Mary Beth Barone’s Netflix Special “Galaxy Brain“
Mary Beth Barone wearing custom Wiederhoeft.
In 2024, I was contacted by Jake Morris, Mary Beth Barone's close friend and creative partner. He said something along the lines of: "Mary Beth is taping a YouTube special and is going to be wearing this vintage Versace dress that Kate Moss wore, and we think it's gonna look sick with that star filter thingy you do." I was already familiar with her work, as my bestie was a fan of hers and Benito Skinner's. We'd gone to one of their comedy sets at The Bell House. Needless to say, I was down.
In 2025, Overcompensating, created by Benito, premiered on Amazon Prime and became a hit; naturally, Mary Beth was one of the standouts in the show. In 2026, she served as the official red carpet correspondent for the 83rd Annual Golden Globes and created a slew of viral interviews.
Shortly after, I got an invitation to come on as the BTS and key art photographer for her then-upcoming special "Galaxy Brain." Once at the taping, I realized that besides the much larger production crew, the people around Mary Beth were the same people I'd met two years before at the YouTube taping. I've done way too many jobs on the promise of an ongoing relationship. There was never a promise with Mary Beth or her team, but somehow I keep ending up sharing the room, over and over again.
The billboards sprung up in Times Square, on Flushing & Morgan in Brooklyn, and in Cali on Beverly & Virgil, Beverly & Sierra Bonita, and Sunset Strip.
Posters were created with the image assets and wheat pasted all over Manhattan and Brooklyn.
Then came The New York Times feature!
Then the Galaxy Brain album came out. Mind you this is when I found out that Thought Provoking (the YouTube special) had an album too! So basically all of Mary Beth’s album materials were shot by yours truly.
Then it was the posters for the Galaxy Brain Ball (which I didn’t shoot), the Galaxy Brain Blast Off pool party (which I did shoot), bumper stickers, a feature in The Guardian, a feature on betches.com and meme-ish thread by @BookTrib advising on reading material based on “your favorite joke from Galaxy Brain.“ Yeah, so the rollout and the features went crazy and Mary Beath’s team basically said, lets really use these assets hunny, and they did.
And the last thing I’m gonna leave you with is proof that I was actually there. In this AI era you just never know…
Thanks to my bestie Sky Vargas (who also assisted on the shoot and in post) for this all-time fave picture of me doing the Lord’s werk. Like, Mona Lisa could never. Or, like, she did, but she didn’t know, but I know.
