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.
