Snow on a Raven’s Back

A young New York journalist moves to Hollywood to interview his famous movie star friend Roz as well as the renowned film director Max Petrov. His real motive is to create for himself an opportunity for pitching a film idea to the Great Max on the abduction and sexual slavery of women. The theme of the story gets the director’s attention but Max objects that the film has no ending. Women are missing, true, and their suffering must of course be great, but if they can’t be found or liberated, we can only commiserate, and how much of a story is that? But the young journalist can’t - won’t - give up. He is urged on by his lover Inge: it was the disappearance of her friend Karen that ignited his passion for this cause. He begins by consulting the nearest archives, the Beverly Hills library, where he searches through news reports and learns of the scale of the world trade in children, some as young as five, and 30 million sexually-enslaved women - a trade, he discovers, that is in some ways more lucrative than drugs. He is convinced that a film on this topic, with Roz, its superstar leading lady to insure success and publicity, would focus attention on the problem. Roz - herself a friend of Inge’s - is equally passionate about making such a film and is willing to use all her Hollywood clout to influence the reluctant Max. But the prestigious director, though sympathetic to the cause, stubbornly refuses, not feeling he could safely risk his reputation on what to him is a mere germ of an idea at a time when, as we learn, he himself is under a professional strain threatening his career. How can the earnest young journalist, then, get Max Petrov, supposed mover and shaker, to act on this timely and immensely important human story?