About Jon Kesselman

Jonathan Baruch Kesselman (yes, he is Jewish), the godfather of the Jewxploitation film, was born and raised in the mean streets of the San Fernando Valley. He received his Bachelors degree from the University of Colorado, graduating Magna Cum Laude in Psychology with an emphasis in Neuroscience. After college, Jon spent two years in the corporate world as an Information Systems Consultant before being accepted into graduate school at the University Of Southern California School of Cinema/Television, where he received his Masters Degree in Film Production in December of 2001. While at USC, Jon's second semester short film, "The Hebrew Hammer," went on to semi-final at the 2000 Austin Film festival, and was chosen by the USC Film archivists in a collection of their ten favorite student shorts from the 1950’s to the present. While at USC, Jon also wrote, directed, edited, and produced a web serial for Doug Liman's Internet film site Nibblebox.com

From the strength of the script and his short, Jon’s first feature film, the full length ‘Hebrew Hammer’ was greenlit by Ed Pressman’s ContentFilm while Jon was still a student at USC. The film had its world premiere at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival, and played a number of international festivals before being picked up for theatrical distribution (Hanukkah 2003) by Strand Releasing in conjunction with Comedy Central and Paramount Home Video.

Jonathan has also re-written a project for Fox Searchlight, served as a consultant/sketch writer for Comedy Central’s ‘Last Laugh,’ for two years, and sold a spec Television Pilot, “Working Stiff,” to Sony Television. Currently, Jon completed writing “The Orbit Of Bob” for Nickelodeon, which he will direct this year, as well as the live action feature film “Odd Todd,” based on the web cartoons of the same name (www.oddtodd.com) for Paramount Pictures. Jon co-wrote ‘Odd Todd’ with creator Todd Rosenberg, and will direct.

Under his newly formed Production Banner, ‘The Worldwide Media Conspiracy,’ Jon is currently producing, “Confessions Of An Ivy League Bookie” based on the Memoir of the same name by Peter Alson with Steven Shainberg (Fur with Nicole Kidman and Robert Downey Jr., Secretary) Andrew Fierberg (http://www.vox3films.com/), and Christina Weiss Lurie. The film, written and to be directed by David Greenwald, will begin principal photography this summer. Jon has also been hired and will produce an adaptation of Glenn Frank’s Award Winning debut novel, “Abe Gilman’s Ending,” which was published this year, and is also producing the film version of Rene Steinke’s National Book Award finalist, “Holy Skirts,” which Noah Stollman (‘Adam Resurrected’) will adapt.

Most recently, Jon sold an animated pilot to the Disney Channel, entitled ‘DNA Dan,’ and a feature film CGI comedy that he will write this year for Chris Wedge at Blue Sky Studios (Ice Age, Ice Age 2, Robots). Jon has also finished writing and will direct ‘The Hebrew Hammer 2: Hammer VS Hitler’ and he is in the process of putting the financing together for. Jon is also working with David Bar Katz (“John Leguizamo’s Pest, ‘Freak’) on the stage musical version of the Hebrew Hammer, and has also recently finished the screenplay “Pure Air” which he co-wrote with ‘Da Ali G show’ writer/producer, Jamie Glassman. Jon also writes a weekly column for Suicide Girls entitled, ‘Jonathan Kesselman’s Suicide Watch’ (http://www.suicidegirls.com), directed the music video, “I’m A Sucker For A Girl In Uniform,” for the Brooklyn-based band The Churchills, (www.thechurchills.net), and teaches comedy writing for the screen at Yale University.