When first generation Italian-American Carlo Cavagna got his screenwriting certificate from UCLA’s Professional Program he found balancing a day job and finding time to write a challenge.

He and his fellow writers lamented the chaos of LA with many a “wouldn’t it be great if we could get away and focus on nothing but writing for a few weeks?”

One day over espresso Carlo and a former professor sat reminiscing about favorite times in Italy. They hit on all the usual points: the amazing food, the delicious yet affordable wine, the idyllic towns, the culture rich with history and art, the peace it’s possible to find away from the American rat race. Suddenly it seemed startlingly obvious: they needed to put together a writing retreat in Italy.

From that seed, Michelangelo Screenwriting was born. Carlo would bring a vetted instructor to teach a group of enthusiastic writers from all over the world. Over two weeks, they’d get intensive one-on-one time with the instructor as well as daily group feedback and lecture sessions.

There would be a smattering of days off for sightseeing and fun but mostly the concept was to take time away from regular life to focus on bringing a new piece of writing into the world and polished for sale. The demand was instant.

The regular venue for the program is a remote, eight-hundred-year old stone farmhouse named Villa Michelangelo (hence the program name) that belongs to Carlo’s father’s best friend. It sits in a quiet valley east of Cortona on the Tuscan/Umbrian border.

This year the program is expanding its offerings to include sessions in the Orvieto convent that was a favorite travel stop of Carlo’s late uncle. “Hollywood is all about who you know. That’s even more true in Italy where family ties are paramount.

These places have been so welcoming to me and my groups because of my family. The villa only sleeps ten. This year we’ve got a writing team teaching so we’re offering sixteen student spots. The convent will be an amazing spot to let go and create,” explains Carlo.

Though it started off as a retreat for UCLA-trained writers, over the years Michelangelo Screenwriting has expanded to welcome Irish university students, German adventurers and Aussie television executives.

Carlo begins lining up the next year’s instructors in late summer/early fall. “We always go for people with a following. Writers that other writers will be really excited to work with,” Carlo says.

This year’s program brings the comedy writing team of Acker & Blacker (The Thrilling Adventure Hour, Supernatural) in to teach. For the first time, the business of launching a project and creating a brand will be a major feature of the program.

“It’s not enough anymore just to write a great spec script,” Carlo says. “You have to know how to market yourself.” After an incredibly successful Kickstarter campaign to expand their monthly stage show to a graphic novel, web series and concert film, Acker & Blacker are the guys in the know.

“Their ability to foster and reach a devoted following is clear. Writers need to understand how to do this now. We can’t just sit around hoping that an increasingly conservative major studio will risk millions on our idea.”

Of course it helps that Acker & Blacker’s regular players in the Thrilling Adventure Hour include comedian Paul F. Tompkins, and Paget Brewster (Criminal Minds), Autumn Reeser (Entourage, The Last Resort), and Busy Phillips (Cougar Town).

The show is also known for its guest stars, including frequent visits from such stars as Nathan Fillion (Castle, Firefly), Colin Hanks (The Guilt Trip, Dexter), John Hamm (Mad Men) and most recently John Krasinski (The Office), Emily Blunt (Looper) and Joseph Gordon Levitt (Looper). Available worldwide via podcast from Nerdist Industries, the show has been covered by NPR, the Los Angeles Times, and countless blogs.

Not only are Acker & Blacker gifted teachers but they are constantly working writers, having sold numerous pilots and sketches, and spent a stint on the writing staff of Supernatural. They’re on the front lines daily and they know how to make it through the machine. Most valuably, they know how to take their work straight to audiences when Hollywood isn’t taking notice.

That is invaluable knowledge for any writer to develop. In Hollywood it certainly is all about connections and if you can create a supportive and fun family along the way, you’re on the right track. Michelangelo Screenwriting aims to help writers do just that while adding a little dolce vita in along the way.

MICHELANGELO SCREENWRITING • SUMMER 2013 • ORVIETO, ITALY

Led by Ben Acker & Ben Blacker of the Thrilling Adventure Hour

Session 1: Sunday June 16 – Saturday June 29 Practical Screen and TV Writing

Session 2: Sunday June 30 – Saturday July 6 Intensive Screen and Television Writing

Twitter: @Michel_write

Visit www.MichelangeloScreenwriting.com for more info or to apply for one of the 16 spots.

