The Jason Aron Effect: Bridging Worlds of Film, Sports, and Culture

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I'm just into what interests other people.

And that's what I think a good story is.

I think far too often things are a little too artsy.

And I think that artsy really is nothing more than saying it's just so niche. Welcome to Mick Unplugged, the number one podcast for self-improvement, leadership, and relentless growth.
No fluff, no filters, just hard-hitting truths, unstoppable strategies, and the mindset shifts that separate the best from the rest. Ready to break limits? Let's go! Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another exciting episode of Mick Unplugged, and we have an award-winning everything.
When I talk about filmmaking, directing, producing, he just told me he is Teaneck, New Jersey's finest. My guy.
Unofficially. There we go.
Jason, how are you doing today? Good. How are you, McMan? It's a pleasure to be here.
Man, I am honored to have you here. I don't get to talk to award-winning people all the time.
Wow. Okay.
Right? So there's so many questions I want to ask. There's so many places I want to go, man.
But let's just talk about you and what got you into this world of entertainment and filmmaking, directing, producing. What got you here? Heavily by accident, to be honest.
My college degree is in criminal justice. I did nothing with it.
I was going to go to law school. Dropped out three months before I was going to start and was just lost.
22 years old, a degree in something I wasn't going to use. What do I do? I had a little bit of a cushion just to hang out for a little bit.
My dad had a sales business and I was always creative. I was always into Photoshop.
And in college i was that guy sitting editing music and um i was a dj in college for a while okay and that kind of pushed me somehow into like web design and graphic design this is the early 2000s okay and i was an okay graphic designer i was i was okay i was all right you know i could still i could still work my way around illustrator and photoshop but that allowed me a platform to you know this is still the early this is before canva right this is before everyone could do it themselves so as long as you could do something you can make some money yeah and um i was designing a bunch of logos for people and doing you know business development in the graphic design space um nothing major and through that I'll never the day, a family friend who had an insurance business said, do you do video? And I said, yeah, of course. I mean, but no, I'd never done a single video in my entire life.
And that was it. That was the genesis of the whole thing.
I went out. He wanted a website and a video for the website.
The irony is he ended up hating how he looked on camera which was probably my fault but um he decided after we shot the video that i went out and bought the camera and did the whole thing he decided that uh we were just going to do a stock video like stock footage video which i made for him but i didn't even need the camera that was the whole point but that was it once i had that started doing corporate video and i think the good thing is that I didn't know what I wanted to do, which allowed me to do a lot of different things.

And, you know, the first television pilot that I shot, which I still think would be a good show that never went anywhere.

It was a show called Music School.

We went to different college music festivals, like, you know, their spring festivals.

We shot our pilot at Rutgers Fest, which was my alma mater.

That was N.E.R.D. played, like shot Pharrell.
Like first thing I ever shot was like Pharrell. It's like, oh, okay.
There you go. And it was a cool show.
We had a Z100 DJ. His name was Nico.
He like hosted the show. I still think that's a cool show and would sell.
Shot a couple of pilots, but along the way just started making money. The corporate video stuff that like everybody does you know dentist's office or like whatever and then 2012 was my big break when i had uh the wild idea to make a documentary about back to the future there we go and so i want to go there next man so actually before i go there let me let me let me pause for a second and give you some appreciation because Because what you do, and I don't think a lot of people, the average person like myself, don't understand storytelling through film, right? It's not just, hey, we're going to go record something.
There's still a story that has to be told that's deeper than the story that's telling, right? Like, how did that become a thing for you? And how, to me, I call it creative genius.

Genius I don't have, but definitely through your work is there.

Like, how important is that for you when you're like,

before you take on a project, like, what's the story?

And then how do you take that story and like, truly tell it?

I think one of the interesting gifts,

and I'll use that word that I have is that what interests me,

I think interests a lot of people.

