Crowds at Sundance Film Festival screening venues are notoriously rowdy but nothing compares to the chaos of the Hollywood Life House. Part discotheque (the venue is home to nightly parties), product placement central (watch the stars choose from a vast selection of giveaways) and corporate-sponsored interview rooms, the two-level Park City, Utah storefront is a busy world onto itself.

 

Fighting for a quiet spot with filmmakers and casts from a handful of other Sundance movies is writer/director Jay DiPietro, who has come to the independent film fest in support of his NY romance "Peter and Vandy."

 

After success as a playwright, DiPietro is also at Sundance launching a new chapter in his creative career. An off-Broadway hit that enjoyed a four-month run at New York's Paradise Theater Company in 2002, DiPietro adapts his play Peter and Vandy for his first outing as a feature filmmaker.

 

Through a series of flashbacks, twenty-something New Yorkers Peter (Jason Ritter) and Vandy (Jess Weixler) go out on dates, move in together, part ways and reunite with the memories of good times as well as heartbreak behind them.

 

The romance genre is a crowded field but "Peter and Vandy" separates itself from the pack by showing the unhappy moments as much as the good times.

 

DiPietro finds a sofa near the front entrance of the Hollywood Life storefront, one large enough for Weixler, Ritter and himself. I sit atop a nearby case of Heineken beer. We make do.

 

Asked about the challenges of revisiting old material, DiPietro quickly follows with a list of things he found fresh about making a movie of "Peter and Vandy."

 

"The play I wrote, directed, acted and built the sets," DiPietro says. "So I am familiar with the core of the story. The play is two people in the living room the entire time and this has a number of more characters and different locations and that's very fresh. Also, the main thread from the play is everything that's important about a couple you learn from these moments when they're not talking about it - if that makes sense to you. It's a feeling. It's a feeling that I'm yelling at you for the way you put the dishes in the dishwasher but you know where this is really coming from."

 

Jess Weixler stars in the role created on-stage by Monique Vukovic and her performance shines - especially in the film's tense moments. Weixler is fast becoming something of an indie pin up queen thanks to starring roles in the teen horror film "Teeth" and "Peter and Vandy."

"In a lot of stories, time has an effect on people and this story is about how time has an effect on love," Weixler says, leaning back on the sofa. "It makes it a very mature love story. We all have our own relationships to love or how we deal with the people that you love. You're always bringing yourself to the role. There's no way to leave yourself out of it. But a lot of it is what happens with the person you are acting with and I was lucky I had Jason."

 

Jason Ritter appears in DiPietro's role but insists he was never nervous about playing the character Peter in front of the man who created it. Instead, Ritter says he closely followed DiPietro's direction; balancing Peter's negative qualities as much as the positive.

"I like that at various points in the movie you think we should be together and then you think we shouldn't be together," Ritter adds. "That's a fun dynamic. I've looked at different couples and judged them or said, wow, what a great couple, or watch a pair at a restaurant and said, thnak god I'm not in a relationship like that!"

 

Weixler and Ritter crack up frequently during the afternoon interview. Like the couple in his movie, they frequently seem like a good fit. They also admit their good fortune in meeting DiPietro and collaborating on a movie romance more realistic than most.

 

"A lot of films end with the people getting together and all of the hope of that or with them breaking up," Ritter says with enthusiasm. "This is different."

 

"Most movies are about the extremes of what loving relationships are," Weixler interjects, finishing off her co-star's sentence like a real-life couple. "We're about the in-between. How do you deal with things that aren't highs or lows? That's what really breaks you."

 

For DiPietro, he's satisfied that his courage to tweak his popular play and make it into a movie has paid off.

 

Peter and Vandy, the movie, also starts a new chapter for DiPietro who can discuss the challenges of independent moviemaking with the same authority he can talk about the risks of off-Broadway theater.

 

Of course, when the audience reacts with enthusiasm, it's all worth it.

 

"I remember doing the play and a 50-year-old couple came up and said to me, that was us! How did u do that? Then, a pair of 25-year-olds came and told me that the play was so like them. That's what I'm hoping for; that people see themselves in the story."