01x93 - Brian Presents

[bunniefuu]

Is this some kind of science fair project?

I was at a comic-book convention, and at the convention I met this old-school comic-book artist who was a legend.

When he heard that I wrote on Limitless, he was really impressed and he said, "Oh, man, it's about time someone did a TV show about a guy who just did a ton of dr*gs and then did arts and crafts."

We have PowerPoint, you know.

We were looking for new ways to convey information visually.

Instead of somebody tapping in front of a computer, you'll have a gap of a couple of hours where Brian has put together this more elaborate than it needs to be presentation.

I was always really impressed by the art department.

We would have something in a script and they would say, "That's great, but we were thinking what about this?"

They would take it to this next level of ridiculousness that you could not have imagined.

When Brian's on NZT, he really gets to be quite genius and creative on the art projects that are very limited in descriptions when we get the script, so it's been great for me as an art department with my team to come up with ways we can do that.

It became sort of like a friendly competition among the staff who could come up with the craziest way to visually represent things.

You spent the day building a model?

Uh, models, plural.

In the Marco Ramos episode, where the Post-it Mexican square was, that didn't start as Post-its.

It started as like building blocks and then they came back with this crazy idea of like we're gonna take 2,000 Post-it notes and build this thing three-dimensional.

They have to bring on all of these people to build this stuff.

Sarah Frank: It becomes very collaborative, which is also great, to keep my art department involved and excited.

[WHISTLES]

That's your breakthrough?

Yeah.

The more work it takes other people to make that idea a reality, somehow the more funny it is for us writers.

I got everything Sam was into, from Aquaman to Zeppelin.

Well, it's pretty.

Thank you.

He creates on these clear plaques around his office these code names so he can visualize the names while he's coming up with different combinations.

We see that both practically and through visual effects, the names coming on, while he's typing on two computers at the same time.

Can you just give me a second? Please?

Just watch the movie, all right?

I like the top-ten video that he makes in 109 quite a bit.

Brian: Thomas James Holden robbed mail trains throughout the 1920s.

Then he was involved in two different escapes from Leavenworth Prison.

What finally got him for good?

In March 1950, he was the first fugitive placed on the brand-new ten most wanted list.

Do you think I'm disrespectful?

Maybe Mike could just use a break from arts and crafts detail.

He made a string art map trying to figure out the Quebecois route.

This map... shows all the highways and the back roads you could use to get there.

And this right here is our best chance of intercepting them.

Our art department is just amazing at creating these things.

Andre Hannan... wasn't lying.

We had the science fair project, the tri-fold boards.

But Jake, to Jake's endless credit, was so game.

Right now, neurons can be genetically modified to be more sensitive to light.

When you are playing what I believe was a four-page monster of a scene, with a ton of props in it, it was so intricate...

Brian's presentations can be a prop nightmare.

The researchers recently reported using optogenetics to implant a false memory into a mouse's brain.

Already when Brian makes a presentation, he's usually on NZT, so he's saying a lot of very sophisticated things, and then if you add props, poster boards, string, whatever, into the equation, it's that much more exciting.

You know, Bob Ross always made it look so easy.

Happy trees, happy clouds.

He needs to make an art forgery so that he can sell it on the Dark Web, so he uses Spike as his muse, and then the painting ends up in a museum as one of Brian's practical jokes.

OK, so, Daniel Lee's story seems to check out.

We did the sort of Venn diagram on the glass, which was strangely complicated technically to execute, but it allowed us to play like through the depth of the whole set, which was very cool to me.

OK, so let's review. Jarrod Sands...

We see Brian off NZT for the first time in a while, and we see his inability to kind of create these beautiful pieces that we are used to, and we see this board that's just a mess of Post-it notes and disorganized newspaper articles.

In that same episode, when he goes back on NZT, we see him create a found art kind of organization chart from things he finds around Datavision where he's working.

Brian...

What?

Why is this so crafty yet functional?

What did you do?

Oh, um... It was a productive night.

In the early going, I would sort of draw these diagrams, and be like, "Here's what I imagine happening."

But by the end of the season, Sarah Frank, our production designer, was owning her role so well and had become such a superstar designer that, you know, I was out in New York and she just walked me into the set and said, "Here's what we've got."

"In the script it just said: He has redecorated her apartment."

That's the mobile that you made to explain to me how you stole money from the rest of the kids in the sixth grade.

It wasn't stealing. It was a bartering system.

You see like, oh, this is so funny, this kid always had this weird imaginative way of illustrating what he's thinking about even back when he was in grade school.

I like that, that they gave that an origin, in a way, so it's not just like, "Well, why wasn't Eddie Morra in the movie making paper-mâché dolls and explaining things to Robert de Niro with string and a Rube Goldberg?"

You know?

I personally would love to see a coffee-table book with all of Brian's crafty projects.

Gentleman, please. Keep the Finchesque theatrics to a minimum, yeah?