Jonathan Yevin

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Jonathan Yevin (born May 8, 1978) is an American writer and film director. Before moving into the film industry, Yevin was the youngest ever staff writer at Spy Magazine, where he worked from 1995 until it folded in 1998.

Yevin has made his mark with high concept pranks that have been generally hailed as refreshingly original. The Village Voice's James Ledbetter applauded a 1996 stunt in which Yevin, posing as an octogenarian widow named Mildred Goldstein, offered a cross section of Christian universities $20 million contingent upon their incorporation of her surname into the name of the school.

Yevin's debut screenwriting and directing effort, Stickball, is a story of a young Jewish New Yorker on a journey down South with two street urchins, who offer him insight on why he has left his girlfriend after she has an abortion.

[edit] Biography

Yevin was born in the Bronx, New York City. His father was a high school history teacher in the South Bronx. Yevin has one younger sister, Shira, an electro-punk rock musician who heads Shiragirl, a Warped Tour institution.

Recognizing that Yevin was gifted, his parents pushed him to apply for the Academy for the Advancement of Science and Technology, a public magnet high school in Hackensack, New Jersey. To compensate for his lack of humanities curriculum, Yevin began publishing an underground zine called The Fine Print. Taking advantage of an apprenticeship program, he then applied as an editorial intern at Spy Magazine. Soon he was submitting articles to Spy as well as other magazines, such as Scholastic. Yevin's first article was a feature entitled "Straight Outta Wall Street," detailing the various ways gangster rappers spend their money.

Yevin graduated from the Gallatin program at New York University.

He also joined the Men's Fitness, Drill, Cracked, Stuff, and Penthouse magazine mastheads as a contributing writer. In one infamous stunt for Frommer's Budget Travel, Yevin traveled from Ecuador to Mexico with no luggage. In another piece for Cracked, Yevin tried to collect a $100/head referral fee from the U.S. Army by mass enlisting civil war reenactors, which Chris Mohney of Gawker called "pretty inspired."

During this time Yevin continued to work in film production as an Assistant Director in such projects as the Bob Balaban feature Bernard and Doris and the Travel Channel's food special Dahlicious.

Yevin lived in Africa from 2001-2003. Initially he worked for the Zanzibar International Film Festival (ZIFF), and later some Tanzanian safari companies. Eventually he was signed to play basketball for the Stonetown Yankees club team in Zanzibar, leading them to the Eastern, Central, and Southern Africa championship tournament. Later, he played basketball for El Zamalek club team in Cairo, until the coaches found out he was Jewish, accused him of being an Israeli spy, and chased him out of the country.

In 2004, he was employed as a ringside photographer for boxing promoters Don King and Tony Brown.

In 2004-2005 Yevin lived in Sao Paulo, Brasil, where he was signed to Elite agency as a fashion model. He has modeled for designers Coogi and Kenneth Cole, as well as photographer Youssef Nabil.

Yevin currently works as a guidebook writer for Rough Guides, Fodor's and Frommer's; and runs Modern Urban Design, a New York City-based landscape design company.