MICHELANGELO SCREENWRITING PROGRAM

What?!? Two weeks in a Tuscan villa with meals and I get to rewrite my script with popular and amazing UCLA professor Paul Chitlik? Yes!

This intensive course*, suggested by students in Paul Chitlik's UCLA Professional Program in Screenwriting rewrite class last summer, is an opportunity to get away from the distractions of life in LA — the cellphones, the relatives asking for money, and the studios clamoring for your scripts. In this amazing villa near Cortona, Italy, you'll be able to focus in a way you haven't since they took you off Ritalin.

Yes, there will be intensive seminars, and yes, you'll write your ass off, but there will also be two meals a day (lunch and dinner), Monday-Friday, in a well equipped villa miles away from a big city, but close enough to the internet that you won't jones for it too much. You'll have a three hour a day seminar and daily office hours for major script issues. You'll also be writing like a Red Bull junkie, and there are plenty of private places (including your room) in and around the villa to do so.

Should you bring your significant other? Cheap vacation for two, granted, but make sure your partner is aware that most of your spare time you'll be writing, not driving from one medieval village to another. Have that talk before you sign up, because it's going to be intense.

*Please note that this course has no affiliation with UCLA, nor does it carry course credit. You do this for the experience only, not the credit.