The local media, ourselves included, have been agape at the tech-absurdity and apparent shallowness of the proposed TV series about the Mission titled 94110 that put out an open casting call back in April. Then we got a look at these comically stereotypical monologues written for various tech-ish types, defining their own motivations and characters, and saying things like, "They just don’t like your guts and effort anymore when you got baller status in this town." But now KQED digs a bit deeper and discovers that one of the people involved in the project is Oakland-based performance artist and all around prankster Scott Vermeire, and he very well may be its mastermind.
Vermeire has recently specialized, you see, in the deadpan mockery of just the sort of tech-obsessed characters described in the 94110 materials. The producers of the show are said to be "award winning," but so far have remained anonymous, and even the people who leant them space to hold the auditions last month, SF Arts Quarterly, are being vague and mysterious in describing what went down that day, but saying they've "terminated communication" with the production team.
Below you can see Vermeire playing one of these awkward, deadpan characters he calls The Average Man, going on a tour of The Ferry Building ironically, though he seems to be mocking the twee, artisanal nature of the shops there, he himself is co-owner of Prather Ranch, a butcher shop with a location there. About halfway through he puts on a fake Google Glass and pretends to be texting his wife through speech recognition, and catching a clerk off guard as he loudly repeats "Do you want to have lunch with me?"
KQED reached out directly to Vermeire who denied having any creative involvement in 94110, though that's probably not to be trusted. He says he's merely helping with the marketing of the project, and that the producers found him through his work for a company called Thunderball Media a fictional creation that he mentions in some of his performances. (And all of this bears some resemblance to the elaborate performances, staged for video art's sake, by the Kill Your TV movement in SF in the 1970s, as recently chronicled by KQED and SFMOMA.)
And here he is repeating the Google Glass gag and playing an atrocious tech character during this year's SF Sketchfest.
Previously: '94110' TV Pilot Casting Monologues, Presented Without Comment