Mm-hmm. I think one of the interesting gifts, and I'll use that word that I have, is that what interests me, I think, interests a lot of people.
It's a weird gift, but I think over the course of the last 15, 20 years, I've kind of figured that out. I'm into some obscure stuff, and I think you have to be, and I think you have to be a little nuts, and I think you have to be willing to work 22 hours a day sometimes.
Yeah. You need all that.
But I think as we're going to get into kind of that back to the future, Doc, I'm just into what interests other people. And that's what I think a good story is.
I think far too often things are a little too artsy, you know, and I think that artsy really is nothing more than saying it's just so niche, you know, and there's nothing wrong with it. It interests you and maybe it interests 10 other people.
But I find that the stuff that I'm interested in is what interests a million other people or 10 million other people. And it's weird to say this, but I think I'm just an average guy, right? Like I'm just.
No, no, not letting you get away with that, Jason. I think, you know, I like to watch sports and I like to watch movies.
And I, you know, the entertainment that's supposed to appeal to the masses appeals to me. And in turn, I could take that and turn it around.
And the things that become interesting to me become interesting to other people. The documentary I'm working on now, it's about eating healthy.
And, you know, I thought i hit a big cultural moment hitting the 30th anniversary back to the future which was huge and we'll get into it yeah but now i'm doing a documentary about eating healthy i mean everybody eats literally there are so little things that as human beings we all have in common we don't all have the same political beliefs we don't all you know have the same religion we don't all have the same uh wear the same clothing but we all eat we all we all eat we all breathe i don't know that a documentary on breathing would be interesting maybe it would be um but outside of that what do we really all have in common and that wasn't something that i was thinking about when i had the idea for this yeah but over the course of a year producing this documentary and people would say, hey, what are you working on? And I'd say, oh, a documentary about eating healthy. 100% of the people I've talked to have been interested in it or want to strike up a conversation about it or want to know what the angle is.
And that's even, to me, that's like mind blowing because that's a hundred layers beyond back to the future. Yeah.
I have way too many friends in their twenties that have never even seen back to the future. And it's like, oh my God, you know.
Yeah. So, so let's go back to the future yeah um i have way too many friends in their 20s that have never even seen back to the future and it's like oh my god you know yeah so so let's go back to the future first let's because perfect segue because one for you to do a documentary on that was amazing and it's one of my favorite ones by the way so definitely go check it out love that but then two it's hard for films a classic like back to the future one to have three to have a trilogy is hard and then to say not only was there a trilogy and we're gonna do a documentary about it like so so walk us through that whole it was uh the year was 2012 yeah and the genesis story is amazing because i was still working in event film production so i kind of got to that point where i was shooting a lot of weddings, bar mitzvahs, whatever.
And this was sort of the odd phone call. Somebody who was having a bar mitzvah for their son wanted me to make a short film that they were going to play at the bar mitzvah.
And the guy sold insurance. I don't know why I remember my life sold insurance.
But the guy sold insurance. But his calling in life was to be a film producer okay you know um he wanted it so badly he loved that world and so this was his opportunity to write a script and act and produce something and uh it was a little hokey but basically he takes his son who's now 13 takes him back to when he was 13 and then to when his grandfather was 13 and And they do this through a DeLorean time machine.
And they go and they see their grandfathers. And everybody in the family got to be in the film.
And it was fun. Well, he rented a DeLorean.
And this is out in Long Island. And the day that we were filming, everybody who passed by stopped at cars, dead in the street, got out, took pictures of DeLorean.
And I was like, wait a second. It's like I love Back to the Future.
I guess a lot of other people love Back to the Future. But, you know, this is a fairly affluent area of Long Island where, you know, a DeLorean at the time you could buy a perfect condition DeLorean for like 30 grand.
And people are pulling over their $100,000 cars to take a picture of this relic from the early 1980s. And that was it.
That's all it took. And I was like, wow, wow this is incredible i should make a documentary about how the deLorean affects uh so many people all these years later you know from back to the future and that was it that's all it took um and then i just had uh i had the ability because i had the equipment to go out i found the guy up in massachusetts who was a huge collector back to future stuff went up there for a day shot a pitch trailer put it on kickstarter raised 45 000 on the first kickstarter and that was i think we had 600 backers for the first one but that's all it took to know okay this project is viable they want it to be made i thought 45 000 was like a million dollars to make a film okay because to me it's i'm doing it it's all my equipment like that's just so much money i burned through that money in like three months it was gone because our first couple of shoots were in vegas la and like and it was just the travel that just ate through ate through the money yeah um ultimately we had another producer who came on board uh and he invested in the film to become a producer because we had already sort of you know kicked the ball down the hill a little bit so that brought in more money and then we always knew we would do a second kickstarter where we raised 150 000 which to me was 10 million dollars right and um i feel like some of that money was already also spent before we even got it but yeah again it was enough to finish the film so we basically had zero out-of-pocket cost um you know we just had fan investors essentially who got paid back in t-shirts and blu-rays and license plates so you go uh all it took was just that spark and knowing that hey the public wants to make this film it's clear the media attention we got was unbelievable i say we were we were in every publication from national geographic to playboy and that is with no exaggeration we were in both of those publications and everything you know the hot little reporter and all that's you know all the stuff you'd expect but just everyone picked it up And they were sending cars to my house to take me to Dirty Rock to go on MSNBC.

I'll never forget, my second appearance on MSNBC was right before the doc came out.

And I'm on, I don't even remember what the show was.

I'm on the show talking to the host.

And they're like, we have to break.

Bernie Sanders has just announced his run for presidency.

I'm like, okay, I guess Bernie Sanders is booting me.

Right.

And it was just moments like that.

And it kept happening over and over and over.

We were,

we promoted the film at like seven comic cons.

We went to London where we were the opening panel on the main stage of the

London film and comic con.

And the panel after us was 15 members from the original cast of back to the

future.

