LAVA Literary Salon at Musso & Frank April 30

LAVA and Musso & Frank Announce Second Literary Salon Celebrating the Famed
Back Room of Hollywood's Oldest Restaurant

WHAT: LAVA (The Los Angeles Visionaries Association) presents the "Down
These Mean Streets: Raymond Chandler's Underworld," the second quarterly
LAVA Salon at Musso & Frank featuring John Buntin.

WHERE: Musso & Frank Grill, 6667 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90028.

WHEN: Monday, April 30, 2012 from 6-11pm.

COST: $100 per person, ticket price includes 3-course prix fixe dinner
prepared by Musso & Frank chefs and Salon presentations. Cocktails not
included.

TO PURCHASE TICKETS: Call Musso & Frank at (323) 467-7788 or visit the
restaurant Tuesday-Saturday between 9am and 5pm.

FOR MORE INFO: Contact Kim Cooper, amscray@gmail.com , 323-223-2767.

FULL SALON DETAILS: http://lavatransforms.org/mussosalon2


There is simply no Hollywood restaurant more closely tied to
the city's literary legacy than Musso & Frank--a favorite of Faulkner,
Fitzgerald, Fante, Hellman, Hammett, Chandler, Cain, Saroyan, Parker, West,
as well as a new generation of luminaries.

In honor of this ongoing writerly tradition, LAVA (The Los Angeles
Visionaries Association) has launched a new dinner and lecture series, The
LAVA Salon at Musso & Frank, a quarterly literary salon and prix fixe dinner
celebrating the great writers and personalities who have frequented the
establishment. The first Salon, featuring Dan Fante reading from his recent
memoir, was a rousing success, with Larry Wilson of the Pasadena Star-News
observing "The sold-out crowd spoke to our hunger for a Southern California
literary history."

The LAVA Salon at Musso & Frank is the brainchild of Kim Cooper & Richard
Schave, proprietors of literary tour company Esotouric -- Raymond Chandler's
Los Angeles, James M. Cain's Southern California Nightmare, Charles
Bukowski's Haunts of a Dirty Old Man, John Fante's Dreams from Bunker Hill
-- who through 2009-10 hosted a free cultural Salon on the last Sunday of
the month at Clifton's Cafeteria. With the new series, LAVA expands its
congenial, intelligent and unpredictable cultural programming into Hollywood
with a quarterly literary Salon event held in Musso & Frank on a night when
the restaurant is closed to the general public. Seating is extremely
limited, and these intimate gatherings are sure to sell out quickly.

On Monday, April 30, John Buntin, author of "L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the
Soul of America¹s Most Seductive City" (recently optioned by TNT as a Frank
Darabont-directed pilot) is the special guest speaker for "Down These Mean
Streets: Raymond Chandler's Underworld," a fresh look at criminal Los
Angeles of the 1920s and Œ30s. This is the culture which informs noir master
Raymond Chandler¹s short stories and early novels. The corrupt civic machine
(³The Combination²) fueled the biggest boom town this country has ever seen,
and inspired the real life struggles between Good Guys and Bad Guys which in
turn influenced much of the fiction and film of the mid 20th Century. At the
Salon we¹ll examine the crusading cop who was the real-life inspiration for
Philip Marlowe, then shine our light onto other crusaders, prosecutors and
policy makers, who through the decades shift from teetotalers to civil
libertarians, but always retain those constants of every Chandler hero: a
chance at redemption.

Also appearing at the April 30 Salon is Howard Prouty (Acquisitions
Archivist at The Academy Foundation/Margaret Herrick Library and proprietor
of ReadInk) with a talk on Jake Zeitlin, another in his ongoing Salon series
on important booksellers in Los Angeles. And before and after the formal
dinner and Salon presentations, guests will mingle with Hollywood historian
Philip Mershon (proprietor of The Felix in Hollywood Tour Company) and
actress Kasey Wilson, appearing in the character of the helpful female book
clerk from "The Big Sleep."

THE BACK STORY:
For much of the mid-20th Century, to rub shoulders with America's greatest
novelists and screenwriters, one needed merely to go to the corner of
Cherokee Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard. Here, within the tight triangle of
the Writer's Guild offices, Musso & Frank Grill and the Stanley Rose
Bookshop, flowed the commercial and social sap that nourished the tree of
American letters. The famous minds who congregated still inspire awe:
William Faulkner, Scott Fitzgerald, John Fante, Lillian Hellman, Dashiell
Hammett, Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, William Saroyan, John O'Hara,
Dorothy Parker, Nathanael West and many more.

