Seeking A Friend at the End of the WorldLorene Scafaria is one of those talents for whom the forward slash (/) was invented. Starting out as an actress who appeared in films such as The Nines, Mayhem Motel and several shorts before getting one of her own screenplays made into a film with Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist. All this and she still makes time to write songs for films like Whip It and make music with her band The Shortcoats. This year saw her make her directorial debut with Seeking a Friend For The End of The World which came out in a crowded summer filled with superheroes and as a result went by fairly unnoticed which makes it one of the years hidden gems. Moving and poignant it is a film well worth seeking out now it’s on DVD.

I had a chance to speak with Lorene about the film recently which made for an interesting and somewhat enlightening chat….

**Warning – Spoilers follow for Seeking a Friend for the End of the World**

HeyUGuys: What was the inspiration behind making a film about the end of the world?

Lorene Scafaria: I guess mostly I was excited about exploring time more than anything as something that changes our relationships and how it affects you when you first meet someone. Also what might happen if you were to meet someone under certain circumstances when ‘forever’ is off the table. So I was excited about that and then thinking about the end of the world in that context and what different kinds of people might react like, so taking that end of the world movie construct and mashing it up with the relationship movie and doing it in the most intimate way. That was really exciting because I always loved end of the world movies and I like high stakes and all of that (laughs) so I thought of taking that mentality and putting it in a smaller film about the people on the ground when no one is trying to save the world and that was what was really inspiring to me.

When we first saw the trailer for the film it seemed to suggest a quirky comedy about the end of the world and it’s quite surprising when it takes a serious turn in the second half and gets quite weighty. Was it the intention to take audiences by surprise and did you have any control over the marketing at all?

I had no control over the marketing, I feel bad for people who go into it thinking that this is going to lighten their mood (laughs) to watch a comedy with Steve Carell in it when that’s not the kind of movie we made. I’m sure the marketing people were excited to promote that part of the film I guess that shows the more comedic side. I think in hiding some of what is revealed later in the film, to me I was worried people would walk out disappointed with the emotions that they were put through and thinking that the film didn’t know what it wanted to be. To me the movie that you see was always in the script on paper and was always intended to move strangely and take you by surprise and I think that is hard to show in a trailer for a film that isn’t one genre or moving in one direction. I think part of that is due to the fact that the relationship between the two characters unfolds so slowly and gradually in this truncated amount of time and the connection that they make takes you by surprise. So I’m not sure that anyone wanted to reveal the love story part of it and that made it hard to showthe tone of the film and how it moves. I always thought the humour at the start of the film was so dark anyway (laughs) cutting it to happy music makes it seem like a comedy but there were such heavy undertones to what they are talking about all the time so I never saw it as that different from beginning to end. So I think people going in expecting a comedy featuring Steve Carell who has been in comedies they have seen before will certainly be surprised.

 

Keira Knightley isn’t really someone you expect to see in a film like this so how did you convince her to come on board?

I was thinking of people who would have really good chemistry with Steve because he was on board first and I never imagined getting someone like Keira which was kind of out there but she read the script and really responded to the material and we talked on the phone and she told me she had read the script and then gone out to dinner with friends and they were talking all night about what they would do at the end of the world and they all decided that they would go out dancing all night so they all did that! (laughs) and I thought that was a very Penny esque response to the question and I just loved that that was how she and her friends took to the story and ran with it. We spoke about everything, our families, our mothers and really hit it off but I didn’t get to meet her until two days before we started filming and that was the first time I got the two of them together and had a read through and I was just so excited because that brilliant of an actress is going to have timing even if they have never been thrown into a comedy before and she obviously has so much depth to her and is able to convey such emotion so seeing them together and playing off each other was really exciting. I think Penny is a really complex character and I think it’s really easy to put her into a specific box and I was excited to see what this person might be like in real life and have certain opinions of like ‘isn’t she optimistic’ or ‘annoyingly optimistic’ and then you drag that person through the mud sort of and learn a lot more about them. Those were the sort of scenes we did with Keira where I was really excited about her performance because I loved seeing her out of the corset and I love seeing her in a modern day film playing this kind of flighty character but then when you get to the heart of the matter and she starts to open up I think that’s where you see the softer side of this character and of Keira and I couldn’t believe we got them both.

On paper you see the pairing of Steve Carell and Keira Knightley and you wouldn’t think it would work but when they are together it really does work and they have great chemistry. What made you think they would work together and were you worried in case it didn’t?