It was the largest assembly of that. Yeah.
And we were there opening act. And it's just like, how? How does this happen? Amazing.
All because I just sat there and said, oh, I should make a documentary about DeLorean. And oh, three years from now, there's this big 30th anniversary of Back to the Future.
And it's the date in the film, October 21st, 2015, when they go into the future. That would be a good date to release a film.
Yeah's it that's all it took crazy outside of the box but almost simplistic in your thinking right to the point that you get scared because i had the thought well who am i i'm just some you know filmmaker from long island yeah universal studios is going to want to do this like i can't do this because you know they're nope you know and you gain a lot of confidence through an experience like that where you just go no i'm going to do this and i'm going to do it first and i'm going to do it better and i think that once everybody realized how big this anniversary was i'm sure universal would have loved to do it but i was way ahead of them um and so you know i i beat a big studio to the punch, which is it's crazy to think about. And you got to meet, obviously, and talk in films, some of the cast, right? Yeah.
I mean, almost everyone who's in the film, I met. Steven Spielberg is the only one.
He was busy on post-production of film. So he did our interview.
His team basically said, OK, what cameras do you cameras you want to filmed on what's your framing what microphone are you using yeah how do you want to chat send us the questions we'll ask for you um I try to fight back but I lost that battle but everyone you know to to sit this close to Robert Zemeckis and talk to him about a film that he made is like is mind-blowing um Michael J. Fox who lives pretty close to where we are right now I mean we just sat and talked about hockey like we're both like hockey guys.
Yeah. It was mind-blowing.
Michael J. Fox, who lives pretty close to where we are right now.
I mean, we just sat and talked about hockey. Like, we're both like hockey guys.
Yeah. It was weird.
It was weird. Canik firearms have come to California.
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Canik, superior firearms. So what was it like, man? And I'm going to call him Fox because, you know, there's two Fox.
Oh, there's three. Red Fox, Michael J.
Fox, and Jamie Fox, right? Like all of them, you can just call them Fox. Vivica A.
That's true, yeah. Vivica A.
Fox. Can't forget her.
Yes. So the four Foxes, right? You can just call them Fox.
So when you met Michael J., like, what was that really like? Because I can only imagine, like, me sitting here and it's like, holy crap. It's so surreal.
Oddly, I think the date was January 7, 2015. I don't know why I remember that.
And there was a snowstorm here in New York. Yeah.
He has his, like, house and office are combined uptown. I'm not going to not gonna give out his address of course Nor do I remember it but um just the date This is a lot going on right commuting into it So one of the things about this documentary is we did very little filming in New York most of the filming Adam F.
Goldberg who is the writer and creator of the show the Goldbergs on ABC He was an executive executive producer, which is a story in and of itself. But he had come on and he basically gave us carte blanche access to the Sony lot in L.A.
to film as many interviews as we needed on the set of The Goldbergs, which was perfect because that show was set in the 80s. OK.
So the set looked like the 80s. Yeah.
So we had filmed Dean Cundy over there, Leah Thompson. We did on that set that set we i finally convinced adam to get in the documentary i'm like you are a part of this right uh you know because the show had done an episode on the goldbergs which i filmed bts of them filming their episode which was also like another out like out of body experience and uh michael j fox was one of the rare interviews that we did in New york wow i mean almost i off the top of my head i can't even think of another one so the weird part of that is it's not weird for me to wake up in my own bed and go to work i mean i do it all the time but for this documentary to wake up in my own bed get up go into you know come into the city and film an interview that was very different than almost everything else on this project so the build-up wasn't there like i didn't get on a plane i didn't go somewhere i didn't i didn't have to go to a to a movie studio that day yeah i just got up and went and then and it was snowing uh so there's like there's snow which is like you know how it is here it's just a pain yeah so now you're dealing with all that we're unloading a grip truck in the street in the snow and like we had a hand carry everything into his house and make sure that we didn't get snow everywhere because it's this guy's house yeah and the next thing you know and then we're setting up an interview it's like okay i've done this 10 000 times and then michael j fox walks walks it and it's like damn like if nine-year-old me could see this right now right like this is crazy yeah and that's that was it's so out of body and then afterwards like i said we're just talking about hockey like my team's breaking down and we're just oh yeah i go to the ranger games all the time oh yeah where do you sit oh yeah yeah i'm friends with cam neely and you know you know and he's he's canadian and yeah um you know he's a bruins guy and a rangers guy and it's just so weird and then i saw him again a few times uh london film and comic-con was one of them and you know we got like the semi-vip treatment at all these things and and like we were just like kind of hang out backstage just talk and yeah it's weird to be you end up on the same level as these people that like you watch on tv and you know when you're a kid like these these people are heroes yeah uh athletes and actors and whatever and then and then they just become a part of your life it's it's it's a weird place to be what's something cool that most people don't know about michael j fox oh i think now when you see him with the disease everyone's like oh is he okay you know like how was it is yet his mind he is sharp as yeah attack like you know he has a he has a physical physical ailment yeah but um you know when you when you see the tremors and you see the shaking i think to a viewer it makes you uncomfortable but when you're kind of a foot away from him and talking he's just he's that guy yeah he's still that guy and i know he's in a lot of pain and um obviously he's basically given up on acting except for sort of weird either commercial things or one-off appearances but um it's it's sad i i liken him to i think this is crazy opinion here i think that michael j fox would have had about 50 of the roles that jason bateman's had in the last 10 years.
Can totally see that. Can totally see that.
I don't know why, but that came to me one day and I'm like, I'm positive. I feel like they're in the same lane.
And, you know, Michael J. Fox is Michael J.
Fox. I feel like he would have had so many of those roles.
Agree. And Jason Bateman tries hard to kind of be the bad guy, too.
I think he wants that for himself yeah you know even like a role like he had an ozark let's say right you know he's he's good but he's bad right i don't know that michael j fox fits into those roles but i feel like so many parts i've seen jason bateman have and he's blown up he's huge of course that would have been that would have been michael j fox i could see that i could see that and so like right after that, I shouldn't say right after, but sometime after that, right? You also had to work with probably the most tantalizing sports event ever, at least at that time. And I'd say still probably.
It's probably ever. Yeah.
Yeah. Ever.
And for those that don't know, we're talking Floyd Mayweather, Con mcgregor jason how did that come about you know what that's another one that's no no planning right place right time um what's fun about my career is that i did not stay in one lane i think that's my my brain that just fires you know in a million different directions all the time um it's funny i'll run into somebody on a pickleball court and they say, oh, what do you do? Like totally out of context. And I just say video production because I don't even – that's – what do you say? And they're like, oh, that's cool.
They're like, yeah, it's fine. Let's just end it.
I've got a trophy back home though. You can see my awards.
But yeah, no. So we, I had gotten into a lot of live production after the documentary just because it was, again, a natural progression.
I was doing live production when I was shooting weddings still. I would get the weird phone call like, hey, I know you do like some live stream stuff.
And this is before live streams, live stream. My grandma can't make it up from Florida for the wedding.
Can we live stream the wedding for her? And that got me in like really at the ground stages of the prosumer live stream world and equipment and how to and figuring all this stuff out. Believe me, when we got to COVID, it was a great skill to have.
I was one of the busiest men on earth during COVID. And I go.
And I truly believe that. But one of our clients at the time was Showtime.
I was working full-time at an agency. And we were just following their boxing weeks and making like little video clips like for social media.
And that grew. That relationship grew into, hey, you know, we have these press conferences like after fights.
And some guy is like throwing it up on Facebook Live on his iPad. Do you guys think you could do something a little better? And we're like, yeah, we can definitely do something a little better.
Yeah. So ultimately what happened is the agency that I was at, we became Showtime's digital arm for all the ancillary events that were not the fight during the fight week.
So that was press conferences, weigh-ins. Yeah.
That grew into doing a lot of these pre-shows. So we would do some of the fights.
So if – let's say – for those that don't know, if you ever watch boxing on TV, you see usually four fights, maybe five. Right.
But when you go to the stadium, there are 12 fights that happen or 10 fights. It's a long day.
Yeah. Long night.
Yes. It's a long night.
I mean it's crazy because when you turn on that pay-per-view at 9 o'clock, they've usually been fighting since like 4 or 5 o'clock. Exactly.
And at 4 or 5 o'clock, they're fighting for nobody because the stands are empty. 10 people.
Yeah. You hear like the fighter's mom like, go Mike! Right.
You know, like that's what it is. Yeah.
And so we started, not those fights, but basically like 7 to 9, that was us. Yeah.
And then, you know, the truck production would take over. So we started doing all that for Showtime and it became very cost effective for them to use a smaller digital crew that didn't have the expense of two trucks and union labor and all this stuff.
20 people. Right.
And so we would do a lot of times they would do a kickoff press conference for a fight that let's let's just call it a pay-per-view that kind of knew would have legs. Instead of just doing a press conference four days before the fight, they would do a press conference right after they announced it, like like anything else in sports.
Right. You sign a player for a seven year contract, do a press conference.
So same deal. They sign up a big fight.
We would do the press conference. And that was flying all over the place and, you know, doing these things.
And I mean, again, I'm underselling it it it became very turnkey and it was it was a very repeatable process and it was great well 2017 floyd mayweather has uh come to the end of his career and decides he's going to fight conor mcgregor now anytime floyd mayweather floyd mayweather was boxing floyd mayweather still boxes these stupid exhibition fights and people still watch and he gets paid a fortune to do it. At the time, this was going to be his last professional fight.
This was fight number 50. And he was fighting at the time by far the most polarizing, exciting fighter in the UFC, Conor McGregor.
And they decided to do a press tour, which not unheard of. It was going to be a four-city press tour.
uh new york london and toronto was the fourth location london was last the other three first we started west and moved east and floyd had done i think floyd had done like 10 city press tours when he fought like my donna and stuff like that um shout out to kelly swanson who put all those things together for for all these years and we were doing this thing. Yeah.
And they asked us, the digital team, to come in and just stream these press conferences because, you know, they weren't going to bring in the whole truck production for this. It was too much.
And not only that, there needed to be some level of being nimble because we were in L.A. on Monday and Toronto on Tuesday.
You can't move trucks that fast yeah um it's impossible and

