‘Kitchener Sync’
A love letter to the city
It was a classic “Seinfeld” moment.
Lyndon Horsfall was hanging out at tech hub Communitech with his creative partner, Duncan Finnigan, pondering ideas for a new TV series, when he happened to take a closer look at his surroundings.
“We go, ‘Here we are in this building in Silicon Valley North,’” notes the Waterloo Region filmmaker, whose six episode series, “Kitchener Sync” is now streaming on Bell’s Fibe TV1 and will be screened in its entirety Saturday at Kitchener’s Apollo Cinema.
“Maybe there’s a show to be made.” It’s reminiscent of Jerry and George brainstorming ideas for “a show about nothing” as — bereft of inspiration — they simply write down everything that happens while loafing in their apartment: “And then the door opens. Elaine walks in.”
“We knew a lot of interesting, fun stories,” insists Horsfall, whose go-for-broke spirit makes him the P.T. Barnum of local TV production.
“The inspiration was right there.”
But tech is a broad subject. What would be the hook?
“I have experience with dating online,” notes the 42-year-old entrepreneur, who earns his income producing corporate and training videos, commercials and academic documentaries.
“And we started reading about how Facebook and Google are spying on you. What if there was a dating app doing the same thing?”
The result is surprising, a wryly comedic take on tech-run-wild that — with its dry humour and tangibly offbeat tone — feels like a genuine local phenomenon.
Is it the Waterloo version of the Listowel-inspired bumpkin comedy “Letterkenny”?
“It’s a love letter to the city,” insists Horsfall. “We wanted it to be very specific to Kitchener, but hopefully the humour is universal.”
Among its local features: a diverse array of defiant tech-centrics: gamer nerd, coder nerd, programmer nerd, social anxiety nerd, attention deficit nerd, sheltered nerd and — for contrast — a prime nemesis described by Horsfall as a “stone cold battleaxe.”
If these characters feel lived in it’s because — other than the battleaxe, inspired by Horsfall’s supervisor at an AT&T call centre — they’re based on the local actors who play them.
But there’s more to this goofy comedy — conceived three years ago with several “spec” episodes — that crosses the geek humour of HBO’s “Silicon Valley” with the deadpan wit of NBC’s “The Office.”
“It’s about a generation that’s really smart and knows technology but is at a point in their lives where they’re going ‘Uh oh, maybe we’re getting a little too old to be noticed,’” confides Horsfall. “It’s about a group of people struggling to make it.”
To some extent, this describes Horsfall himself, who attended Waterloo Collegiate in the ’90s and worked for his dad’s automotive parts company in Kitchener before kicking around the fringes of the Toronto film industry for a decade.
His career highlight: production assistant on the first “X-Men” movie.
“I was young and naive,” he says without regret. “I thought it would be easier.”
Moving back to Kitchener in 2006, he studied psychology and sociology at Wilfrid Laurier University before starting his own film production company.
But always, in the back of his mind, he wanted to craft his own cinematic narratives.
“I’m in my early 40s,” he admits candidly. “I’m on the cusp of the industry. I haven’t quite made it and I wonder, how much longer do I have?”
Whether or not “Kitchener Sync” — which started streaming Aug. 27 — blows the lid off his career, Horsfall notes it’s already opened doors for meetings with other TV networks, including CBC.
“The show is good enough that these production companies have taken the time to meet with me,” he notes proudly. “That tells me they’re not just blowing smoke up my ass.”
If it doesn’t translate into dollars and sense — and it’s pretty hard to get rich in the oxygen starved world of Canadian TV — it’s still gained Horsfall a valuable industry toehold, for which he is appreciative.
“I don’t want to be famous or a millionaire,” he notes, acknowledging that the probability of this is pretty slim. “I just want to put a roof over my head.”
To this end, he has two ideas he hopes to market if his TV calling card does reasonably well.
First is a film adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel “The Invisible Man,” about a scientist who makes himself disappear, which prompts questions like “What makes a human being a human being?” and “If no one knew what you were doing, how would you behave?”
Second is a western set in turn of the 20th century Canada that would trumpet this country’s proud history of nation building over the U.S. culture of swaggering individualism.
“Donald Trump has 50 per cent of the people voting for him, despite threatening the press and threatening football players who take a knee, who now have people wanting them dead,” he notes sardonically. “I don’t identify with individualism. I really believe in the Canadian identity and the good of the many over what’s good for just me.”
Reminded that the most likely career trajectory for successful Canadian filmmakers is recruitment by Hollywood for second-rate sequels — like CBC’s Ken Finkelman writing “Grease 2” — he reveals his dream to hop on board the “Star Trek” franchise.
“I’d love to do a ‘Star Trek’ sequel with the ‘Next Generation’ cast and send them out properly instead of that horrible ‘Nemesis’ movie they did,” he laughs.
“If someone said ‘Here’s billion dollars — come to California!’ that would be ideal. But what I really want is to make movies in Canada about Canadians. There’s something about Canadian identity that speaks to me.”