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, you know, and and I think that artsy really is nothing more than saying it's just so niche and

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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another exciting episode of Mic Unplugged. And we have an award-winning everything. When I talk about filmmaking, directing, producing...

He just told me he is T-Neck, New Jersey's finest. My guy. Unofficially. There we go. Jason, how are you doing today? Good. How are you, McMahon? 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? Like 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. Yeah. Dropped out three months before I was going to start and was just.

Lost, you know 22 years old a degree in something. I wasn't gonna use what do I do? I had a little bit of a Cushion just to hang out for a little bit. Yeah, my dad had a sales business and you know, I was always creative I was always into Photoshop and in college I was that guy sitting editing music and 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 always okay. I was all right You know, I could still I could still work my way around illustrator 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 and I was designing a bunch of logos for people and doing you know business development in the graphic design space and

Nothing major and through that i'll never forget the day a family friend who had an insurance business said Do you do video and I said, yeah, of course, I mean, um, but no i'd never done a single video my entire life And uh, and that was it. That was the genesis of the whole thing. I went out Um, he wanted a website and a video for the website Okay, 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 we were just going to do a stock video, 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, um, you know, the first television pilot that I shot, which I still think would be a good show that never went anywhere. Uh, it was a show called music school. We went to different college, um, music festivals, like, you know, their spring festivals. We shot our pilot at Rutgers fest, which was my alma mater. Um,

that was NERD 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 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 what you do, and I don't think a lot of people, the average person like myself, don't understand storytelling through film. 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. 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. How important is that for you when you're like, before you take on a project, what's the story? And then how do you take that story and 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. It's a weird thing.

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. 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

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, 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...

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 of 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 have the same religion. We don't all wear the same clothing. But we all eat. We all eat. We all breathe. I don't know that a documentary on breathing would be interesting. Maybe it would be.

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 100 layers beyond Back to the Future. 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. Yeah. So let's go Back to the Future first. Let's go. 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 um

Bar mitzvahs, whatever. Yeah. 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 everyone in my life sells insurance. But the guy sold insurance. But his calling in life was to be a film producer. Okay. You know? 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 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 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...

And everybody who passed by stopped their cars, dead in the street, got out, took pictures of this 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. Right.

And that was it. That's all it took. And I was like, wow, this is incredible. I should make a documentary about how the DeLorean affects so many people all these years later, you know, from Back to the Future. And that was it. That's all it took. And then I just had...

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 the 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. Because to me, I'm doing it. It's all my equipment. That's just so much money. I burned through that money in like three months. It was gone. It was gone.

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. 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. Right. And, um,

I feel like some of that money was already also spent before we even got it. But again, it was enough to finish the film. So we basically had zero out of pocket costs. Um, you know, we just had fan investors essentially who got paid back in t-shirts and blu-rays and license plates. So, 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 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 Hollywood Reporter and all that, 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 30 Rock to go on MSNBC. I'll never forget my second appearance on MSNBC. It was right before the doc came out and I'm on. I don't 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, OK, I guess I guess Bernie Sanders is booing me. Right. And it was just moments like that. It kept happening over and over and over. We were.

Yeah.

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, 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. That'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. And so, you know, 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 with 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 and film, so he did our interview. His team basically said, okay, what cameras do you want to film on? What's your framing? What microphone are you using? How do you want it shot? Send us the questions. We'll ask for you.

Um, I try to fight back, but, uh, 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. It was, it was weird. It was weird. So, so what was it like, man? And,

I'm going to call him Fox because, you know, there's two or three Red Fox, Michael J. Fox and Jamie Fox. Right. Like all of them. You can just give a fox. Vivica A. That's true. Yeah. Vivica A. Fox. Can't forget her. Yes. So the four foxes. Right. You can just call him Fox. So when you met Michael J., like, what was that really like? Because I can only imagine like me sitting here is 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 house and office are combined. Yeah. Uptown. Not going to give out his address. Of course. Nor do I remember it. But just the date. Yeah.

So there's 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 producer, which is a story in and of itself. Mm-hmm.

Uh, but he had come on and he basically gave us carte blanche access to the Sony lot in LA to film as many interviews as we needed on the set of the Goldbergs, which was perfect because that show was set in the eighties. Okay. So the set looked like the eighties. Yeah. So we've, we had filmed Dean Cundy over there, uh,

Leah Thompson, we did on that set. I finally convinced Adam to get in the documentary. I'm like, you are a part of this. Right. Because the show had done an episode on the Goldbergs, which I filmed BTS of them filming their episode, which was also another out-of-body experience. And Michael J. Fox was one of the rare interviews that we did in New York. Wow. I mean, almost...

