Jay Kogen, son of award-winning comedy writer Arnie Kogen, was born in Brooklyn and raised in Los Angeles. He began as a stand-up comic and an actor. While studying philosophy at UCLA, he joined The Groundlings, an improv comedy troupe in Hollywood.
Then he and partner, Wallace Wolodarsky, started writing the critically acclaimed The Tracey Ullman Show with their mentor James L. Brooks. They worked their way up to become producers there, then jumped to the spin-off, The Simpsons, where they wrote and produced the first five seasons and then quit thinking, “How long can this go on?”
On his own, Jay has spent the last few decades writing, producing and directing shows such as The Single Guy, Ned & Stacey, Frasier, Malcolm In The Middle, Everybody Loves Raymond, The George Lopez Show, Wanda At Large, The Class, The Troop, Happily Divorced, Kirstie, See Dad Run, Henry Danger and, most recently, the new reboot of Malcolm In The Middle. He also wrote pilots over the years and made several, including Monkey World, World on a String, What’s Up Peter Fuddy?, Courtship of Eddie’s Father, Cooked and Pack Of Wolves.
Jay has been a showrunner for several series, including Wendell & Vinnie for Nick@Nite and “School of Rock,” which has been nominated for two Emmy Awards. Over the years, he’s been nominated for many awards, including “People’s Choice” “Producers Guild Award,” “the American Comedy Award,” “The Humanitas” and “The Golden Rose of Montrose,” whatever that is. Jay has 15 Emmy nominations and has won the award four times. He was also voted “most likely to drop his pants on a dare” in high school.
As for movies, Jay co-wrote the movie The Wrong Guy with Dave Foley and Dave Higgins, which became a cult hit and won "The Best Writing Award" in the 1997 HBO/Aspen Comedy Arts Film Festival. The movie has become a cult hit, which means people love it, but Jay made no money for it.
In addition, Jay has written many films that have never been made as well as rewriting or punching up The Nutty Professor, The Cat in the Hat, The Spy Who Shagged Me, Madagascar, Goldmember, Bad Company, Shrek II, Shark Tale, Shrek III, Superhero Movie, Starship Dave, The Love Guru, Walter Mitty, Sluts, My Bad Self, ParaNorman, Kubo And The Two Strings, We Be Monsters, Home, The Hunt for Jaden Hayes, Zombieland 2, The Wildwood Chronicles for LAIKA studio and two new movies he can’t talk about.
As an actor, he’s appeared on The Bob Newhart Show, Newhart, The Bronx Zoo, Malcolm in the Middle, The Single Guy and many others, but his most seen role is the “Mouse Ears Guy” in the pre-ride safety film before “Soarin’” at Disneyland.
Jay served on the board of the Writer’s Guild Foundation and continues to work on the advisory board of the Humanitas organization. He has mentored many writers through the WGA and Humanitas mentorship programs as well as the Veterans Writing Workshop with the WGAF. For the last six years, Jay has been proudly teaching writing to his future employers at USC’s School of Cinema Arts as part of the John Wells Division of Writing.
Jay is currently peddling a few new pilots, including the animated “Broken America” and the Alzheimer’s disease-themed comedy, I Forget, as well as supervising several other pilots in development like F-Ups, Desi Family and Dickmatized. He's writing a new comedy movie, Billionaires in Space.
Jay continues to do stand-up comedy around the Los Angeles area and after being a guest on countless podcasts, he now hosts a wildly successful podcast called Don’t Be Alone with Jay Kogen where he interviews writers, actors and comics and asks them to solve his problems. The show has been nominated for multiple awards including "LA WebFest." Plus, Jay’s mom watches every week and doesn’t hate it.
Future projects include creating an army of robots to rule the world and trying to eat more fish instead of meat.