This week on The Screen Savers, writer/director/actor Rob Schrab will stop by to chat about his popular short film website, Channel 101. Schrab is most famous for HeatVision and Jack, the unaired-FOX-TV-pilot-turned-cult-favorite-bootleg-tape he co-created that starred Jack Black and Owen Wilson (and was produced by Ben Stiller). But Channel 101 will soon change that. A haven for aspiring filmmakers, Channel 101 is a website that plays host to a slew of short films in the form of TV pilots. Each pilot is voted on by a live audience at a screening. The winners go on to make another episode of their 5-minute shows. The losers have to go back and create a new show until one gets picked up for future episodes. The film festival inspired the website, which is now one of the hottest havens for new filmmakers on the net.

One such filmmaker is Scott Chernoff, a man many of you will recognize from his countless appearances on TV shows, commercials, films, and as the former Managing Editor of Star Wars Insider magazine. Chernoff has had several of the most popular and longest running Channel 101 shows, all of which he co-wrote, co-directed and co-starred in with his comedy partner Andy Goldblatt, the yin to his comedy yang. Since he is an old friend of mine, I thought I’d chat with Mr. Chernoff about his work with Channel 101, his life as a TV personality, and why he doesn’t return my calls anymore.


Tell the folks at home how they know you.

Do they know me? I only know a few of them. I’m an actor, writer, and filmmaker. On TV, I’ve appeared in a bunch of commercials, most recently for T-Mobile, IHOP, KFC, and Netscape, as well as a few pilots, which I guess you haven’t seen, unless you happen to work at the networks that made them and then rejected them (Showtime, FX). I also wrote for a show on MTV called The Big Urban Myth Show. I’ll soon be on an episode of Tom Goes to the Mayor on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim, which is pretty awesome.

Lots of people know me through Channel 101, which I’ve been part of since its debut in June of ’03. And some people still know me from my six years as a writer/editor for Lucasfilm’s official Star Wars fan magazine. I’d be willing to wager there are more than a few Star Wars Insider readers trolling the G4TechTV website. Just a hunch.

So how was it working with the great Catherine Zeta-Jones in that T-Mobile commercial where they wheel you out in a gurney after seeing your phone bill?

Well, our scene together was very intense and personal, so we did a lot of crying together. She had just won the Oscar, so I gleefully deluded myself into believing that by working with her, I was somehow Oscar-caliber, too.


What were the most frequently asked questions you got after working with her?

That was really interesting. At first, lots of people just asked me if she was nice, and if she was as pretty in person as she is on screen. When I would answer yes to both (honestly, because she was totally nice and professional, and also smokin’ hot), the person who asked would seem really happy, like that information had given them some kind of comfort.

Then I started getting asked the weirdest question – a few people asked if she was really there with me. They thought she must have been green-screened in later. It was like they couldn’t believe that a supreme being like Catherine Zeta-Jones could ever really be in the same room as them. It was more comforting for them to believe that she would do her lines in front of a green screen while on the set of Oceans 12 in Milan or something, than to think a mere mortal like me would ever be allowed next to someone as special as her. It kind of freaked me out. For some reason, people don’t want to believe she’s part of the real world. I guess that’s why she’s a magical movie star, and I’m in a tiny screen on the internet.

Speaking of the 'Net how would you describe Channel 101 to the Average Joe?

Channel 101 is the unavoidable future of entertainment. It’s a TV network that isn’t on TV, but has better shows than you can see on real network TV. It’s kind of a film festival/website -- but all the films are actually 5-minute-long TV shows, and the audience is in total control -- they vote on which shows to renew and which shows to cancel. All of the videos are self-financed and pretty much labors of love for the people who create them.

The whole thing was created by two really talented writers/filmmakers, Rob Schrab and Dan Harmon. Rob created the comic book Scud: The Disposable Assassin, and he and Dan together created one of the most legendary and amazing unsold TV pilots of all time, HeatVision and Jack, which is about a crime-fighting astronaut (played by Jack Black) and his talking motorcycle (Owen Wilson), and their adventures on the run from the law. Even though Fox never aired it, the show is so good that it has its own fansites, and has somehow been passed around and become a cult hit.