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 buildup wasn't there. Like I didn't get on a plane. I didn't go somewhere. I didn't have to go to a movie studio that day. I just got up and went and then it was snowing.

So there's snow, which is like, you know how it is here. It's just a pain. So now you're dealing with all that. We're unloading a grip truck in the street in the snow. And we had to hand carry everything into his house and make sure that we didn't get snow everywhere because it's this guy's house. And the next thing you know, and then we're setting up an interview. And it's like, okay, I've done this 10,000 times. And then Michael J. Fox walks in. And it's like, damn, if nine-year-old me could see this right now, 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, 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, and he's, he's Canadian. Yeah. 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 would 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? His mind, he is sharp as attack. Like, you know, he has a physical disease. A physical ailment. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, 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 there. I feel like they're in the same lane and they're,

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 in Ozark, let's say. Right. You know, 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 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, Conor 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 brain that just fires in a million different directions all the time. It's funny. I'll run into somebody on a pickleball court and they say, oh, what do you do? Totally out of context. And I just say, video production. Because I don't even... 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. Yeah, no, so we...

I had gotten into a lot of live production after the documentary just because it was, again, a natural progression of my career. I was doing live production when I was shooting Wedding still. Yeah.

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. Could 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 truly believe that. But

I, uh, 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 guys 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. 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 that grew into doing a lot of these pre-shows. So we would do some of the fights. So if let's say, you know, 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. So it's a long day. Yeah. Long night. Yes. It's a long night. I mean, it's crazy because, you know, that when you turn on that pay-per-view at nine o'clock, they've usually been fighting since like four or five o'clock. Exactly. And at four or five o'clock, they're fighting for nobody because the stands are empty. Yeah. You hear like the fighter's mom, like, like, that's, that's, that's what it is. Yeah. And, um,

So we started not those fights, but basically like seven to nine. 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, 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 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 doing these things. And I mean, again, I'm underselling it. It became very turnkey and it was a very repeatable process and it was great. Well, 2017, Floyd Mayweather has 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 watching 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 um 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 la uh

uh new york london and toronto was the fourth location london was last the other three first uh 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. Like it was, it was too much. And not only that, there needed to be some level of being nimble because we were in LA on Monday and Toronto on Tuesday. You can't move trucks that fast. Yeah. It's impossible. And Showtime had their own truck that, you know, they own their truck 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 who do digital stuff. Mick, I was in so far over my head on this.

First of all, this was going out to linear television. It was my first experience doing that. We were in these... I say we were in LA and New York. We were at the Staples Center and the Barclays Center. Those are the locations. And in Toronto, we were at a 10,000-seat amphitheater. It was outdoors. They did a lot of music stuff there and whatever. And I'll tell you a great story from Toronto. But

Now I'm dealing – like 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 floor level, the VIP level. Yeah. And Roger Clemens walks in with the owner of the Astros. And then I hear somebody behind me, yo, Tobe, Tobe. And I turn around, it's like Tobey Maguire. It's like, all right, Spider-Man's here. Then like A-Rod's over there. J-Lo's right there. Jamie Foxx, the other Foxx we mentioned earlier. He's three feet away from me. Shaq was there, of course. This was the biggest cross-section of entertainment-

people that i've never seen i've and i've been to some major boxing events i've been to super bowl like yeah 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 the four, then we did five fight week. And I'll tell you the great Toronto story I'll never forget. There was no backstage area for us to set up, so it was a very big stage in the Sampa Theater. They had the press conference in the middle of the stage, and we're just off on the side of the stage, just behind 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 portable. We're on a couple tables, and I'm just sitting there. And also, you wouldn't believe how small of a crew we did this with. We had a camera operator on every camera. 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'm like all right just press you know camera two camera three again four yeah that's all he knew just to press one two three four five or whatever it was yeah and that was the whole production crew that was it oh and then and then a camera operator on every camera and it was like you're telling me you did that with for that yeah 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 show out i'm just like

Oh, hey. He's like, hey. It's like, what? That was that press tour. Just certain things in life that you work on, they just become so much bigger than you could ever imagine. You didn't think that was going to be big when you started it? As I grab you as you sip water. 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. Done a ton of his fights.