showtime had their own truck that you know they own their truck uh for their for their fight production so i don't know if that was part of the equation like well we can't even physically do this we'd have to rent broadcast trucks in different cities so let's just use the guys to do digital stuff mick i was in so far over my head on this uh first of all this was going out It's a linear television.

It was my first experience doing that.

We were in these the i say ah we were in la and new york we were at the staples center and the barclay center okay those locations right and in toronto we were at a 10 000 seat amphitheater uh that you know it was outdoors i did a lot of music stuff there and whatever and i'll tell you a great story from toronto but now Toronto. But now I'm playing with the big boys now.
Yes, sir. And we're doing these shows.
And I think what Showtime didn't have the forethought to realize, I don't know that anybody did, was this was going to be the biggest thing. Ever.
Not in sports. Ever.
In pop culture. Ever.
Yes. You could not – fast forward to the fight, which happened over that summer.
I remember walking in and we're just on the floor and i did the post fight so during the fight i was just walking around and we were kind of on the on the floor level the vip level yeah roger clemens walks in with the owner of the astros okay and then i hear somebody behind me yo tobe tobe and i turn out like toby mcguire's like all right spiderMan's here. Then A-Rod's over there.
J-Lo's right there. Jamie Foxx, the other Fox we mentioned earlier.

He's three feet away from me in my right.

It was – Shaq was there, of course.

This was the biggest cross-section of entertainment people that I had ever seen.

And I've been to some major boxing events.

I've been to the Super Bowl.

I've never been at an event where you would just have this feeling,

if you're not here tonight, you're nowhere because this is it yeah this is this is the mecca that's you know this is the coliseum in rome you know it like you know 500 years ago this is this is where it was at yeah and we that event was just so big and we ended up streaming like 10 streams for that fight because we did we did the four then we did five fight week and uh i'll tell you the great toronto story i'll never forget there was nowhere there was no like backstage area for us to set up so it's a very big stage in the amphitheater they had the press conference in the middle of the stage and we're just off on the side of the stage like just behind like where the curtains would be but on the stage so i'm here and there's the press conference happening right in front of me so my whole setup it's it's you know it's portable we're on a couple tables and i'm just sitting there and and also you wouldn't believe how small of a crew we did this with we had a camera operator on every camera yeah it was me my guy shy who ran all the audio stuff yeah and then i had a another technician from our company who didn't really have much live experience,

but was like an extra set of hands for me to like cut cameras.

