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Jonah Goldfinger is one of the top up-and-coming comedy writers in L.A., a mantra he’s been telling himself for at least the last seven years.

Raised in San Diego, CA. Jonah once had aspirations to become a professional surfer but later discovered that while it looked cool, surfing was really a lot harder than it looked. So instead, he wore Vans, learned to talk like Sean Penn in Fast Times and went to the movies.

It was at UCLA where Jonah began to study the art of screenwriting under the tutelage of professors who mostly could not make it as screenwriters.

Out of college, Jonah quickly became very confused on how to function without a meal plan. He took various assistant jobs in the biz while honing his writing craft. His first script, an action/drama wasn’t very good. His second, a comedy, was much better but also not great By his third script, his own mother was leaving law school applications around the house when he’d visit.

Many scripts later, Jonah finally optioned a property to the hefty sum of $1 (he would later get the rights back and re-option the same script for the WGA minimum.)

Jonah’s long overnight success story began when he met screenwriter Jeremy Garelick (The Break Up) at a dinner party, got him drunk and had him agree to read a comedy spec script. Jeremy found the spec to be too broad to be sellable but thought the comedy strong enough to put Jonah to work on some of his own projects in development. One of those projects was a rewrite of The Hangover, a subject matter Jonah knew a great deal about through his days of working as an assistant not to mention his penchant for video poker.

Building on the success of the film (#1 rated R comedy of all time,) Jonah received his own rewrite assignment for Universal’s The Hassleman with Garelick attached to direct. He’s also developing an original idea for New Line, and a pitch he’s planning on taking out to studios this spring. Both of those he’s not allowed to talk about so you’re just gonna have to trust him. And just to make sure he’s getting no sleep, Jonah also works for screenwriter Etan Cohen (Men in Black 3) one of the top comedy writers in the business.

Jonah resides in West Los Angeles, so close to Beverly Hills that he manages to get their overnight parking tickets but far enough that their fire department won’t come if his apartment burns down.