Two Writers Pretended To Be Seth Rogen To Sell A Jewish Mafia Movie
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By Thea Glassman March 29, 2017
You can’t make stuff like this up.
According to a report from The Hollywood Reporter, Jonathan Witz and Jeremy Spektor, two twenty-something screenwriters, were having a really hard time getting their Jewish mafia screenplay “The Kosher Nostra” produced. The script, which they wrote with the hopes that Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, James Franco and Aziz Ansari would star, had made it past a few assistants and Creative Executives, but never into the hands of Rogen.
So, Witz and Spektor decided to do the next best thing. The two repackaged the script, crediting Rogen and his writing partner Evan Goldberg as the authors, and sent it out to producers, studio executives, and Will Farrell (you know, just for good measure).
Rogen’s team got wind of all this, and sent out a legal letter warning the duo to stop sending out the script under the actor’s name.
For Witz and Spektor, it was all in the name of art.
“We’ve all heard the myth about a young Spielberg slipping onto the Universal lot,” Witz told The Hollywood Reporter. “This was about getting our script past the ‘gatekeepers’ and into the right hands.”
Thea Glassman is an Associate Editor at the Forward. Reach her at glassman@forward.com
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