I think that part of the point is that they are an odd couple and they are two people who would have been passing each other in the hall and not paying each other any attention until something like this takes place. Part of the difficulty was that I wanted it to be two people who realistically would never have met in that way and are not running in the same circles or have anything in common and yet are living in the same building and so I wanted to start from a place like that and hope that these two people would find that kind of chemistry. I guess I always thought Carell is such a still actor and incredibly subtle and I kept just picturing little hummingbirds flying around him and then she just brought that energy to it and the two of them had incredible chemistry and I think it was a lot of mutual respect and admiration for each other and the idea that the two of them are such different actors from different places which made them respect each other more and they could put each other at ease working outside of their usual comfort zone. I know Keira said something like ‘He’s funny but he’s not scary funny’ (laughs) like he isn’t intimidatingly funny so that you don’t want to open your mouth around him and he is someone you want to spend time with. When Keira left, because we filmed all her stuff first and then went back and filmed all of Dodge’s alone time afterwards and he (Carell) said ‘I really miss her’ because the two of them hit it off in such a way because it is an unlikely pair that when they get together you realise how much they have in common with each other. Keira said something one time like ‘you can fake a love scene but you can’t fake friendship’ as that is a harder thing to do and I thought that was kind of beautiful that they did have this flowering friendship as filming went on and I think it shows.

Steve Carell is a very versatile actor but it feels like it’s only recently that we are getting an idea of what he can really do. Was he who you imagined in the role when writing?

He was when I was writing the script because when I was writing I didn’t really have any idea of how old any of the characters were. Carell was someone I always had in mind and I feel like ive been writing this character for a long time and I feel like I know this guy and sort of always enjoyed stories about people who are in need of an awakening, so it felt like I had written stories about this guy for like nine years (laughs) and always pictured Steve Carell in them so even though I had never met him or knew him he was always the embodiment of this character. He’s obviously s brilliant at comedy and I can’t wait to see Anchorman 2 (laughs) but I have always found him to be so subtle and still and capable of doing so much with a look and I really think he shines as Michael Scott in The Office and that character was incredibly complex actually and you can see an entire range of emotions in a moment with him and it was very transparent which is very difficult to do with a great comedic talent. I always saw him as this dramatic actor trapped in a comedic body and it’s hard for him to not be funny of course he has that scene where he screams at the kids kissing in the park and it was tragic to me but it’s still Steve Carell making a sound and he really immersed himself in the character and very much related to him which I think is interesting because you don’t imagine someone like that being so guarded and I think that was what he responded to. I loved him in Crazy, Stupid Love and Dan in Real Life and films like that where he was expressing more of a range of emotions. He was someone I fantasised would take the role and once he came on board it legitimised the whole project and people wanted to work with him.

You have a number of well-known people in smaller but pivotal roles in the film like Martin Sheen, Rob Corrdry, Gillian Jacobs and Patton Oswalt. How did you convince them all to come on board?

It wasn’t money (laughs). We were lucky and unlucky that we had to shoot in Los Angeles, unlucky because I wanted the movie to have more of an East Coast scope as there are only so many streets you can drive down that doesn’t have palm trees and I was desperate for a vague East Coast. We filmed out here which made it easier to get great actors come out for a day or three at most for all of the cameos. Everybody came from a different place, we had a table read five months before we started casting and William Petersen who played the trucker was there and Adam Brody who plays Owen, the two of them were probably the first two cast based on the table read without knowing who else would be in it. Rob Corrdry was someone who I have known for some years but I wasn’t sure if he would be able to play the part or if Dodge would be age appropriate. I think everyone was excited about the script and exploring the same themes and story. Rob I know was desperate to play that exact character who I wrote specifically for him in the hopes it would be him. People like Connie Britton and Melanie Lynskey were my first choices but I never dreamed I would get them to come out and play such tiny parts. Patton (Oswalt) was the same way he read the script and he came out and did one night with this one speech and we did four super long takes of letting him go off the rails and say whatever he likes and when he was done he was like ‘Ah I needed that’ (laughs). Once Steve Carell was on board and Keira was on board it made the project bigger than it really was. Martin Sheen was a tougher sell obviously to try and get someone like that to come out and we met up and he asked that I re-write the part a little bit because it was always a little underwritten because I didn’t want that scene to be grown men fighting and yet I wanted this character to have as much closure as possible in two and a half minutes. So it was something we worked on once we had someone like Martin Sheen because I wanted to fill it out a little more even though I still wanted the scene to be minimal. There are certain things where you come to the end and it’s not even about forgiveness anymore just forgetting and not wanting to drag things through the mud but wanting to hear the one thing you need to hear to let go. The gesture that the father makes is so much more of a thing than any words that they could say to each other. Sheen was incredible though, he was the nicest man he would sit with the crew for lunch and he learned how to play the harmonica and took a flying lesson although he didn’t need to (laughs) he was just the nicest guy. I’m not sure if he knew Keira’s entire body of work he just though she was this sweet little girl and we were like ’Its Keira Knightley!’ but he really was an incredible presence and made it so fun for everyone. I think his presence on set was like his presence in the film where people were intimidated and it’s immediately washed away by this wonderful personality.