The magnitude's just not there. And you hear the stories... You hear the stories of, like, Floyd in his prime and what those fight weeks were like or Tyson back in the 90s. And I worked the Andre Berto fight that Floyd Mayweather fought, which was fight 49. Yeah. That was kind of once we had made our segue into Showtime. Mm-hmm. And, like...

same guy right it's it's floyd 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 i 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 working media and you know combat sports that fight was just the perfect soup of you know just bringing two sports together and

And 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. Yeah. But I think even me who had been covering boxing for a couple years at that point, like, I believed because Conor made you believe because he was one of the best salesmen ever.

out there. And yeah, I mean, that fight was great until the fight started. You know, everything about the promotion was great until the fight started. And then you're like, wait, a little different. Like Connor was here. Connor looked awkward throwing punches, like foot speed. And that's what boxing has become now. I mean, the fights that sell are these celebrity fights. You know, it's, 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. Uh,

But, you know, you can't fake Floyd 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. Right.

But it had a lot of those elements like, oh, this guy can knock out Mike Tyson or, oh, Mike Tyson's going to finally knock him out. I mean, everyone's still waiting for Jake Ball to get knocked out. Right. And it hasn't happened. And it won't happen because the people making his fights won't put him against Mike 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 are. But then the show stops, right? Then the story ends. And the money runs out. Exactly. So why would they do that? Right. Right? Like, totally get it. It's a business. And most of those boxers that could knock Jake Paul out won't sell tickets. Right. Because you don't even know who they are. Right. And it's sad that you have to, you know, I mean, I hate to say it, but I worked on the Evander Holyfield fight. Mm-hmm.

I mean, this is a career moment. Donald Trump called that fight. Yeah. This is down in Florida. It's in between presidencies. Yeah. 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 the 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. Yeah.

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 salvage this thing.

Vander's in shape all the time. Right. He looks like he could fight right now, but looks like he could fight and can fight are two totally different things. When the bell goes off and you got a shuffle, it's like, Oh wait, wait a second. These are 58 year old hips. Yup. And I remember, and I remember his, his media workout because they did a media workout and it just, everything looks slow. And I, 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's going to be ugly. And it was, I mean, he got knocked out. Like it was, that 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, why is this happening? But Trump called that fight. It was, that was crazy. You know, I'm just, I have a picture of,

of like me in a suit standing there. I'm like, I just put his earpiece in because again, tiny crew. So I'm also the guy doing that, right? Right. And the day before the shoot, they're like, oh, your entire crew has to go through Secret Service, like background checks. And almost everyone made it through. And I was like, oh God.

Then we had to negotiate deals. Like, okay, can we sit in the hallway? They won't be in the room with him. Like, 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 looking up at me like this. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, I was telling him. But it's just a funny picture. It was just a weird time. That's crazy. Good stuff, man. So now we're going to fast forward to the new documentary. Right? Netflix. Netflix.

But before we go there, I want to ask you a question that probably is going to lead 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 thing? 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, there 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 be

Like 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 social media is – 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 –

You know, it's just like people that I know. That's it. Like, you know, but I mean, my TikTok, I've grown like way bigger than 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 like all stuff. I need that because the double negative there is if I don't have it, I feel incomplete and unwhole. And that's what's cool about doing a big documentary project that.

Unlike doing contract work and doing shows, 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 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 brains 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 Super Bowl also 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 because I am a big sports fan, but I

I haven't watched TV at all because my mind is so in like create mode. And I think that is deeper than the why. 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 to.

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. Um, 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 they love 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 has 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 the next thing, you know, creating the next thing, being successful at the next thing. That's the driver. And that is...

I feel so deeply inside of me that 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. - Yeah, let's do it. - 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. I sat, I was having a conversation. I think it was with my girlfriend. I said, you know, the price of healthy food is expensive, but I don't know. I feel like it's overblown. Like it doesn't have to be that expensive. And that was it. That was all it took to get the wheels in motion. And yeah.

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. Spent 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. Came up with a name, The Price of Health.