Well, at Channel 101, the decisions aren’t up to the network -- every month, people come to a new Channel 101 screening at Cinespace in Hollywood. It’s a cool place where you can order dinner and drinks, and watch a huge movie screen from your table. You’ll watch about an hour’s worth of short, independently made TV shows. No show can be longer than 5 minutes. Audience members vote for five shows, and the top five vote-getters are “renewed” for another episode, and they’ll return the next month to compete with a handful of new “pilots.” The rest of the shows are “cancelled” (if they were returning series) or, if they were pilots, simply not picked up.

Most of the videos are really funny and amazingly well-done, usually on zero budget. It’s the cardboard-and-tinfoil approach, where the important thing is not what kind of toys you have but what you can do with them. They’re all posted online after the screening, so go check out the site and you can see several months worth of fine entertainment. And if you like (or don’t like) what you see, anyone can submit a video and have a chance to compete for primetime.

How did you hook up with it?

Rob and Dan love to make short videos, and they used to host these cool filmmaking challenges for their friends, where we’d have a short time to all make videos based on the same theme, like Batman or Creepshow. Then we’d have a party and watch each other’s films--some of them are up on the site. I participated in a few of those shows, and then Dan and Rob created Channel 101, adding the competitive element, and the thing just took off.

Actually, at first I was kind of being a hippy about it and I wasn’t sure I wanted to do anything if it meant I had to compete against my friends, but then my friend Andy Goldblatt and I came up with an idea out of the blue that would be a short video that would parody TV dramedy -- we literally wrote the whole thing in about 5 minutes -- and then we realized, “Hey, this would fit right in with Rob and Dan’s new festival, Channel 101.” It was perfect timing, and the 101 premiere gave us a deadline to aim for, so we jumped into the first screening, about a year and a half ago. The show got voted back and we ended up making three episodes of it, and now we sell it on DVD. We’re on our third primetime series now. In the beginning, the screenings were at a small Thai restaurant in Hollywood, now they’re at fancy-pants Cinespace. These days, we get submissions from all over the world, but I was lucky enough to be in the right place the right time, and get in on the ground floor.

Who else is involved in Channel 101 shows that we might know of?

Most of the people who are “stars” on Channel 101 aren’t very well-known outside of that world, but there are a few people who are awesome and have lent their awesomeness to Channel 101. At the top of that list is Jack Black -- Jack was the star of Computerman, one of 101’s original primetime hits, which lasted for six episodes. It’s a hilarious show that Dan Harmon created. Jack was also in one episode of Dan’s current juggernaut, Laser Fart, and last summer, when Channel 101 made a pilot for the FX network, Jack hosted and produced it, and helped get it made.

Another of my favorites is the mighty Flava Flav, who acted and rapped on episode of a show called Six Months to Live. Sarah Chalke from Scrubs is on one of 101’s longest-running shows, The ‘Bu, which is kind of like The O.C. only funnier and with ninjas. The most downloaded video is Kicked in the Nuts, which was made by Mike and Patrick Henry -- Mike wrote and does voices for Family Guy. Also, Drew Carey did two episodes of a series called Call Me Cobra, and Kato Kaelin was in it! If that’s not star power, I don’t know what is.

Are you guys given any creative direction as to what type of show to make? What are the guidelines?

No creative direction at all -- that’s what’s so great. You can do whatever you want, provided it’s a TV show, and pretty much anything can be one of those. Most of the shows tend to be comedic, but not all. The main and immutable guidelines are that your show can be no longer than five minutes, not even by a second, and that it must have a title. Seriously, that’s it. It might be the only place that’ll ever let you write, direct, produce, and star in the TV show of your dreams. Of course, you have to pay for it yourself, too.

What is the criteria behind the voting?