So I'd tell him like, all right, just press, you know, camera two, camera three, camera

four.

Yeah.

That's all he knew.

Just to press one, two, three, four, five, whatever it was.

Yeah.

And that was the whole production crew.

That was it.

Wow.

And then, and then a camera operator on every camera.

And it was like, you're telling me you did that with, for that?'s all that's all it was um and it was everywhere dude watching that doc i would not have thought that at all it was everywhere um you know and of course there's so much media there and they were doing behind you know behind the fight and all that stuff but we were just like i said we were the production crew to actually make that live production was nothing and even still those videos on youtube millions of views yeah but that doesn't even count all the television stations that picked it up all over the world uh you know and their views and whatever it was just it was wild so i'm sitting in toronto i'm on the stage i'm at the computer and like you know when you feel somebody coming up on you like you know you kind of have that i look over my shoulder and i'm like drake standing over my shoulder staring at my computer uh just watching me like cut the shell out i'm just like oh hey he's like hey it's like what that was that press tour it just certain things in life that you work on, they just become so much bigger than you could ever imagine. Canik firearms have come to California.
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Canik, Superior Firearms. You didn't think that was going to be big when you started it? As I grabbed you as your supporter.
It's interesting because we got to, you know, I've gotten to work on some really big fights. And, you know, Javante Davis now is one of the biggest fighters in boxing.
I've done a ton of his fights. The magnitude's just not there.
And you hear the stories of like floyd and in his prime and what those fight weeks were like or tyson back in the 90s um and i worked the andre burdo fight that floyd mayweather fought which was fight 49 yeah that was kind of went once we had made our segue into showtime and like same guy right it's it's Floyd May mayweather and that fight was basically a dud he just he just danced around yeah he just danced around for most of it threw a couple punches got the win so no you can't imagine that i mean that fight was and i've talked to so many people i've become friendly with a lot of people work work in media and combat sports. That fight was just the perfect soup of just bringing two sports together, selling us on the idea that Conor McGregor had a chance of winning that fight.
Floyd might get knocked out. Right.
Which there was no chance. He wasn't going to get touched.
There was no chance. And the people that really knew knew.
but i think even me who had been covering boxing for a couple years at that point like i believed because connor made you believe because he was one of the best salesmen yeah uh out there and yeah i mean that fight was great until the fight started you know everything about the promotion was great till the fight started and you're like wait a little different like what? Foot speed, a little different. Like, Conor was heavy.
And Conor looked awkward throwing punches. Right, right.
Foot speed. And that's what boxing has become now.
I mean, the fights that sell are these celebrity fights. You know, it's Jake Paul, Mike Tyson.
Like, that fight did incredibly well for Netflix. Also, great business model.
Same, had some of the same elements. Yeah.
But, you know, you can't fake Floydyd mayweather who's still active at the time he was older but still active and conor mcgregor who's at the peak of his prime yeah you can't fake that with a boxer who's a celebrity boxer who nobody's ever thought was really all that good and jake paul right and mike tyson who's 56 like you're not right but it had a lot of those elements like oh this guy can knock out mike tyson or oh mike tyson's gonna finally knock i mean everyone's still waiting for jake paul to get knocked out right um and it hasn't happened and it won't happen because the people making his fights won't put him against me to knock him out and there are i mean there's two dozen boxers out there that can knock out jake paul in two rounds there there are. But then the show stops.
Then the story ends. And the money runs out.
Exactly. So why would they do that? Totally get it.
It's a business. And most of those boxers that can knock Jake Paul out won't sell tickets.
Because you don't even know who they are. And it's sad that you have to.
I mean, I hate to say it, but I worked on the Evander Holyfield fight. I mean, this is a career moment.
Donald Trump called that fight. Yeah.
This is down in Florida. It's in between presidencies.
He was, I guess, hanging out in Mar-a-Lago. Didn't have much to do.
Triller puts on this fight. It's Oscar De La Hoya fighting Vitor Belfort.
Again, like this boxing crossover with an active MMA fighter, like right at end. And Oscar was certainly big enough to carry this fight and then he got COVID.
I think it was two weeks before the fight he gets COVID. Triller spent all the money.
What do we do? They call Oscar... They call Evander Holyfield sitting on the couch also in his 50s.
Now the thing with Evander is again, Evander could sell fights. He had enough of a name to like salvage this thing evander's in shape all the time right he looks like he could fight right now right but looks like he could fight and can fight are two totally different when the bell goes off and you got a shuffle it's like oh wait wait a second and i remember 58 year old hips yep and i remember and i remember his his media workout because they did a media workout and it just everything looks looks slow.
And I did that production. And I remember telling my camera operator, shoot really tight because really tight, like slow doesn't look that slow.
Yeah. And wide, slow looks really slow.
And I remember watching it and I go, I think Saturday night is going to be ugly. And it was – I mean he got got knocked out.
Like it was, that was the one time I ever worked a fight that I think everybody working the fight felt dirty. Like, why are we doing this? Why is this happening? But Trump called that fight.
It was, that was crazy. You know, I'm just, I have a picture of like me in a suit standing there.
I'm like, I just put his earpiece in. crew so i'm also the guy doing that right right and um and the day before the shoot they're like oh your entire crew has to go through secret service uh like background checks and almost everyone made it through and i was like oh god then we had to like negotiate deals like okay can we sit in the hallway they won't be in the room with him like all this is the only time I've ever had to deal with this on a production.
And I just have a picture of me standing over him and Donald Jr. And he's like looking up at me like this.
And I'm like, yeah, yeah. I was telling him, you know.
Yeah. But it's just a funny picture.
It's just a weird time. That's crazy.
Another weird time. Good stuff, man.
So now we're going to fast forward to the new documentary, right, right? Netflix. But before we go there, I want to ask you a question that probably is going to lead to to this.
On Make Unplugged, we talk about your because that thing that's deeper than your why. Right.
Like for me, why is superficial? Your because is what holds you accountable to getting things done. So if I were to say, Jason, man, what's your because like what's deeper than your why that's like making you do the things you do i have a burning desire to create if i don't you know there are days that go by where there's no shoot right i don't have a shoot every day i wish i did i guess but you know are just days that you don't.
And if there's a day and you're sitting around the house and, you know, you're watching TV and, like, you just get to the end of the day, like, it feels so unproductive. And it's almost a double negative, but I don't know how to not create and I don't feel right when I don't.
And that could beiktoks like that could that could just be making a five second tiktok and putting it out there but you're creating and you're putting something out in the world and then you're watching to see if people watch it i mean the instant gratification that you get from you know social media is uh it's a drug love it the irony is the one platform i've never tried to to uh kind of grow is my own instagram that's the one that I've never, you know, it's a drug. Love it.
The irony is the one platform I've never tried to kind of grow is my own Instagram.

