Back at the office Donald called in Walter Ames. Walter was the person who directed the people who searched for stories, actually selected stories, arranged for the legal permissions and moved them to the writers. He was the intake of the production line. The rest of the process depended on him. He told Walter about the girl and asked why they had avoided stories about amputees. Fritz could not remember them ever doing one. Walter shook his head. “I don’t ever want to look at a story about an amputee.”

“Why?”

“Didn’t you hear about what happened to Lorie Productions with that?” Lorie productions was the only one that could even be remotely considered Fritz’s competitor. They had never been able to get the process working smoothly but they did make good films. They just never made enough money on them to get above the “scraping by” economic condition. Fritz knew the problem, Mark Lorie never took the active hand in the business and it had to get bad before he would take action. “They tried to do one about three years ago. Stirred up a hornet’s nest. The amputee groups wanted them to use real amputees for the film. They did, including the leading female. She was awful. Wasn’t bad looking but she couldn’t act. She refused to do some of the scenes. They had to rewrite them for her. She insisted in doing the before amputation scenes herself including one where she was running on a track. They had another girl who looked enough like her to be a twin without makeup to do the before action scenes. When the director balked she had people picketing the set for three days and they got nothing done. By then they had to get it moving. They gave in and she did the before scenes. She limped so bad in them it was obvious that she was an amputee. The movie was a flop. It lost them money. The amputee community blamed them for making her look bad. It was a disaster. I don’t want to back into a meat grinder.”

“So let’s find an amputee who understands the business and can act.”

“With Hollywood’s idea of the perfect woman where are you going to find an amputee actress?”

Donald dropped the subject for now but he knew that some day it would happen. Either Fritz productions would solve the problem and do these stories or someone else would and Fritz knew there was money to be made. He also mused, “Every story line we have done has been at least somewhat socially responsible. We have raised awareness that has benefited society and the people involved. I want to do that in this area even if I have to make money to do it.”

A month later Donald talked to Walter again. He wanted him to pursue about six stories about female amputees, get the first version of the scripts written and put them on hold.

Walter protested, it would be using resources for something that didn’t have a return.

“Take the story about the gal I saw in the restaurant, then see if you can find some stories of women who have lost limbs in traffic accidents, maybe concentrate on accidents with drunk drivers. See if you can find a couple where the woman herself was drunk. Maybe this will give us a place to start.”

“I can’t afford to have someone working on something that we aren’t going to do.”

“Do you have a new person on the crew?”

“Sure. Julie.”

“Give it to her to do one of them. Tell her I will pay her up to one day a week extra to work on it.”

“But I am not sure she can do it alone. She doesn’t have the experience.”

“Do you have someone who could help her?”

“Ben told me the other day that if I had some extra work his wife was interested. She was doing scripts but when the baby came she wanted to spend time with the baby. She is looking to be part time. I told him I didn’t have a position.”

“Go back to him. See if Martha will work with Julie. If they will, maybe we can get a few of the scripts up.”

“I think this is right.”