At UCLA I always had my students do a poster for their movie. The image and logline was to be the distilled essence of their screenplay. I recently came across a blog post by Edan Leucki about another kind of assignment for the same purpose. This assignment was for a rewrite class where writers were stuck.

Go wild, I said.  Do whatever it takes, to keep writing this thing.

Melissa came to class with these…boxes.

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They were cardboard jewelry gift boxes, and there were three of them, one inside the next. The first bore the title of her novel, A Tiny Upward Shove, on its face. The inside of this box contained a smaller box, decorated with a monkey (“Because…duh,” Melissa said, or something like it), and a piece of paper, which described her book’s premise.

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Inside the monkey box was an even smaller box, this one decorated with a plastic heart. On the inside of the monkey box, Melissa had written a shorter version of the novel description, distilled from the notes on the piece of paper.  The smallest box — we all leaned forward to see — was empty, except Melissa had written the book’s premise on its inside.

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She’d distilled it to a single sentence: “Chronicles the life of a woman who was separated from her bipolar mother and placed into foster care at 15.”

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She told us she’d been struggling with how to describe her book to people who asked about it. This project forced her to find the book’s main idea, its essence.  It ended up thrilling everyone in the room.

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The boxes were funny, and strange, and beautiful, and important. I keep imagining Melissa struggling to write in the margins of the smallest box, and it moves me. Making this project wasn’t novel writing, of course, but it enabled Melissa to return to her book with a fresh perspective. It helped her to keep going. That’s what we’re after, isn’t it?

Okay, so here’s the homework part of this post:  Make … something as unwriterly as possible. No outlines, no character sketches. Instead, do something surprising and weird and beautiful and fun; the only requirement is that it provides you with a new outlook on your work, and gets you pumped to write.

It’s no secret that every script that makes it to the screen gets rewritten multiple times.  In an informal poll I took at a WGA conference on rewriting, most screenwriters (among them Oscar, Emmy, and Golden Globe winners) said it took an average of 25-30 drafts before the script reached the stage floor.  So, you know you have some work ahead of you after you reach that glorious moment when you first type FADE OUT.

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But then what?  There are few courses in rewriting and fewer books (Yes, I do have one – “REWRITE, A Step-by-Step Guide to Strengthen Structure, Characters, and Drama in Your Screenplay,” but we’re not talking about that here.) on how to approach this sometimes daunting task.  You might have the guidance of your trusted advisors or your writing group when it comes to what’s wrong, but who do you turn to to figure out how to fix that?  Or even how to go about fixing that?

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That’s why I created the residential workshops I’ve been giving in Europe for the past few years.  Here’s how it works.  Eight writers who have completed at least a year in the UCLA Professional Program for Screenwriting or the MFA in Screenwriting program, or have reached an equivalent level in their writing, gather in a villa (yes, a real villa) with me in a remote part of a friendly host country.

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The Villa There we live and work for two weeks, most meals provided, and we dig into their screenplays and figure out what to do about them.  We meet for three hours a day in a seminar format, we talk at meals, we have informal seminars during long walks in the countryside, and I meet one on one with everyone in “office hours.”

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In my way of looking at things, writers usually lose their way from first draft to rewrite because they don’t know their character well enough or their structure needs strengthening.  The first thing we do, then, is focus on the character’s flaw.  From the flaw comes the necessity for change.  From the necessity for change come the goals – the inner and the outer – that drive the story.  So we must know the character inside and out so that we know how that character must change and what he or she must do to achieve his or her goals.

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Then we take a look at the overall story in its most basic form – what I call the seven points of the story.  For the seminar, we send these story points out to each other before we arrive in Europe (this year it’s Spain, last year it was Italy) so that we can discuss them during the first seminar meeting.

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The seven points all have something to do with the flaw – in the ordinary life (1) we see the flaw and how it affects the person’s life – the necessity for change; in the inciting incident (2) we see something happen that will eventually cause the protagonist to want to change now; at the end of act one (3), we learn of the goal and plan to bring about that change; at the midpoint (4), the character shows us a change in that goal as well as a realization of his flaw; at the low point (5), we see the character as far from that goal as possible; in the final challenge (6) we see the character overcome his flaw and reach his/her goal; and in (7) the return to the now changed forever normal life, we see the character enjoy the fruits of his/her labor in the new life.