That's the one that I've never – it's just like people that I know. That's it.
But I mean my TikTok, I've grown like way bigger than Instagram because I'm doing that more as a creative outlet to like put videos out there and see if I can hit the algorithm and like all this stuff. um i i need that because the double negative there is if i don't have it i feel incomplete and and unwhole and that's what's cool about doing a big documentary project that unlike doing contract work and doing shows you know there's a date of that show there's a meeting for the show there's a pre-pro and then a setup and then you do the show yeah and then it's it's over.
Yeah. With a documentary, especially something that I'm writing and directing, there's this sense of like it's there.
Like for the entire duration of the project, it's going on. It's happening.
And my brain's always working. You know, right now we're getting towards the end of production.
This doc, I haven't even turned on a television. I haven't watched since the Super Bowl.
Yeah. I don't think I've turned on a television.
Okay. And by the way, I was working during the Super Bowl also.
So, like, I was directing a concert and then there was, like, a screen with the Super Bowl on. First time that's ever happened in my life.
Wow. Because I am a big sports fan.
Yeah. But I haven't watched TV at all because my mind is so in, like, create mode.
Yeah. And I think that is deeper than the why.
Yeah. Because you could think about the why.
I think the because is innately buried inside of you. Exactly.
Exactly. I love that, dude.
Like my thing is, my because is the promise that I keep, right? So the promise that I made to my mom when I was 10 years old, I'm keeping that promise. The promise that I made to my kids, I keep that promise.
And that's what's deeper, right? Like my why are my kids, my why are my family, but it's because I make all of them a promise and I fulfill that promise every day, or at least I try to fulfill that promise every day, but it's the promise that's my because. I love that.
And I think the people that are closest to me in my life, it's hard for them to necessarily understand the hours that I put in or the fact that like there's no five o'clock bell. Right.
And that when my phone rings at 10 o'clock at night for work, I don't think twice about answering it. Yeah.
Because that's how it's been for the last literally 20 years. Like that doesn't stop.
And I'm sure plenty of people would tell me how unhealthy that is, um, that there's no work life balance, but like work is life and not that it should be, but it's my life. Yeah.
Um, and that's because I don't have a job, you know, I'm not doing a job that I hate. Right.
It's so cliche to say, Oh, you know, do something you love and you'll never work a day in your life. But it's true.
Find anybody who does what and they'll agree you know cliches are cliches for a reason yeah i live that dream every day i love what i do right so i never feel like i'm working i never have a problem being on a laptop and yeah you need to make time for yourself and you need to get away and you need to unplug and you need to go on vacation you need to do all those things because you know mental health is a thing but yeah but i am programmed to just constantly be thinking about creating and working and, you know, that next success. Money's never been a driver for me ever.
I like it. I mean, you know, tell me somebody with money who doesn't like it.
But that's never been a driver for me. It's never about, like, making the next dollar.
It's about doing's about doing the next thing, creating the next thing, being successful at the next thing.

That's the driver.

And that is, I feel so deeply inside of me.

I don't have to think about it.

I don't have to make it a part of what I do.

It is me.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So let's get healthy for a moment.

Right.