Something I took away from the film was that the whole male standby we have of ‘The One who got away’ is nonsense when compared to what is there in front of you in the present. Is this something that you wanted to bring out in the script or did it just happen by accident?

I think that men do dwell on the past a lot and I think that women do look to the future more and that’s a difficult thing for men and women to match up on and live in the present with each other. I think men have a greater sense of nostalgia actually which is sweet but I think it just comes from craving your glory days and the person who was with you at the time when you felt like your best self. It’s an easy thing for anyone to do really but I think for men its part of their struggle which is letting go of their past and the one who got away and their old self. I loved exploring that and with this limited amount of time someone would still feel drawn to that like anybody would when faced with their own mortality, they would look back and chase the past especially because it wouldn’t seem like anything new would come along which comes with this kind of hopelessness when faced with the end so why not look for the thing that made you happiest. I remember when 9/11 happened I had moved from New York to California and had been here a week and I wasn’t going to get on a plane to fly home anytime soon and I immediately called my ex-boyfriend who lived nearby, I fell into the same trap of chasing the past because you don’t know what else to do in that moment other than look for what is familiar and comfortable. I do think that men tend to do that more and I think that is part of getting more comfortable as you get older and eventually you can mellow out but the idea that it’s all about ‘the first girl you ever kissed’ (laughs) is a little exhausting. I wanted to point that out and talk about and break it by showing that you can actually let go of your past and live in the moment and look ahead.

There are some very subtle and terrifying things in your depiction of the end of the world, were you tempted to put in any big effects sequences or anything?

No I don’t even know that our budget could have handled it! I never wanted to see the asteroid or get a glimpse of it, to me the sound in Jaws is more terrifying than seeing the shark itself and so I never really wanted to see it and just feel it and know it was coming but also forget about it so that the characters could get to know each other without thinking about their impending doom! I liked exploring the darker sides of things like the suicides and the hitman to help with that and the riot and all of that. I wanted to show that there is a darkness to humanity that would certainly emerge and it’s not just people going about their business but I never wanted any CGI and for the last scene I wanted it to be from their perspective and seen through their eyes and from their point of view,

Music is a big part of this film as well as Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist and you are in a band yourself so music is clearly a big part of your life. Do you have any ambitions to make a musical at some point or a musical biopic?

Yeah I was writing Bye Bye Birdy for a little while for Sony and then working on my own musical which will be a long process. Certainly music is important to me but I don’t feel like a ‘music head’ just a music lover and I don’t feel like I know everything about it and I have so much to learn about being a musician and I’m always turned on to new bands by friends of mine and its hugely important to me but just seemed really important to the story of what people would be consuming at the end of the world, would you be watching your favourite movies or old TV shows? And for some reason food and music seem like these universal things that you can share with people of any culture so I loved the idea that songs are like memories for people and you would be wanting to hear your favourite song. So music inspires so much more emotion than other things that it just felt like it was important to the story as well and I loved the idea that this character who again stepped out of another movie carrying her records might be a bit of a fool or a hipster or whatever but her records might be part of her and represent her family and the idea that she is about preservation, making things last and that someone would care that much to love the things around that and what it is to love something like that. A record collection is so personal and something that nowadays is so easy to share with other people but when you go back in time a little bit and it’s about putting a needle on a record and it sounds so much like hearing something for the first time. I’m not that cool, I don’t have a vinyl collection or anything but I appreciate the idea that you collect these memories over time and pick your favourites in the last moments. I was raised on dusty, classic rock more than anything so was excited to include the songs what should have been in Dodges collection but were more in Penny’s.

What do you have coming up next?

I’m writing a script about my mother! If she lets me do it, I’m writing what started as a noir film where the main character is based on my mother so we’ll see what it turns into if anyone lets me make it.

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World is out now on Blu-ray and DVD.