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You can see how the whole story is flaw and goal oriented, but sometimes, in the original writing process, you lose track of that.  Following up on clarifying these essential ideas, we write a new beatsheet and discuss it at length in seminar, private meetings, walks, trips to town, whenever.  We’re always talking about food (we have a cook or a special deal with a local restaurant), movies, or our scripts.  We’re unhindered by interruption from work, friends and family calling (though there is cell reception), or annoying phone solicitors.  We do have wi-fi this year, but it will be on a limited basis.

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As the first week progresses, the story blooms in sometimes unpredictable ways, but always improves.  Then we begin rewriting scenes, adding new scenes, taking away old scenes that don’t move the story or have been superseded by new directions in the story.  This is a very exciting time as we read portions of new work in the seminars so we can hear if the dialogue works in the mouth and feel the pacing of the scene.  We also work on scene structure and scene dynamics so that writers can get the best out of their pages.

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Did I mention that we get two days off during the two weeks so that people can travel, rest, write, whatever they want to do?  This year we’ll be within an hour’s train ride from Barcelona, forty-five minutes by car to the beach, and ten minutes from Gerona, a lovely old city dating from the middle ages.  Rewrite Retreat in Spain.

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Then it’s back to work.  We usually schedule things so that both night and morning writers can get their work done in time for all to read it before the afternoon session.  I have found that when all eight (plus me) participants in a seminar are familiar with everyone’s work, great things can come of the ping-ponging of ideas.  I’ve found seminar participants to be very generous with their thoughts and very supportive both in and out of the workshops.  It’s one of the things I nurture as much as possible because, while I do contribute my own ideas, I’ve found that nine people working on the same story together can come up with things that nine people working separately cannot.  It’s one of the great things about the workshop.

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And did I mention the food?  Spain has some of the best seafood in the world, and we’ll also be in the middle of their cava region – cava is what they call their sparkling wine, very much on a par with Champagne in my book.

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By the end of the workshop you can have, with diligence, a completed draft or, at the very least, a very good roadmap to your next draft.  You will also have had a heady creative experience with your peers (which is why there are always several people repeating from the year before).  And, surprisingly, little change in your weight since anything you may have added from the food is usually subtracted by the long walks after lunch and dinner.

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For more information, visit the site http://rewritementor.com/retreats/spain.html or contact me directly at [email protected].

Dr. Howard Suber, author of The Power of Film, says that the majority of all great films could be titled “Trapped.”  Here he talks on a panel at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum about the enduring interest in Holocaust films, illustrating that theme:

The treatment of the Holocaust in film dates back to the 1950s when Judgment at Nuremberg and the Diary of Anne Frank earned 21 Oscar nominations between them. But today, 65 years after the end of the war, the number of films seems greater than ever. This year, among the 65 films submitted for Oscar consideration in the foreign language category, 8 were related to the Holocaust or World War II. The question, of course, is why?

Responding to that question, Meyer Gottlieb, president of Samuel Goldwyn Films and a child survivor, said “The Holocaust has 6 million compelling stories and Hollywood is always desperate for a good story. It is only the media that think the public is tired of the subject.”

Howard Suber, a UCLA film professor, believes that all Holocaust films are variations on the world’s greatest storyline. A character is trapped in a situation and the question is will he get out? Professor Suber has said, “the moment a Nazi storm trooper or a swastika appears on the screen, the audience knows a survival story is coming. That story always works — from baby Moses floating down the Nile, and Joseph and his brothers to Robinson Crusoe and the TV survivor series.”

Clearly the Holocaust is a powerful setting for exploring universal themes about human nature — evil, apathy, heroism, guilt and redemption. And maybe by making and by watching these films, we, as a society and as individuals, find ways of confronting, or perhaps more importantly not confronting , our innermost anxieties — our own potential for evil, our tendencies to apathy, our longing for heroism, our sense of guilt and our need for redemption.