So I love when we started and you said you thought about commonalities and people and everybody breathes and everybody eats. The fact that you could just do that that simply, bro, like I'm seeing the story of Jason a little bit, right? It's the simplicity of things that you can make creative and go.
So talk to us about the documentary. How did it start? Where is it going? All of that.
Same genesis that same genesis i sat i was having conversation i think it was with my girlfriend and i said you know the price of healthy food is expensive but i i don't know i feel i feel like it's overblown like it doesn't have to be that expensive that was it that was all it took

to get the wheels in motion and um so i was traveling a lot back and forth to raleigh at the time and i was coming home and i kind of had this idea i think it was over like the christmas season 2023 are you talking raleigh north carolina yes oh that's where i just moved from oh nice yeah spend a lot of time down there and so i go to the airport and i'm sitting in the delta lounge at the airport and literally in like 20 minutes i did basically the entire research this entire documentary wow um came up with the name the price of health uh again simple right i mean the back to future documentary is called back in time right you know play on the song right you know and i researched who i would want in it what like kind of what we could touch on finding out that nobody ever did it obviously that's that's the big piece of it because there have been a gazillion documentaries on food i mean that's not new yeah uh but just finding the unique angle of you know essentially what this documentary became is the inverse supersize me to the point that it was so obvious that i was uploading transcripts into chat gpt to organize them and i asked chat gpt do you understand what this trend and i said yes this project is like the opposite of supersize me i was like okay, I'm done with the machines. But that's what it is.
And I think the benefit of what I'm doing over Super Size Me, Super Size Me is entertainment, right? So this guy went to McDonald's, ate McDonald's every day. But what do you learn? Not to eat McDonald's? I mean, I think that's fairly common sense at this point.
Nobody's going to tell you, what do you mean McDonald's isn't healthy? Right. Every day.
Right. You may want it.
You may eat it, but I don't think anyone's going to be pitching how healthy it is. Right.
So what I want to do with this project is start at the top. Look at healthy food.
You know, my documentary is called The Price of Health, and we're looking at how much does it cost to eat healthy? Well, the problem with that question is there are two variables. If you go back to high school math, there's two variables in that that need to be defined.
One is what's healthy, and the other one is what's expensive. One of those answers cannot be answered, which is what's expensive, because expensive is going to be different to everyone.
Every person, right. What can largely be answered and then there's room for exploration on certain other things i think as i've done this the biggest problem with the healthy food conversation is that people get so caught up in trying to be perfect that they do nothing because you can start talking about oils and then oh but this oil but then that and then it's not a hundred percent and oh there's this chemical and that's an additive, that doesn't mean you can start talking about oils and then, oh, but this oil, but then that, and then it's not 100% and, oh, there's this chemical and that, and that's an additive.
That doesn't mean you can't just be better. Right.
And I think that even outside of food, just be a little bit better every day. And, you know, that's a great way to live your life.
Yeah. And that's kind of how I look at food.
And I didn't, I wasn't extreme in this project in any way. It wasn't.
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You know, ultimately I did a 30-day experiment where I ate healthy for 30 days. Well, what to find healthy? There were no extreme guardrails on it, but it was was eat whole foods don't eat things that you know have a million ingredients and that were that are cooked in a ton of oil or that are fried i think largely we know or with a little a teeny tiny bit of research you know what's kind of healthy i had no macro counts i wasn't counting calories and in 30 days you know we added up the number and that's a secret for the end and uh even the health results i'll give away some of them i mean i lost 10 pounds and 10 of body fat in 30 days how just by eating healthy there was no exercise involved i play pickleball so okay because i played before i continued to play because i didn't change any variables the only variable that changed was just eating there was no working out there's no exercise no gym just ate healthy and when you define when you define healthy what's what is that for you so it was a lot of um eating chicken eating fish eating steak although i had to cut that out because i had taken i took blood tests before and after as well and like found oh my cholesterol is really high so we cut out a lot of the red meat stuff um it was eating quinoa and eating frozen vegetables frozen vegetables are i found this out during the project just as healthy if not healthier than fresh because they're flash frozen as soon as they're picked so okay frozen vegetables get vegetables get a bad rap.
It doesn't feel like you're eating at a gourmet restaurant when you have peas and carrots on your plate, but they're just as good for you, if not better. And a serving of frozen vegetables at a big box store is about 45 cents.
Serving quinoa is 45 cents. You can buy salmon, even frozen pre-ackaged pieces, about $4 a piece.

That's a meal for $5.

And those are the changes that you start making.

You know, the snack stuff, I use Thrive Market.

The CEO of Thrive Market is in the documentary.

I use them just to order a bunch of snacks, see how it is.

I did some meal prep with a company called Eat Clean Bro.

They've been around for a while.

They kind of started servicing the finance guys and then the gym world. And is that something I would regularly do? Their meals are about $12 each if you order for a week and do the pricing.
Is that something I would regularly do? Probably not. But gave me a little bit of variables in there.
Got some sauce on stuff because you just stay away from sauce. But at at the same time met what most people's calorie goals three meals about 1800 calories you know three of those meals a day and then filled in with some snacks and cut out the snacks there was no there were no potato chips there was no doritos there was no chocolate um you know i make ice cream at home in a ninja creamy so it's relatively inexpensive and it's super healthy and loaded with protein.
You know, watching that, watching protein every day, making sure you're having protein in every meal. I didn't want this to be a film about a specific diet.
And that's absolutely not what it is. Right.
It's about being mindful of what you're eating, being mindful that, hey, you know, having protein, fat and carbs in every meal is important. Yeah.
And showing that you can lose weight, lose body fat without counting a single calorie, almost doing it by accident, because that's just what's going to happen. And mindfulness.
Mindfulness is probably the one thing that comes out of this documentary the most that we're all busy. I mean, I just talked about working 22 hour days.

Yeah.

All busy.

But, you know, I think when you do anything for yourself, when you go to the spot and get a massage, you get satisfaction out of that, taking that time and doing something for yourself.

And these meals that I was making, these are not gourmet meals.

Like this is stuff that like open a package, pour some rub on it, put it in the oven.