And at the center of it all was the famed "Back Room" of Musso & Frank, the
oldest restaurant in Hollywood. Beginning in 1936, in response to the
restaurant's growing popularity, Musso's expanded its operations into a
small room tucked behind the Vogue Theater. A door was punched through the
west wall of the dining room, and a haughty door man installed. His
instructions were simple: the back room was to be the exclusive domain of
Hollywood's literary lions, their friends and romantic partners. It was
called, informally, The Cocktail Room or The Round Table or the Algonquin
West.

The party raged on, six nights a week, for twenty glorious years.

In 1955, Musso & Frank expanded to the east, and the contents of the "Back
Room"‹the long bar, chairs, light fixtures, coat racks-- were moved
wholesale into the "New Room." The "New Room" was no longer the exclusive
retreat of literary Los Angeles, but the writers kept coming. Today, Musso &
Frank's clientele still includes celebrated novelists, screenwriters, poets
and songwriters, all of whom cherish the old world hospitality, traditional
Continental cuisine and opportunity to soak up the same rarified air that
nourished the greats.

LAVA co-founder Richard Schave, the Salon host and co-curator, says "I would
argue that along the bar in the old Cocktail Room, somewhere between the
drinking, bragging, fighting and general hell-raising, the better half of
the Hard-Boiled School of American Letters was hashed out and put down on
paper. The purpose of the Salon is two fold. First, to set the record
straight on some basic milestones: the rise and fall of the original
Cocktail Room and its reincarnation as the "New Room" and the symbiotic
relationship Musso & Frank shared with the legendary bookshop next door,
Stanley Rose's. Secondly, a more ephemeral aim: in these hallowed rooms,
that still bear the nicotine stains from Raymond Chandler's pipe and Charles
Bukowski's cigarettes, we want to seek out and amplify the spark which all
those great souls have left behind. Musso & Frank is just bricks and mortar,
but incredible ideas and connections were forged here, and we believe that
spark is waiting to be reignited and make its impression felt in Los Angeles
again."

Each Musso's Salon evening will focus on different aspects of Hollywood's
literary lore, feature fascinating speakers and special guest historians,
and be hosted by LAVA co-founder Richard Schave.

Mark Echeverria, 4th generation General Manager/Proprietor of The Musso &
Frank Grill, says "For 93 years The Musso & Frank Grill has been a keystone
in Hollywood's ever-evolving history. Some of the world's greatest people
have walked through our doors, sat at a booth or a bar stool, and dreamt the
unimaginable. That is what makes Hollywood so unique: unimaginable things
come true. Musso & Frank Grill has always been that inspiration in people's
lives to make the impossible, possible, and it is now time to tell the true
story of the people who put Hollywood on the map, and the restaurant they
did it in--The Musso & Frank Grill. We are extremely excited to work with
LAVA to bring you living history in a setting where history continues to
happen, even 93 years later. So please enjoy an authentic dinning experience
you would have found in the early decades of last century, and bring
yourselves back to the time era of the literary giants, and truly get a
journey through the history of Hollywood, in the restaurant that Hollywood
grew up around, The Musso & Frank Grill."

John Buntin, speaker at the April 30 quarterly LAVA Salon at Musso & Frank,
says, "Sixty years ago the producer David O. Selznick likened Hollywood to
ancient Egypt, 'full of crumbled pyramids.' But Musso & Frank's is still
there, and like Hollywood itself, it's celebrating its Silver Age. I'm
excited -- and honored -- to be speak in such celebrated surroundings to my
fellow noir enthusiasts and to the spirits of writers past who are always in
attendance there."

Future Salons will focus on the life and works of Dorothy Parker, F. Scott
Fitzgerald, Charles Bukowski, Nathanael West and other fascinating
characters who've contributed to nearly a century of literary culture at
Musso & Frank.

ABOUT LAVA: Through participation in LAVA, a select group of creative
professionals come together to promote cultural programming that speaks to
the urban experience while promoting positive public space. LAVA's creative
partners share a love for L.A. and unique ideas for exploring it in their
work. Formed by social historians RICHARD SCHAVE and KIM COOPER --
proprietors of Esotouric bus adventures and the 1947project time travel blog
series (including On Bunker Hill and In SRO Land) -- LAVA brings together
L.A.'s most visionary promoters, artists, writers and thinkers.

Applications from prospective LAVA members are being taken at
http://lavatransforms.org/apply

To learn more about LAVA, please visit http://www.lavatransforms.org