Spec Script Sale: “Carnivale”

Stone Village buys comedy spec Carnivale from agent turned writer David Styne:

After spending 17 years at CAA and the last three at ICM, David Styne is leaving the agency business to focus on a new career as a screenwriter. This comes after he made a sale on the first (and only) script he has ever written. Scott Steindorff’s Stone Village bought Carnival!, a comedy that Styne wrote, based on a trip to Rio that he took four years ago with his high school buddies from Los Angeles.

The trip was a seminal experience for Styne and when he described it to ex-client Oliver Stone, the director told him there was a movie in it. Styne never had time to write it. When the trip’s Brazilian guide, Marco Cavalcante, was killed, Styne became determined to follow through and dedicate the movie to him.

Styne, who majored in English at UCLA and is the grandson of legendary songwriter Jule Styne, wrote the script on a legal pad last December. He put it in proper form after his wife bought him the computer program Final Draft for Christmas. He put a fake name on it — A. Tuttenroux — and after trying to get a Brazilian actor client on Steindorff’s series pilot Rio, the agent mentioned that he had a young client who wrote a script in that locale. The more Styne talked about his own affection for the place based on the trip he took there, Steindorff and his Stone Village colleague Dylan Russell became convinced that Styne wasn’t telling him everything.

David was one of my former agents at CAA. Congratulations to him!

By my count, that is the 41st spec script to sell in 2010.

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