Romance and the Apocalypse: Writer-Director Lorene Scafaria on Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

In writer and first-time director Lorene Scafaria’s new Focus Features release Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, a giant asteroid is on a collision track with Earth, and all global high-tech efforts to divert the oncoming disaster have failed. With everyone facing only weeks left to live, an insurance salesman named Dodge (Steve Carell) is deserted by his wife (Nancy Carell) and most of his co-workers—although not his maid, who diligently reminds him to buy more window cleaner. As society rapidly unravels, he meets his resourceful, nonconformist neighbor Penny (Keira Knightley), and they agree to a road trip together, sort of one last pilgrimage before dying: she’ll help Dodge reconnect with a long-lost love, if he’ll help Penny get back to her family.

A hybrid of science fiction, romantic comedy, and road movie, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World is notably high-concept. It’s also as upbeat a reflection on the apocalypse that you’ll likely ever see. And as a date night movie (which it is, in its own odd way) it’s fresh and seductive, like the 2008 charmer Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist, whose screenplay Scafaria also penned.

Throughout the movie Dodge and Penny try to remain focused, despite the numerous distractions supporting characters present. A bickering married couple (Robb Corddry and Connie Britton) throws a hedonistic dinner party where the guests range from the debauched (Patton Oswalt) to the sweet but dim (Melanie Lynskey). Rioters plague the streets, so a noisy chain restaurant called Friendsy’s seems like a haven, although its party-hearty, buff staff is unusually welcoming. I asked Scafaria during her own recent promotional road trip why she chose to layer this bittersweet love story within vignettes of people going haywire.

“I thought a lot about what anybody would do, if we’re all facing our mortality at the exact same time—which obviously is a different circumstance than just one man dying,” she replied. “I thought about who would be the best characters for that scenario–like an Everyman who’s been sleepwalking through life, sort of half-dead. And who’d be the best person to pull him out, and take him along on the ride of a lifetime. I’ve been trying to write these kinds of characters for a long time, and using the backdrop of the end of the world was a chance also to explore all these other people they meet along the way.”

   Scafaria, a trim, long-haired brunette with China doll bangs, a sharp sense of humor, and an intent gaze, started laughing:  “And I thought, if this were happening to me, I would go over to my friend’s house for a dinner party that would get weird really fast. We’d have a great time, and everybody would be cracking up. Some people would be doing heroin, and other people would want to be wasted the whole time—just sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll, why not? Nothing wrong with it, in a way.”

Then she turned serious again:  “But I know what I would be like. I would go for love, I would go for a relationship, and I’d look for friends. Death is inevitable, and it is the great equalizer, so the idea that [when that moment comes] you could just be looking into the eyes of the person you love, that is a happy ending to me. In college I used to study poetry, and a lot of elegies. So I was always thinking of this movie as an elegy, something that starts in such a dark place, takes us on a journey, and then, hopefully, ends in a sort of uplifting moment,” She laughed, conceding, “Even though, obviously, it’s still dark.”

One of the funniest–and loveliest–scenes in Seeking a Friend for the End of the World is when Dodge and Penny stop at that diner called Friendsy’s. The scene has a tender undercurrent because it’s where we first see that the two are falling in love. But I thought Scafaria called the restaurant “Friendsy’s” because it sounds like “frenzies,” which exactly describes what’s on offer, since the servers have impulsively added group sex to the menu. So I asked Scafaria how she came up with the name, and she shot back, laughing,  “I don’t know! When Friday’s said no, and then shockingly, Appleby’s, and all the rest who were not interested? ‘Our restaurant: where you come to feast and dine before you die.’ Really? When do I get to go?”

Our talk turned to casting. Keira Knightley has been in so many weighty movies of late that it’s refreshing to see her in this film as such an exuberant, playful character. I wondered if Scafaria set out to upend audience expectations by casting Knightley in a role that’s zanier than Steve Carell’s.

The director admitted that was the case. “I was excited by movies like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, where Jim Carrey–who’d never been seen like that before, who becomes almost invisible in that movie, he’s so good–takes a back seat to Kate Winslet, who’d been known for playing different [more serious] parts, yet suddenly has the loopy role. I remember wanting to take a page from that, and have a comedic actor who could play a more guarded character. I used to love watching Steve Carell go from zero to 60 in the course of an episode of The Office, but I also love him as a much more still character–because that to me is when he shines the most, in things like Dan in Real Life and Little Miss Sunshine. The idea behind pairing him with Keira was to convey that she is this sort of old soul, and he’s sort of a young man, and so the notion that she would light a fire under him fit. I also think that when you’re that great an actress, you already have good comic timing built in.”

   Scafaria is now two for two with romances that resonate. Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist is a favorite of mine; it exquisitely captures what it’s like to fall in love for the first time. As its title suggests, it’s about a couple with time and time ahead of them {assuming their love stays true). With Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, we watch two older people who, after several false starts, finally find true love, but they’ll have much less time together.

“Just so you know,” Scafaria interjected, “that was a completely conscious decision after writing Nick & Norah’s. I loved that story; I loved that it could go on forever. But what I wanted to write next was something that had an end to it; like, what if you took “forever” off the table, how that would affect the dynamic. I was desperate to write something with a loud ticking clock, and I couldn’t think of a louder one than this.”

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