyard.

Perry went to confirm with the marshal that, with daylight saving time kicking in that morning, the party could go until 6 a.m. instead of the usual 5 a.m.

“I don’t ever want to let you down,” Perry told L.A. Fire Inspector Glen Martinez, who approved the extra hour.

As the morning wore on, more taxis appeared outside the party on Gower. Valets worked frantically to get cars.

After a night of dancing, Victoria Secret’s model Alessandra Ambrosio skirted a couple of paparazzi on her way out of the party and got into the front seat of a four-door Maserati driven by a friend. The car stereo began to blast Aerosmith’s “Dream On,” and then, with a screech of the tires, the driver sped off into the approaching dawn.