Towards the end of The Reader, the protagonist, masterfully played by Mr. Fiennes, confronts a Holocaust survivor who tells him, “people ask me all the time what I learned in the camps. Go to the theater if you want catharsis. Go to literature. Don’t go the camps. Nothing comes out of the camps.”

In one sense, that may be true. But at least one thing that came out of the camps was the human need to keep telling the story of the camps, whether through history, novels, art, theater, film, or even museums.

Are there too many Holocaust films? Maybe the better question is what is the role of film in transmitting history, communicating common values, helping us understand what we don’t know, and in asking us to confront who we are and who we can be.

Dr. Howard Suber, author of The Power of Film, teaches an extraordinary class on strategy, storytelling and strategic thinking at UCLA in the MFA Producers Program.  During his course, he has an on-going email conversation with students present and past on the key topics of the class.  We had dinner the other night and discussed the importance of online entertainment.  He is a bit more of a skeptic than I am– I am a true believer, I admit it.

In his class emails he talks about the truism “it’s not what you know, but who you know” which reflects the nepotism, name dropping and almighty rolodex or contact list in Hollywood.  He turns this notion on its head and says the more important thing is “who knows you.”  In his class, Dr. Suber emphasizes the importance of having credibility and a stellar reputation.  In my email to him, printed below. I reference his more accurate and useful truism and apply it to my experience and the importance of “being watched” in the context of making a deal or getting a job in the entertainment industry and how New Media affords you the best platform.

Dear Howard–

For several years, I have been a consultant for FreMantle Media, one of the leading worldwide media companies. I’ve met and worked with their executives, producers and writers across Europe and Australia. I recently started developing my own online series with them.  The reason I got my deal was management had an opportunity to watch me work.   They knew my work ethic, how I relate to their business and what my general approach to drama development was.  They watched and knew me personally.

I think “being watched” is how any one gets any deal or any assignment in this business.  It absolutely goes back to the principle you articulate about “who knows you.”  No one is going to risk any kind of a substantial budget on someone they don’t know on some level.  Spec scripts used to be the way people got to watch and get to know a new writer.  But those days are pretty much gone.  Budgets are too high and most everything is an adaption, a franchise property or a remake.  There are plenty of better known writers ahead of a newbie.  What a newbie brings to the table is a new eye, a fresh take and original ideas– not easily financed any more (with the rare exception).  Then there is the nightmare of distribution even if you do get financed.

That is why I believe online comedy and drama is the future for talent.  The barrier to entry is low.  Productions values can be minimal because the screen is small.  What makes a series successful is really clever, interesting and engaging writing.  The online series is very much a writer’s showcase.  All you really need is a distinctive voice. Distribution is equally available to everyone.

To prove how clever writing emerges in even the most minimal format– take a look at the article below from THR:

“Twitter sensation Shit My Dad Says is headed to television.  CBS has picked up a comedy project based on the Twitter account, which has enlisted more than 700,000 followers since launching in August and has made its creator, Justin Halpern, an Internet star.”

“Will & Grace” creators David Kohan and Max Mutchnick are on board to executive produce and supervise the writing for the multicamera family comedy, which Halpern will co-pen with Patrick Schumacker. Halpern and Schumacker will also co-exec produce the Warner Bros. TV-produced project, which has received a script commitment.  The comedy’s title will change if it gets on the air.”

“Halpern, 29, had moved back in with his parents in San Diego, and on Aug. 3 he launched “Shit My Dad Says,” a Twitter feed featuring colorful — often profane — comments and pearls of wisdom made by his 73-year-old father during their daily conversations.”

Full article is here:  Shit My Dad Says

So Justin Halpern got a deal based on 140 character Tweet depictions of his dad.  He translated his ear for dialogue and sense of humor into a running comedy.  The Powers That Be watched him do it.  Believe me.  They are watching everywhere!  There are staff people whose only job is to troll the Internet for new talent.  If you are talented enough to develop a following they will find you– guaranteed.

Don’t forget Juno scribe Diablo Cody first got noticed for her blog about being a stripper among other things.

From her Wikipedia page:

“Cody began a parody of a weblog called Red Secretary, detailing the (fictional) exploits of a secretary living in Belarus. The events were thinly–veiled allegories for events that happened in Cody’s real life, but told from the perspective of a disgruntled, English–idiom–challenged Eastern Bloc girl.  Cody’s first bona fide blog appeared under the nickname Darling Girl after Cody had moved from Chicago to Minneapolis, Minnesota.”

