The story goes that when Seth Rogen approached Judd Apatow, Saturday Night Live producer and then also producing Seth in Freaks and Geeks and told him he and his writing partner wanted to write comedy movies and had some ideas to pitch to him, Apatow told him not to give him a script or a pitch but to first prove they had idea depth – he told them to go away and write up pitches (full pitches, at least 500 words) for 101 OTHER movies. If they could do that, he’d know their pitch would be solid.  (They did, and then they proved they could write by scripting Pineapple Express, which wasn’t their idea, and having thus proven themselves in both realms, were allowed to write Superbad, and the rest is history.)

About five years ago I decided to challenge myself along the same lines: 101 ideas for TV shows. Back then I gave myself three months to do it, and 500 words each, and set up a Yahoo Groups group for it, but then I got hit by the Life Truck and the idea lay in ruins after about ten.

Today, I found my original scribbled list of ideas and I decided I needed a new challenge, but shorter, and more insane. 101 movie ideas in 24 hours. Now, to make it easier, these won’t be full pitches. Rather, they’ll be elevator pitches. One sentence only. No more than fifty words. Sum it up, succinctly – because if I can’t, it’s no good for TV anyway. They’ve got to be obviously watchable and workable and pop off the page. I don’t, however, guarantee they will be particularly original. It is TV after all.

I can’t think of anywhere else to do it, so I’ll do all 100 of them here, in the comments. The time is now 10:17 pm. My time starts now.