Etan Cohen

Etan Cohen (born March 14, 1974) is an American screenwriter and film director. He is best known for writing the scripts to Tropic Thunder, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa and Men in Black 3.

Life and career

Born in Israel to an Orthodox Jewish family, Cohen grew up in Efrat, and in Sharon, Massachusetts. He graduated from the Maimonides School and Harvard College, where he wrote for the Harvard Lampoon.

His first produced scripts, in 1995 and 1997, were for Beavis and Butthead, where he was credited as Ethan Cohen. He has since written for other Mike Judge-directed projects, including King of the Hill from 2001 to 2005, and for the feature film Idiocracy in 2006. In the late 1990s he worked on two other television series – the animated Recess and the short lived It's Like, You Know.... After scripting Idiocracy he worked on the hit animated series, American Dad! and wrote the episode, "Failure Is Not a Factory-Installed Option". The American Dad! minor character of the same name is named for him.