Fight to save Vaux Library, Hollywood’s beloved prop house

Mark Mayer, the longtime owner of the prop house, always imagined he would die in his office chair. One day, someone will find him lying on his desk, surrounded by his life’s work.

Last week, that desk — a vintage Monteverde Young piece from 1963 with an 11-foot wallpaper and built-in ink blotter — was buried under bills and bright yellow Post-it notes.

Meyer was alive, leaning back in his office chair and answering a call from his landlord, who he said had recently informed him that he had until the end of the week to pay more than $100,000 or vacate the building and hand over everything inside.

In a New Year’s miracle, Mayer was able to hold some last-minute prop sales and raise enough money — $45,000 — to satisfy the owner and buy the property to himself for another month. Now, he and his industry allies are on a mission to raise $100,000 by February 1 and save his business.

Meyer’s Faux Library Studio Props — which provides fake books, real books, antique furniture and other decor for movies and TV sets — is among a number of prop houses in Southern California that were still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic when Hollywood actors and writers went public in 2023, making It almost stopped filming.

After laying off employees, cutting salaries and finding new sources of income to make ends meet, many support houses are busy rebuilding and preparing for the return of production after the end of the strike season in Hollywood.

Others, such as the Sony Pictures prop house in Culver City, did not survive.

Vu Bookshop, which has been around for 24 years, was hit hard by the business shutdown, forcing Meyer to lay off 11 of his 13 employees and miss several rent payments. As of last Tuesday, Meyer estimated he owed his landlord about $500,000.

“I’ve heard from interior designers — some of whom I haven’t heard from in 10 years. They’re all rebels,” Mayer said. “They say, ‘Oh my God, this is a resource we can’t live without.’ … It hurts me when it has come to this.” .

At least two of those set decorators and another support home owner have credited Mayer — a 75-year-old former set designer whose credits include Olivia Newton-John’s 1980 musical “Xanadu” and the 1970s detective series “Switch” — with inventing Counterfeit product. book.

After watching in horror as crew members risked their safety by climbing ladders with their arms full of hardcovers to decorate a 14-foot-tall bookcase on the set of Steven Spielberg’s film High Incident in the early 1990s, Mayer had an epiphany.

“I just said, ‘We should write light books. “There’s got to be an easier way to do this,” Mayer recalls. “So I went into my garage, and… decided I was going to start playing with it.”

While hard at work in his garage in Eagle Rock, Mayer tore out the pages of psychology books—donated by a friend who had just retired from the field—and replaced them with foam. Over the years, he perfected his craft, covering exposed foam with striped wallpaper he found at Home Depot.

“It looked just like pages,” Mayer said. “And at that very moment, I could see (the wallpaper) on the edge of the book. I mean it was instant. So I bought eight of them and took them back to the store, and we cut them on a band saw the width of the books. Then we glued them down, and it looked like a million dollars.”

As his collection grew from hundreds to thousands of counterfeit books, Mayer expanded to include additional garages and eventually warehouses, officially founding Faux Bookshop in 2000. The company’s current location—an 89,000-square-foot warehouse in North Hollywood—houses about 16,000 counterfeit books. 4,000 real books (paperbacks, Mayer explained, are “very difficult to unpack”) and various pieces of rare furniture and decor have a total value of about $6 million.

Mayer estimates that he personally destroyed, stuffed and glued about half of the counterfeit books by hand.

“When you have a whole library to do, instead of having to move pounds and pounds of books, you can design book faces,” says Susan Benjamin, an interior designer whose credits include “Roswell” and “The Blind Side.” “And ‘Saving Mr. Banks.’ “That was a game-changer for a lot of us.”

Items from the Faux Library’s sprawling stock have appeared in thousands of films and TV series, including “Angels & Demons,” “Snowfall,” “American Horror Stories,” “Daisy Jones & The Six,” and “True Blood.” And “The X-“. Files, NCIS, and Top Gun: Maverick.

Meyer’s collection of fake books alone covers an astonishing range of topics and titles, from chemistry textbooks and aviation safety manuals to classics like Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” and Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.”

“I’m sure when people see the movies, they say, ‘Oh… they found a bookstore,'” said Pam Elia, co-owner of nearby History for Hire bookstore. “‘I found a law firm with all those books.’ “No, this is Mark’s stuff.”

When Faux Library doesn’t have the exact book or piece of furniture needed, Meyer often does his best to find it elsewhere—sometimes buying the prop himself and then loaning it to a decorator who can’t buy it at full price.

“He would do things like that for us,” Benjamin said. “If I ran into a problem, I could always go to Mark and say, ‘Hey, I really need this, but I’m on a budget,’ or ‘Hey, I’m in Atlanta.’ Would you mind shipping these things? And the answer was always ‘yes.’”

These acts of kindness — renting out entire sets for an extended period of time or covering the cost of an Emmys ticket for an underrated nominee who couldn’t afford to go to the ceremony, for example — earned Mayer a reputation. As one of the most helpful and generous homeowners in this area.

“Mark is an amazing, amazing soul,” said Ron Franco, a set designer whose credits include “True Blood” and “The X-Files.” “He would give anyone the shirt off their back. … So what’s even sadder for our industry is to see this support home perhaps fall by the wayside.”

Franco added that many community members “came out hard at work” to try to save the Vaux Library in recent weeks, “but no one was able to do it because of its value.”

“It hurts me that I can’t help him,” Elijah said. “I could write Mark a check for $500,000 and cover his rent. If it were normal I would. But I don’t know what’s going to happen next year. … I’m really committed to making sure my employees have a paycheck and have a job, and that’s what I’m saving for.”

During the strikes, interior designer Mary Ann Biddle and her husband, John Onsen, a boom operator, launched a GoFundMe campaign for the Faux Library that raised more than $16,000. A few other friends — including prop house owner Francisco Ocampo and “Top Gun: Maverick” set designer Jean Pascal — have stopped by Meyer’s warehouse in recent weeks to buy some props and hopefully ease his financial burden.

Thanks to those transactions, Meyer was mostly able to purchase an extension from a property owner who did not respond to requests for comment.

Some of the expensive items that Meyer was able to sell for rent money were a “chrome desk” he designed, as well as various “crystals and stuff” to decorate Superman’s castle for the Warner Bros. movie. and the upcoming DC Studios “Superman: Legacy,” as well as some office supplies for the Amazon Freevee “Bosch: Legacy” series.

Last Wednesday, Meyer strolled through the seemingly endless hallways of his warehouse as if he were strolling down memory lane, pointing out some of his proudest possessions: a massive, sparkling amethyst desk from “Jane the Virgin,” a Navy general’s desk. In “Top Gun: Maverick,” he wrote the struggling Vatican library from “Angels & Demons.”

When asked to name some of his favorite props, Mayer couldn’t choose.

“I’m in love with everything here because I carefully selected each piece,” he said.

“I have a story for each of these pieces. I know exactly where it came from and who it is…it’s a love of place.”

Back in his office with his dog and “best friend” Xanadu (Xana for short), Mayer took his place behind his dear Monteverde Young desk and looked toward the uncertain future.

“I don’t know what I’ll do at the end of the week,” he said. “I think I’m finally old enough to retire, but I seem to have a lot of life left in me. I don’t know why I should think that.”

While Mayer isn’t ready to quit just yet, this experience has forced him to accept that he probably can’t continue running Faux Library alone forever. As part of his ongoing efforts to save his business, he is looking for potential partners to invest in and eventually take over his beloved home.

“After this scare, I have to get someone else here to take over,” he said.