Like this is not complicated. The frozen vegetable stuff like broccoli, bag, microwave, five minutes.
And sure, you can get to what do you mean the microwave and you can't microwave food and it's not good. Yes, I understand that I wasn't trying to reach this 100% pinnacle of how to be.
It was just being healthier and making the right choices. Absolutely.
Sadly there are people in this country that don't know that like fried chicken's bad for you because they think it's chicken and but it's fried and that that's that's a real thing right and you know no i have friends that are prescatarians that love fried fish and i'm like well okay okay exactly exactly and i found for myself because fat's not an issue i didn't know this but i could drink olive oil out of a bottle and get only benefits from it um yeah there there are so many health benefits to olive oil as long as it's olive oil not canola oil not who knows what they're frying stuff with it at you know at some of these restaurants uh but if you're not worried about fat intake then yeah drink olive oil till the till the cows come home so yeah i could doubt stuff but then you go to the restaurant you get those vegetables and they're nice and soft i mean they're soft because they're drenched in oil but like what is it what oil right probably not that extra virgin olive oil right so things like that and i think this project is going to help a lot of people.

So many health documentaries that I had seen, they're just so specific. Don't touch me and you could do this.
Don't touch this or you can't eat anything out of the ocean. We're killing the oceans.
And these are great documentaries and they're based in research and science and that's fine. But going back to the beginning, do they reach the masses? does it hit that 80% of people who are not the 10% extreme

not the 10% not the 10 at the other end 80 in the middle and speak to them in different ways like oh i i could do this oh i could exercise i could change my diet a little bit oh if i just stopped doing that and you know eating doesn't have to be restrictive it certainly wasn't for me there are things are things that I did not eat. But if I was hungry, I ate.
It wasn't like I had an intermittent fast. I mean, there are benefits to all these things.
But I think I stayed away from the extremes and just ate and had a good time. I love it.
So when is the documentary coming out and where? Although I said it earlier. But for the listeners and viewers, this is a big deal.
We are looking at Netflix.

There are some other players involved.

I actually had a great talk with our sales agent this week.

And, you know, the documentary space is weird right now,

just in terms of who's spending money and who's not in the studios.

But when is a little easier.

We're going into post right now.

Aside from the interview that I'm shooting in an hour, um, we're basically wrapped on all the interviews. I already did the 30 day challenge.
Um, there's going to be a little bonus at the end where I work out for 30 days and see kind of what that does to my body. Okay.
You know, that was one of the recommendations I got from a doctor in the documentary early on was you need to be strength training. You're at that age where you don't use it and train and build muscle.
You lose it. it yeah so that's going to kind of be the footnote to the documentary that you know health is not it's not just about eating eating is definitely the most important piece but uh your own life's journey through health can have different twists and turns we'll see what that does over over the course of a month i think it'll be positive so i'm going to do that but we're going to go into post at the same time because again i know where that's going to fit into the film so i don't need to wait a month to shoot it right and then from there we uh probably 60 to 90 days in post and then one thing we're looking at is a big film festival release so don't know where that would be uh if you kind of know what film festivals are going to be in early 2026 you can figure out what we're targeting.
Yep. And then from there, the streaming release.
Okay. So that's the plan.
But, I mean, super exciting. It's crazy to think that Back in Time came out 10 years ago this year.
Yeah. 10 years flies.
I've been in contact with Bob Gale, who's the writer of Back to the Future. And I know that they're planning some stuff this year because now it's the 40th anniversary correct correct right it just it just kind of creeps up on you so amazing to think i've worked on another feature-length talk about travel uh in the middle that is still it needs some refinement gotcha never got to the fit and covid kind of killed that as we were sort of getting to the finish line.
Maybe I'll pick that back up. Maybe I won't.
Who knows? But to think it's been, you know, 10 years since the last release. I mean, I could not be looking forward to that more because the only thing more fun than working on a long-term project is releasing the long-term project.
There you go. There you go.
So two questions. I'm going to get you out of here.
I know you're know you're busy being gracious with your time. So here we go.
Rapid fire two questions. When are you going to do the podcast documentary on the world of podcasts and how that came? And then part two of that question.
Do I get to be the superstar? since it was your idea definitely yes to the second question and the first question I like that I like that idea

I would definitely be ready to do that

alright idea definitely yes to the second question thank you and the first question i like that i like that idea i would i would definitely be ready to do that all right you know we get we get we get some of the big names at the top some of the small names at the bottom that's a good i'll go to the bottom i'm good no i mean you know i'm thinking rogan's got to be in there of course but then uh yeah i think this is uh that could that could be next i had another i had another good idea too uh the other day which i already i forgot uh-oh but yeah it was podcasting yeah it is yeah the world of things down there you go you know there you go and then last question where can people find and follow you where do you want them to know ah so instagram the one that i don't optimize is uh jason underscore aaron it's one a a r o n-N. And that's the best place.
Okay. And, of course, shout out to Youngry, which is the agency that we just started.
Young and hungry. So, Youngry.
I love that. Yeah.
It was Anker's name. Shout out to Anker Garg who came up with that.
But started that early this year. That's kind of where we're taking all our talents on the sort of corporate and production side.
You know, Youngry is a full-service marketing agency. I had a video on Creative there.
So all of Youngry's socials are another good place because he does a much better job of promoting us than I do. There we go.
Ladies and gentlemen, this has been my guy, Jason Aaron. Jason, thank you so, Jason.
Thank you so much for for breaking bread with us today, man.

Anytime.

You got it.

No bread, though.

We're staying off the carbs.

There we go.

Because you told me to.

For all the viewers and listeners, remember, your because is your superpower.

Go unleash it.

You're awesome, brother.

Dude.

That was great.

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