Shit Justin Halpern Says

By mining his dad's cantankerous ramblings for Tweet-sized maxims, Halpern has become an internet celebrity, a published author, and the brains behind a new CBS pilot starring William Shatner. He tells Gelf how it all happened.

David Downs

Seventy-four-year-old retired doctor of nuclear medicine and Vietnam-era Navy veteran Sam Halpern doesn't take any shit. Halpern's profane maxims, as transcribed by his son Justin Halpern on the Twitter feed Shit My Dad Says, have garnered more than 1.3 million Twitter followers. Now, once-struggling 29-year-old screenwriter Justin has a book deal with HarperCollins, and a CBS sitcom pilot of the same name starring the great William Shatner.