Jonathan Kesselman wrote and directed The Hebrew Hammer, a comedy about an Orthodox Jewish Blaxploitation hero (Adam Goldberg) who saves Hanukkah from the evil offspring of Santa Claus (Andy Dick). The film has become a cult favorite, and you should add it to your holiday viewing list this year. In addition to being a successful screenwriter, Jonathan teaches Writing Comedy for Film and Television at Yale University. He has some great tips for aspiring comedy writers.

Cinematical: When did you know you wanted to be a writer?

Jonathan Kesselman: I always loved writing. When I was in the 5th grade, I was pulled out of my class and put onto the 12th grade yearbook staff writing copy. For a while, I thought I wanted to be a journalist. In college, I majored in Psychology -- neuroscience was my field. I realized that I didn't like slicing rat brains. I remember really searching for what it was that I wanted to do with my life. And I had always been obsessed with movies. I remember having this existential crisis pre-graduation, and then seeing a documentary on Your Show of Shows, and it hit me that I was put on this earth to make fun of people.

Cinematical: So you threw the rat in the air triumphantly...

JK: I ate the rat -- tasty! Yeah, I graduated, and decided I wanted to go to film school. I eventually went to graduate school at USC for film production.

While the name Jonathan Kesselman doesn't ring many bells, his Hebrew Hammer should. While not an epic feat of comedy cinema, the movie was pretty entertaining. 100% Kosher superhero, Mordechai Jefferson Carver (Adam Goldberg) joined with Esther Bloomenbergensteinenthal (Judy Greer) and Mohammed Ali Paula Abdul Rahim (Mario Van Peebles) to save Hanukkah from Santa Clause's evil son, Damian. Honoring Blaxploitation movies, the certified circumsized dick floats around in a sea of cool that only his mother can truly shake and berate.

But don't expect the same sort of goofy comedy from his next feature project. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Kesselman is taking a radical diversion from Hammer. He has signed on to adapt Glenn Frank's recent debut novel, Abe Gilman's Ending, which the pair will produce through Kesselman's Worldwide Media Conspiracy. The book centers on Gilman, a wheelchair-bound man and widower who would rather die than spend the rest of his life in a nursing home. Things begin to change when a new patient gathers help from the residents for a historical project. This is intermixed with the story of Elie, a boy in 1948 who wants to learn what happened to his father -- a German Jew who sent his family to safety while staying behind. It's obviously a large change for the director. Do you think he can pull it off?

Here's an interesting pair: Music video director/graphic designer Adam Levite (AKA Associates in Science, or AiS) is teaming up with The Hebrew Hammer (tagline: "Part man. Part street. 100% kosher.") writer-director Jonathan Kesselman to pen the screen version of Glenn Gaslin's Beemer. Levite himself owns the movie rights to the book, which sounds more than a little bit insane. Somewhat dismissively described by Publisher's Weekly as providing "empty calories [and] a modest rush but little else," the book tells the story of Beemer Minutia, a child of the 80s whose dreams of "his name mass-marketed on everything from 'motion pictures to action figures'" are interrupted by his girlfriend's demand that he get an actual job. Beemer eventually goes to work at an advertising agency, which sounds deceptively normal. Not to worry, though: The book also features "domestic terrorists, a boy band comprised of eunuchs, a crafty teen nemesis and a crazed suburban mom running a homeowners association militia." Among other things.

Man alive. Has anyone read the book? Is it even possible to adapt it for the screen? it's unclear from the Hollywood Reporter article if Levite (who's both designed the posters for Boogie Nights, Magnolia and Happiness and directed videos for Beck, Interpol and Queens of the Stone Age) or Kesselman will even be involved in directing the film, so we can't draw stylistic conclusions based on their names or previous work. If this ever happens, though, it'll doubtless be something to keep an eye on.