It’s all up to the audience. They vote for five shows, and everyone has their own criteria. For me, I like to vote for shows that I would like to see another episode of, that I think would be good to continue as a series. But for most people in the audience, the majority of whom are not exactly sober, I think they are voting for their five favorites, period. They remember the ones that made them laugh the most, or that dazzled them with laser beams and monsters. It can be very scary surrendering your baby, that you’ve worked on all month, to all those people, but whether or not I agree with the results, I always learn a little more about what they like. Shows that don’t tell a story or move quickly are dead in the water.

So you either get to continue with your show idea, episode to episode, until you get voted out OR you get voted out and keep coming back with new ideas till one sticks? How do you know what people will like?

You don’t. You should just do what you like -- at least that’s what Andy and I do. She and I make shows that we want to see, that make us laugh really hard, and then we hope enough people laugh, too. Sometimes we have a feeling, based on past experience, that the audience will or won’t like what we’ve done, but it’s out of our control. So far, the show that we took the least seriously has lasted the longest.

We’re working right now on the fourth episode of our current primetime show, Who’s Teaching Whom? Andy plays a 12-year-old orphan named Carly, and I’m the starchy old Professor who takes her in. It’s kind of like Punky Brewster, only creepier. And that’s saying a lot, because Punky Brewster was really creepy. We have a sassy neighbor named Suzay, who is always after the Professor, but the Professor’s much more focused on rearing Carly. They have a special relationship. It’s very much a tribute to sitcoms--Andy and I both love TV, and we have fun jumping into a genre and pushing it to crazy extremes.

Our first series was called Second Time Around (which is now the title of a “real” TV show, but ours came first). In our Second Time Around, Andy plays a middle-school teacher who’s also a recovering child molester, and I play a 30-year-old man who goes back to junior high in order to win her love. Believe it or not, the first episode won an award at a film festival in New York City, and it’s screening on January 25th at a film festival in France (http://boxland.org/programme.html). So that makes it legit.

In between those two series, we made our personal favorite, The Harper Teen Mystery Files, in which Andy and I play mystery-solving teens. I’m a brooding, leather-clad, motorcycle-riding loaner named Travis. We’re twins, brother and sister, and our relationship is extremely close. Extremely close. It’s awesome because where else am I going to get cast as a brooding teen biker?

Last summer, we made the first episode of a sitcom called Vice Ghost for Channel 101’s FX network pilot, but now it’s tied up in legal limbo land, which is too bad because Vice Ghost is pretty sweet. Hopefully soon we’ll at least post it on our site, or put it on a DVD.  

As for how they fared with the voting, Second Time Around debuted at #2 and lasted three episodes. Harper Teens debuted strong, also at #2, but then it came in sixth place and was cancelled after only the second episode. Who’s Teaching Whom? has come in at #5 every time, but that’s enough for primetime, and now we’re on our fourth episode.

I also co-wrote a few episodes of Sammy Primero’s Fastest Samurai in the West, in which I had a regular role as a hardass Western sheriff, which was awesome. Rob Schrab had an amazing series called Twigger’s Holiday and I got to play a small part, as Stinky Warren, one of the “Twigger Kids.” I play a wizard in the opening credits to Timebelt, and a very homophobic NASCAR fan in the pilot The White Mammy. And I get kicked in the nuts in the second episode of Kicked in the Nuts.


What are some of your favorite shows other people have done?

Twigger’s Holiday is one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen, all five episodes of it. Watch it now. Laser Fart is really good -- it’s about a superhero who farts lasers. I’m a big fan of a failed pilot called Friends and Lovers by these guys who call themselves Comic Sacrifice, and another pilot called Shi*buster, which must be seen to be believed. There was a cool animated series called Codename: Embryo. Anything by Steve Agee is good. My favorite new primetime show is called S.O.S. Fantome, which is like a cheap French-language version of Ghostbusters--I’m so looking forward to the second episode. There are too many good ones to list. I’m sure I’ve forgotten a lot of incredible stuff.