Writer/Director Richard Press is highly accomplished as a short filmmaker and attended Sundance’s January Screenwriting Lab to develop Virtual Love, his first feature film project.

At the lab, Press was one of 16 fellows who worked with an extraordinary group of creative advisors to develop their scripts while in residence at Sundance Village from January 9-14. Press was joined by screenwriters Zoe Leigh Hopkins, Abdi Nazemian and Micah Schraft, Orlando Montiel, Aditya Assarat, Emre Mirza, and Paxton Winters, Kazuo Ohno, Derek Nguyen, Stephen Guirgis, Kieran and Michele Mulroney, Goran Dukic, Dael Orlandersmith, and Blanka Zizka.

Artistic Director Doug McGrath led creative advisors, including Michael Almereyda, Tony Drazan, Todd Graff, Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal, Larry Konner, Walter Mosley, Frank Pierson, Tom Rickman, Howard Rodman, Susan Shilliday, Zachary Sklar, Dana Stevens, and Doug Wright.

Press offers the following account of his time at the lab.

I never know when or why an idea will strike. For me it happened one Saturday night curled up on the couch with The New Yorker.
I was reading an article called Virtual Love and I started to get an adrenaline rush. It was a great story. It was reading like a movie. I could see the scenes in my head. My mind started racing - “option, option, option, option” (which I did first thing Monday morning, but that’s another story).

Virtual Love is the true story of Tony Johnson, a charismatic 15 year-old whose struggle with AIDS and life of abuse brought him friends from all over the world - including the writer Paul Monette. Tony became one of the most important people in Paul’s life. But when Paul wanted to meet him, it seemed that maybe Tony was too good to be true, that maybe he didn’t even exist.

The story fascinated and touched me. Why did so many people need to believe in this boy? Why do so many still do? For me it was about need and faith and belief; a metaphor even, for religion itself.
It was a difficult story to adapt. How do you make a movie about someone who may not exist? I knew my first draft needed a lot work, so when Michelle Satter called to invite me to the January Screenwriters Lab, I was thrilled, hoping help was at hand.

And it was.

It's hard to describe how privileged I felt being handed from one advisor to the next, with so much respect and care; advisors who were incredibly insightful, funny, and fun, and also fully committed to helping me write the best possible script that I wanted to write.

My second draft now has “the breath of life” which my advisor Susan Shilliday said my first was lacking - and then helped me find. Gone is the narration which Frank Pierson said was (and I loved him for it) “not narration but nattering.” Michael Almereyda helped me find purely cinematic moments to tell the story and Doug Wright created a metaphor of such clarity for the entire story that it gave me a structure to hang everything on. And this was only in the first two days.

My protagonist now snaps into focus in a scene suggested by Tom Rickman and the characters have an emotional truth that evolved from my conversations with Todd Graff whose enthusiasm could not be contained as he acted out potential scenes and dialogue.

It’s hard to describe how privileged I felt being handed from one advisor to the next, with so much respect and care; advisors who were incredibly insightful, funny, and fun, and also fully committed to helping me write the best possible script that I wanted to write.

Days at the lab were also filled with presentations, screenings, and group discussions. I remember feeling that, as each day passed, I was literally being filled up and creatively nourished. I did reach a point when I almost couldn’t take any more in - but Michelle, who presides with Zen-like calm and care along with the rest of the folks at the lab, also knows when it’s time for a party or an hour on the slopes.

I could not have gotten to this draft alone. I wrote it with an ease and confidence that I can only attribute to the boot-camp / summer-camp / kumbaya utopia that is the lab.