STEWART STERN January 7th, 1999 To Whom It May Concern:   As a Creative Advisor to the Writing Fellows at the Sundance Institute's Screenwriter Lab in June, 1998, I had the pleasure of reading Cory McAbee's screenplay, American Astronaut, and of working with him privately in an extended tutorial.   I should mention that the scripts we are asked to help young writers with at Sundance have gone through an exhaustive screening process before they are given to us; out of more than a thousand candidates who submit their scripts, only about a dozen Fellows are selected to come to the Lab.   I found Cory's writing to be immensely visceral, poetic, and moving. His characters still haunt me, and the visual landscapes of the marvelous worlds that his writing conjures up are ones I revisit with pleasure in my mind. He has a very firm belief in his story's tone and in what he means it to say, and our session together was a passionate one and very challenging for me, and I hope for him as well.   With kind regards,   Sincerely, Stewart Stern