Again, simple. Right. The Back to Future documentary is called Back in Time. It's, you know, play on the song. Right. You know, I researched who I would want in it. Like kind of what we could touch on. Finding out that nobody ever did it. Obviously, that's the big piece of it because there have been a gazillion documentaries on food. I mean, that's not new. But just finding the unique angle of

Essentially, what this documentary became is the inverse Super Size Me to the point that it was so obvious that I was uploading transcripts into ChatGPT to organize them. And I asked ChatGPT, do you understand what this – and they said, yes, this project is like the opposite of Super Size 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 seismic super seismic entertainment, right? So this guy went to McDonald's and McDonald's every day But what do you learn not to eat McDonald's? I mean, right fairly common sense at this point You know, nobody's gonna tell you what do you mean McDonald's isn't healthy right every day, right? You may eat it, but I don't think anyone's gonna be pitching how healthy it is, right? So what I want to do with this project is start at the top. Mm-hmm. Look at healthy food. Mm-hmm

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. Right. 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 is healthy is...

I think 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 100%. And, oh, there's this chemical in 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, you know, ultimately I did a 30-day experiment where I ate healthy for 30 days. Well, what defined healthy? There were no rules.

Extreme guardrails on it, but it was eat whole foods Don't eat things that you know have a million ingredients and never 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, and 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 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 was no exercise, no gym. Just ate healthy. And when you define healthy, what is that for you? So it was a lot of...

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 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 a bad rap, you know it doesn't it doesn't feel like you're eating at a gourmet restaurant when you have peas and carrots on your plate and

But they're just as good for you, if not better. And, you know, a serving of frozen vegetables at a big box store is about 45 cents. Okay. Serving quinoa is 45 cents. You can buy salmon, even, you know, frozen prepackaged pieces, about $4 a piece. Okay. That's a meal for $5.

Those are the changes that you start making. The snack stuff, I use Thrive Market, the CEO of Thrive Market's 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 the same time, met most people's calorie goals. Three meals, about 1,800 calories, three of those meals a day. And then filled in with some snacks and snacks.

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 and 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. Um,

Didn't want this to be a film about a specific diet and that's absolutely right what it is, right? It's about being mindful of what you're eating Being mindful that hey, you know having protein fat and every meal is important. Yeah Showing that you could lose weight lose body fat without counting a single calorie almost doing it by accident because that's just what's gonna happen and

and mindfulness. Mindfulness is probably the one thing that comes out of this documentary the most that, um, 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 spa and get a massage you get satisfaction out of that taking that time and doing something for yourself and these meals that i were that i was making these are not gourmet meals like this is stuff that like open the package pour some rub on it put it in the oven like this 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. And sadly, there are people in this country that don't know that fried chicken is bad for you because they think it's chicken, but it's fried. And that's a real thing. Right. And, you know.

I have friends that are Presbyterians that love fried fish and I'm like, well, 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. 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 at some of these restaurants. Right.

But if you're not worried about fat intake, then yeah, drink olive oil until the cows come home. So yeah, I could doubt stuff. But then you go to the restaurant and 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 meat 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% at the other end? Mm-hmm.

80 in the middle and speak to them in different ways like oh 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 that I did not eat but yeah I was hungry I ate it wasn't like I didn't intermittent fast I mean there are benefits to all these things but I think I stayed away from the extremes and just

I love it. Aiden 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 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, we're basically wrapped on all the interviews. I already did the 30-day challenge. 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. 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. 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 your own life's journey through health can have different twists and turns. We'll see what that does 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. And 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 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. 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 is a writer of Back to the Future, and I know that they're planning some stuff this year because now it's the 40th anniversary of Back to the Future. Correct. Right. It just kind of creeps up on you. Amazing. I worked on another feature-length talk about travel 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 busy. You've been 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. Thank you. And the first question, I like that. I like that idea. I would definitely be ready to do that. All right. 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, I'm thinking Rogan's got to be in there. Of course. But then, yeah, I think this is...

That could be next. I had another good idea, too, the other day, which I already forgot. Uh-oh. It was podcasting. The world of podcasting. You've got to write these things down. There you go. There you go. And then the last question, where can people find and follow you? Where do you want them to know? So Instagram, the one that I don't optimize is Jason underscore Aaron. It's one A-A-R-O-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 Ankur's name. Shout out to Ankur 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. Youngry is a full-service marketing agency. I had a video and creative there. So all

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 much 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. Thank you.

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Mick Unplugged. If today hits you hard, then imagine what's next. Be sure to subscribe, rate, and share this with someone who needs it. And most of all, make a plan and take action because the next level is already waiting for you. Have a question or insight to share? Send us an email to hello at mickunplugged.com. Until next time, ask yourself how you can step up.