Super Midnight Movie Show was the predecessor of Channel 101, launched in 2001. Originally a showcase based off vague assumptions what Dan Harmon and his friends what Jaws 4 would be like shortly after renting the film, it spun off into a film-festival, averaging 200 people at the Improv Olympic West.
Background[]
In 2001, after Rob Schrab brought his friends over to his apartment after renting Jaws: The Revenge (aka Jaws 4), he challenged them to make a project based on their predictions over Jaws 4's storyline. His friends brought in presentations in the forms of puppet shows, poems, and mixtapes. Schrab's own medium of choice was a video of himself sticking his penis (dressed as a shark) into a fruit, and was briefly shared on the internet.[1][2]
Due to the success of the Jaws 4 event, they decided to do the same concept with Fresh Horses, which was slightly more successful, and mostly used video. Rob Schrab created Ringwald and Molly for the assignment. The next project was to create a Creepshow-esque anthology film, sending interested parties a letter featuring a common phrase to base their vignette on. When the screening started, Dan Harmon stated that "even the biggest living room in Los Angeles couldn't hold the audience." The fourth assignment was to create "a Batman" movie. This time, they moved out of the apartment and into a local bar, where 200 people watched 15 films about Batman.
For the next two screenings, Harmon and Schrab finally named the initially unnamed festival the Super Midnight Movie Show, and concluded with two more prompts: "Music Video Night" and "Saturday Morning", at Improv Olympic West (now iO West). After the rebrand, they made two new guidelines: each film must be less than 5 minutes in length, and the show will be monthly. However, when Harmon asked one of the employees why she's "being such a c---", they decide to stop the show.
When they realize that the problem with Super Midnight Movie Show was that since too many people decided to join in, some creators would have to be rejected. To rectify this problem, Schrab comes up with a solution: the audience would have the power. On May 18, 2003, the festival would be renamed Channel 101.[3]