By SARA FISHER
Staff Reporter
On a quiet side street in Hollywood, behind nondescript concrete walls, lie some of the most prized artifacts of Hollywood history.
Film reels, audio recordings, photographs and videotapes that date from the dawn of media reside within Hollywood Vaults Inc., one of the nation’s most technologically advanced storage facilities.
The company’s clients are mostly confidential for insurance reasons, but the list reads like an entertainment-industry Who’s Who. Winners of 24 Oscars, 102 Grammys and 36 Emmys have stored original works of what made them famous at Hollywood Vaults, as do 11 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees and 120 Hollywood Walk of Fame honorees. The master recordings of some of the earliest radio and television shows also reside within.
Such storage facilities might seem quaint in an era of digital media, but many of these master recordings have not been replaced by digital copies. And the digital revolution is actually turning out to be an engine for growth, at least for the time being, at Hollywood Vaults and other media-storage outfits that comprise the L.A.-centric cottage industry.
While digital versions may be more durable than the original formats, they too will ultimately deteriorate. And some storage needs are growing, with clients storing the same film or record in four or five different technological formats.
“We have not yet developed a truly archival medium, meaning that everything is still temporal and fragile even digital media,” said David Wexler, president and co-owner of Hollywood Vaults. “Eventually, all types of material will be reduced to thumbnail size and there won’t be a need for my services, but that’s not going to happen in my lifetime.”
While Wexler today has emerged as one of the leading experts in the field of film and tape storage, he stumbled onto the field while he and his wife were casting about for an entrepreneurial opportunity in the mid-1980s.
“Martin Scorsese and Robert Redford had just started to challenge the industry about the fading and destruction of films because of improper storage, and we were also hearing about the shortage of good storage spaces around town,” Wexler said. “That’s when we had our ‘ah-ha’ moment. We realized we could fill a need.”
Realizing that no storage facility meeting their specifications existed, they decided to build one from scratch. The result is arguably the most sophisticated storage facility in the nation, on what had been a weed-choked Hollywood parking lot.
“That storage facility is one of the best anywhere in the world,” said Gray Ainsworth, vice president of technology services at MGM Studios, a unit of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. “The conditions in there are optimum.”
Hollywood Vaults’ interior steel, glass and concrete melange is in dramatic contrast to its unobtrusive exterior. The main glass doors slide back on an angle, strongly evocative of a spaceship.
Up the Spartan steel steps, thick parkas dangle on hooks outside the storage areas. They’re necessary within the vaults, which are constantly kept at 45 degrees and 25 percent humidity to best preserve the film, audio and videotape. For material that is already damaged or that someone wants to keep for countless generations, Hollywood Vaults has zero-degree temperature units.
Filters continually scrub dirt, dust and chemicals from the air, making the environment as pristine as a computer lab’s clean room. Instead of a standard fire-sprinkler system, the building has a halon gas system that extinguishes fires on a molecular level without harming material around it. A central security station monitors the facility 24 hours a day.
The space-age look of the place has also made it a popular location for filming and photo shoots for album covers or fashion magazines.
“The photographers love it because it’s such a high-tech look,” Wexler said. “It was an unexpected result of one of our marketing pushes. We sent out postcards with images of the facility to photographers around town, hoping they would want to store their film here. Then I got a call, and instead of storing film, this guy asked if he could use it as a shoot location.”
When the Wexlers hung out their shingle in 1985, the new company quickly landed more than 100 clients, mostly through word of mouth. Encouraged by clients’ constant requests for more space and facing almost flat revenues because of Wexler’s disinclination to raise rental prices beyond matching inflation Hollywood Vaults decided to expand in the mid-1990s. The original 6,000-square-foot facility was expanded to 13,000 square feet, with actual storage space being increased by 56 percent.
Again through some modest direct mail advertising and mostly word of mouth, the much-larger Hollywood Vaults is back up to 80 percent capacity, and certain sized storage spaces again have waiting lists.
The company’s revenue has climbed proportionately. Projected revenue for this year is $1 million, almost double its 1997 level. Monthly rental rates range from $65 to $1,350, depending on unit size.
Of course, media people aren’t the only ones who have taken advantage of Hollywood Vaults. Years ago, Wexler says, a chocolate importer called desperately looking for cold storage for his confections before the holiday season.
“He moved into a double vault, with one half filled with dark Belgium chocolate, the other half filled with lighter types,” Wexler said. “It made the place smell absolutely wonderful for a while.”
