Like two of the main characters in The Last Romance, Joe DiPietro, born in 1961, comes from an Italian-American family in New Jersey.
He graduated with a degree in English from Rutgers University in 1984, planning on attending law school at the University of California at Los Angeles. But, as he told The New York Times in 1998, fate intervened. Shortly before he was to leave for California, he was offered a job with the sports division of the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) in New York. He remained with CBS for a decade, rising to the position of advertising copywriter while also cultivating his interests in theater.
Meanwhile, he began to work on material for the stage, and at the suggestion of a friend, started writing comic sketches—very short dramatic scenes—for a theater company in New York. “Through sketch writing, I learned what was funny,” DiPietro told The Times. “I learned the ropes. I was getting better, and I still had a great day job.”
Writing comedy seemed the natural course to follow for a person who described himself as “the class clown.” “I wasn’t cool, I wasn’t the jock. I made them laugh, and that was always a way to get people to like me.”
His writing led eventually to his first New York success, the musical comedy revue, I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change, which opened off-Broadway in 1996 and ran for twelve years and more than 5,000 performances. DiPietro wrote the book—the spoken lines of the script—and the song lyrics for this show.
In an interview with The Daily News in 2000, the playwright defined his view of life as “mostly benign, [and] unapologetically centrist,” a perspective rooted in his, “very stable, very nurturing middle-class kind of environment.” He notes that, ``some critics say [my plays] are very middlebrow or mainstream. Well, that's kind of where I'm from. And that's kind of who my people are, kind of what I enjoy. I don't have huge things to rebel against.''
``For whatever reason, things of mine tend to strike a universal chord,'' DiPietro told the Daily News. ``I also write comedies, and much of the comedies that are produced by theaters nowadays are very dark comedies. And that's also the stuff that critics celebrate more often than not, for whatever reason. Dysfunctional families, yeah.” His characters, by contrast, are “real people, they’re functional people.”
He graduated with a degree in English from Rutgers University in 1984, planning on attending law school at the University of California at Los Angeles. But, as he told The New York Times in 1998, fate intervened. Shortly before he was to leave for California, he was offered a job with the sports division of the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) in New York. He remained with CBS for a decade, rising to the position of advertising copywriter while also cultivating his interests in theater.
Meanwhile, he began to work on material for the stage, and at the suggestion of a friend, started writing comic sketches—very short dramatic scenes—for a theater company in New York. “Through sketch writing, I learned what was funny,” DiPietro told The Times. “I learned the ropes. I was getting better, and I still had a great day job.”
Writing comedy seemed the natural course to follow for a person who described himself as “the class clown.” “I wasn’t cool, I wasn’t the jock. I made them laugh, and that was always a way to get people to like me.”
His writing led eventually to his first New York success, the musical comedy revue, I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change, which opened off-Broadway in 1996 and ran for twelve years and more than 5,000 performances. DiPietro wrote the book—the spoken lines of the script—and the song lyrics for this show.
In an interview with The Daily News in 2000, the playwright defined his view of life as “mostly benign, [and] unapologetically centrist,” a perspective rooted in his, “very stable, very nurturing middle-class kind of environment.” He notes that, ``some critics say [my plays] are very middlebrow or mainstream. Well, that's kind of where I'm from. And that's kind of who my people are, kind of what I enjoy. I don't have huge things to rebel against.''
``For whatever reason, things of mine tend to strike a universal chord,'' DiPietro told the Daily News. ``I also write comedies, and much of the comedies that are produced by theaters nowadays are very dark comedies. And that's also the stuff that critics celebrate more often than not, for whatever reason. Dysfunctional families, yeah.” His characters, by contrast, are “real people, they’re functional people.”