Dive into an electrifying conversation on Mick Unplugged, where host Mick Hunt sits down with award-winning filmmaker Jason Aron, as they unravel the accidental journey from criminal justice to the star-studded world of film production. Tune in for captivating stories, like filming Michael J. Fox talking hockey, and the serendipitous inception of the "Back to the Future" documentary. Mick and Jason explore the essence of storytelling, the magic of creativity, and how even seemingly simple moments can lead to monumental projects. This episode is a masterclass in turning passion into reality—don't miss it! Takeaways: The accidental journey can become a pathway to success: Jason's career in filmmaking kicked off unexpectedly, showcasing the power of seizing opportunities and saying 'yes' even before you're completely ready. Simplicity can lead to greatness: Jason's approach to projects, focusing on basic but universal concepts, reflects the idea that sometimes the profound is found in simplicity. Creativity doesn't sleep: Jason shares his relentless drive to create, underscoring that true passion means constantly finding ways to express and challenge oneself. Sound Bites: "Jason Aron: Heavily by accident. To be honest, my college degree is in criminal justice." "You have to be a little nuts, and I think you have to be willing to work 22 hours a day sometimes." "Mick Hunt: I'm not letting you get away with that, Jason." Quote by Mick (Host): 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." Connect & Discover with Jason: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jason_aron/ Website: https://www.jasonaron.com/ FOLLOW MICK ON:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mickunplugged/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mickunplugged/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@mickunplugged Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mickhunt/Website: https://www.mickhuntofficial.com Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mick-unplugged/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Chapter 1: How did Jason Aron transition from criminal justice to filmmaking?
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 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. I was always creative. I was always into Photoshop.
In college, I was that guy sitting, editing music. I was a DJ in college for a while. That kind of pushed me somehow into web design and graphic design. This is the... early 2000s. And I was an OK graphic designer. I was OK. I was all right. 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. And I was designing a bunch of logos for people and doing business development in the graphic design space. 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 uh we were just gonna 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, 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.
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Chapter 2: What was Jason Aron's first major break in filmmaking?
that was for any rd played like shot pharrell like like first thing i ever shot it was like pharrell it's like oh okay there you go and uh 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 um shot a couple pilots but along the way just started making money um the corporate video stuff that like everybody does you know dentist 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 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, 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 that 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... 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 little too artsy. And I think that artsy really is nothing more than saying it's just so niche. 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. 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 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. 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 have the same – 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?
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Chapter 3: Why did Jason Aron create a documentary about Back to the Future?
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. One hundred percent 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 20s that I've never even seen back to the future.
And it's like, oh, my God. So let's go back to the future first. 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. But then two, it's hard for films. A classic like Back to the Future 1, to have three, to have a trilogy is hard.
And then to say, not only was there a trilogy, we're going to do a documentary about it. So walk us through that whole.
It was 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. Yeah. 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 everyone in my life sells insurance. But the guy sold insurance. But his calling in life was to be a film producer. 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.
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.
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Chapter 4: How did Jason Aron fund his Back to the Future documentary?
I had the ability because I had the equipment to go out. I found the guy up in Massachusetts. It 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, 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 it was just the travel that just ate through the money.
Ultimately, we had another producer who came on board and he invested in the film to become a producer because we had already sort of 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. And 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 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 reporter and
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. And it was just moments like that. It kept happening over and over and over. 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. And we were their opening act. And it's just like,
Yeah.
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Chapter 5: What was it like for Jason Aron to meet Michael J. Fox?
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 gonna 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 gonna do this and i'm gonna do it first and i'm gonna 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 beat a big studio to the punch, which is, it's crazy to think about.
And you got to meet, obviously, and talk and film 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. Yeah. I try to fight back, but I lost that battle.
But everyone, you know, to sit this close to Robert Zemeckis and talk to him about a film that he made is like is 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.
So so what was it like, man? I'm going to call him Fox. Cause you know, there's two Fox or there's three red Fox, Michael J Fox and Jamie Fox, right? Like all of them, you can just call them Fox. Vivica A. Oh, that's true. Yeah. Vivica A Fox. Can't forget her. Yes. So, so the four Foxes, right. You can just call them Fox. So when you met Michael J, like what was that really like?
Cause I can only imagine like me sitting here and it's like, Holy crap. Like,
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Chapter 6: How did Jason Aron get involved with the Mayweather vs. McGregor fight?
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.
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 80s.
Okay.
So the set looked like the 80s. Yeah. So we had filmed Dean Cundey over there, 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 like another out of body experience.
And Michael J. Fox was one of the rare interviews that we did in New York. 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 buildup 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 the 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 and the snow. And like, we had a hand carry everything into his house and make sure that we didn't get snow everywhere. Cause 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, like this is crazy. And 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?
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