Rodney Rothman

Raised in Queens and Scarsdale, New York, Rodney Rothman began writing comedy bits in high school. He even went to to the length of going to Rockefeller Center to pass a joke to the writers of "Saturday Night Live" (NBC, 1975-). The ploy was unsuccessful, but Rothman kept writing. He attended Middlebury College then landed a job as a junior writer on "Late Show with David Letterman" (CBS, 1993-2015) that lasted for five years and ended with Rothman as head writer and producer. Once he left the show, Rothman wrote an article for The New Yorker, which became controversial when it was revealed that he had fictionalized some of his story. The scandal didn't prevent him from landing a job as a writer on "Undeclared" (Fox, 2001-02) a comedy created by Judd Apatow and Paul Feig. The show never found an audience and was cancelled, which left Rothman bereft. He decided to retire at age 28. Or, at least, he decided to move to a retirement community and live there for a few months. He turned that experience into a Early Bird, a non-fiction book which caught the eye of executives at NBC, who went far enough to make a pilot for the show before deciding not to go forward. Retirement over, Rothman landed work as a writer on the comedy series "Committed" (NBC, 2005) then on the show "Help Me Help You" (ABC, 2006) starring Ted Danson. He made his feature film debut, contributing to the screenplay for "Grudge Match" (2013) starring Sylvester Stallone and Robert DeNiro as retired rivals who are enticed to get back into the ring for one last fight. Rothman also wrote the successful sequel "22 Jump Street" (2014) before writing the script for "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" (2018). Rothman also co-directed the animated film, which earned rave reviews and an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Feature.