“Then, Cody signed up for amateur night at a Minneapolis strip club called the Skyway Lounge. Enjoying the experience, she eventually quit her day job and took up stripping full-time.  Based on the popularity of Pussy Ranch (her City Pages Newspaper blog) received, she was able to secure a publishing contract with Gotham Books. At the age of 24, Cody wrote her memoir Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper.”

As another site says:  “she gonzo-blogged about the local sex industry until people with money began to notice. ”

Cody wasn’t the overnight success everyone depicted– she put in long hours developing a distinctive voice that got noticed online.  She was being watched until they knew her well enough to invest in her.

Last but not least, the WGA has just admitted its first member for writing a self-financed online series– her name is Ruth Livier.  Her Writers Guild membership is based entirely on her online credits.  Livier is a 30+ actress who feared the roles were dwindling for her age range and for her ethnicity.  Here is the story and a whole Guild issue about writing online series in general in  WGA Written By Magazine

Here is what Livier has to say about creating her series:

“In the entertainment community there is typecasting. The ‘powers that be’ don’t really know what to do with you. In my case I am not dark enough to fit their Latina stereotype and not white enough to be white. That’s why writing and producing for New Media is such a fantastic option. It affords us the opportunities that traditional media hasn’t. Let’s be real, the opportunities to break in through ‘traditional’ channels are slim. Like my friend Dennis Leoni says, “The oldest form of affirmative action is the ‘Good Ol’ Boy’ network.” And he is right. Try breaking through that! If you are not a part of the GOB network, mainstream media is super expensive. I don’t know about other Hispanic Americans with similar upbringings to mine, but rich relatives do not abound. No one has the private money to fund theatrical projects. I am not complaining. I’m grateful for my life experience.

I’m just saying New Media, the vehicle we are now using for Ylse, is a fantastic resource and a wonderful opportunity for us. We have immediate and unaltered access to a world audience and are circumventing traditional media platforms which are controlled by a small few.”

Read the full article in Hispanic Tips: News and Ideas

As the old foundations of Media Empires crumble there is plenty of opportunity for talent willing to think and create in a new way.  This is the good news in the Old Media Armageddon.  My advice is don’t waste your time on a dying paradigm that’s more interested in excluding you than including you.  This is a tremendous time to be a pioneer and create new ways to tell stories.  As Gary Carter says in his lecture on Storytelling in the Digital Age,  Old Media is based on exclusion (scarcity) and New Media is based on inclusion (abundance).   I know which one excites me.

There is a well known story that goes something like this……. Dan was coming to the end of a long overseas business trip that had seen him visit a number of different cities and countries. He was looking for a gift to take home for his young son and came across a rather unique puzzle that had a map of the world on the front side with the option to have your one of your own pictures printed on the back. As he had a recent family photo with him, this was perfect. He felt this would be a fun gift that would give his son some fun putting the puzzle together while at the same time show him where he had travelled.

When he got home he gave his son the gift, but since his son was quite young he said, “Son, let me help you put the puzzle together first to show you what the world looks like and then you can try.” To his surprise the world puzzle was far more difficult than he thought because all the pieces, especially the seas and the skies, looked the same. Eventually he gave up and said, “Son, why don’t you have a go at it yourself. “

His son took a few minutes to think about it and decided to turn the pieces over and complete the family photo picture instead. In no time at all he had the whole puzzle put together. He turned it back over to show the whole world and took it back to show his dad and innocently said, “See, Dad, if you take care of all the people, the world will take care of itself!”

This is so relevant and applicable to screenwriting.  If you understand each of the characters in your script on a deep emotional level the plot will take care of itself.  Audiences are most interested in characters and less so in circumstance or situations.  One of my colleagues at UCLA once reminded a class– the world may be about to end by threat of meteor, plague, natural disaster or war and what the audience is really invested in is the love story between the daring young hero and the intrepid young heroine.  Take care of the people and the world (and plot) will take care of itself!   To learn more about how to pull plot from character take a look at the Character Map information and eBook