For today's Female Filmmakers blog, we are going to focus on a more modern female director who has been getting increasingly sexy in her work. She is a writer and a director who has worked with Jennifer Lopez, so you know she's good. We are talking about Lorene Scafaria.
Scarafaria grew up in New Jersey to an Italian father and a Canadian mother. According to her Wikipedia page, she became interested in writing stories when she would write a monthly book report for a fake book in order to win Pizza Hut gift certificates from her school. She basically became a writer because she was trying to game the Book It system! I can't help but admire that.
After attending college to study English and theater, she moved to New York City and began writing plays and performing every once in a while. Her plays got her noticed fairly quickly and in 2005, she was hired by Focus Features to adapt the book Nick Norah's Infinite Playlist into a screenplay. She worked with allstar writers Diablo Cody and Liz Meriwether (the creator of New Girl) to make this screenplay come to life.
Lorene also dabbled in acting as her writing career continued to get off the ground. She acted in The Nines, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, Big Helium Dog, and her final acting role as Lee in Coherence in 2013. While she did appear in Nick Norah, it was star Alexis Dziena who showed off her bubbly bosom in low-cut tops.
Lorene's debut directing job was 2012's Seeking a Friend for the End of the World. This romantic comedy about a man's quest to find companionship during the end of days put her on the map as a director to watch who had a knack for touching and hilarious storytelling. She then directed a few episodes of New Girl in 2013 and 2014, probably thanks in part to her working relationship with Liz Meriwether already.
Her hottest work yet is definitely the 2019 film Hustlers which she also wrote the script for. She wrote the script based on a news article she read about female strippers who scammed their wealthy clientele. She turned this into an amazing movie that featured some of the hottest talents of the day. J Lo, Constance Wu, Cardi B, Lizzo, Trace Lysette, Keke Palmer, and more. How's that for a powerful group of women?
Lorene Scafaria had J Lo taking poll dancing classes to perfect her role (and her body). What I wouldn't give to see some raw footage of their rehearsals! For a stripper movie, there weren't that many breasts except for a dressing room scene filled with topless extras.
Lorene Scafaria clears know what she is doing and I cannot wait to see more. Her work centers around strong and maligned women getting one up on other people - sort of like her origin story in which she got one-up on Pizza Hut by scamming them with her fake book reports. It all comes together!
