Lorene Scafaria

Biography

Lorene Scafaria is an American screenwriter, playwright, actor and singer best known for her work on the 2008 film "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist". Scafaria was born and raised in Holmdel, New Jersey, where she first became interested in writing when she would write up a report on a completely fake book once a month to win Pizza Hut gift certificates from her school. She began to take an interest in storytelling and had written and produced her first play in Red Bank, New Jersey by the ag...

Lorene Scafaria is an American screenwriter, playwright, actor and singer best known for her work on the 2008 film "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist".

Scafaria was born and raised in Holmdel, New Jersey, where she first became interested in writing when she would write up a report on a completely fake book once a month to win Pizza Hut gift certificates from her school. She began to take an interest in storytelling and had written and produced her first play in Red Bank, New Jersey by the age of seventeen. She attended Lafayette College in Pennsylvania for a year before switching to New Jersey's Montclair State University when she could no longer afford Lafayette's tuition.

After moving to New York City, Scafaria wrote and put up a play at the Producer's Club Theatre called That Guy and Others Like Him, in which she also played a role. Her writing agent had yet to find her a job, and so she took on more acting roles, appearing in many theater productions in addition to the films Big Helium Dog and A Million Miles, among others. She sent out queries to twenty different agents seeking representation, one of whom replied and asked Scafaria to move from New York to Los Angeles. Even though she did not anticipate real success with the agent, she moved out and became roommates with screenwriter Bryan Sipe, whom she had met making a film in New Jersey earlier. Neither of their work was considered "commercial" enough by studios, so they paired up to write a children's adventure film called Legend Has It. Revolution Studios bought the screenplay but asked for a re-write which Scafaria described as "far less interesting", and the project was ultimately shelved.

In early 2005, Scafaria was hired by Focus Features to adapt Rachel Cohn and David Levithan's book Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist into a film of the same name. The screenplay was her ninth, but her first adaptation. She is good friends with fellow writers Diablo Cody (Juno) and Dana Fox (What Happens in Vegas), who she collaborates with in their writing group they call the "Fempire". She wrote Iraqi war docudrama Sweet Relief for Paramount Pictures and The Mighty Flynn, a spec script which she set up at Warner Brothers. She has also written Man and Wife, which Gabriele Muccino is attached to direct. Lorene is currently working on Sony’s musical remake of Bye Bye Birdie for Red Wagon and Offspring Entertainment

In 2009, Mandate Pictures picked up Scafaria's script Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, a romantic comedy that focuses on one man's quest for a meaningful connection amid the "end of days". This will also mark the directorial debut for Scafaria. The movie is set to release in 2011.

During the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike, Scafaria recorded a voice-and-piano album called Garden Party. The 2009 Drew Barrymore film Whip It! features Scafaria's original song "28" in the closing credits.

Scafaria recorded a second record available April 1st 2010 on itunes called "Laughter and Forgetting." Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.