Robert Hurley, a Los Angeles-based screenwriter of Notes from the New World, based on Dostoevsky Notes from the Underground, has vanished shortly after reporting harassment from unidentified people.

Robert Hurley, 27, a Culver City native and one time computer engineer, has not been heard from since late February, after many attempts to contact him via phone calls, e-mails, and visits to his home in Los Angeles. The latest film based on his screenplay, 'Notes from the New World', tells a modern day version of Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky's 'Notes from the Underground', complete with Russian mafia gangsters and a dangerous call girl, and evidence suggests Hurley's disappearance is due to real life characters who inspired the script. Abandoning his job at Teletech Technology, Hurley hooked up with Vitaly Sumin, a fellow screenwriter from New Playwrights Foundation after a chance meeting and Hurley went back to his first love: writing. Vitaly, a Russian native and creator of the film company VM Productions, took a shine to Hurley and looked over a very rough draft of the script for ' 'Notes from the New World'. They visited Sumin's hometown of St. Petersburg to get a better feel for the language, people and culture, and Hurley's rough draft took shape with Sumin finishing the script. In Hurley's quest for authenticity for the character in the story, he met a call girl - which the main character in 'Notes' does as well - via a contact to an agency suggested by Sumin. Apparently, however, Hurley became a little too smitten with the girl - Natalya - and became entangled in her dealings with members of the Russian mafia.—Vitaly Sumin