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Heber Cannon: Fitness Life with a Buttery Bro

Written by David Tao
Last updated on November 11th, 2024

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For nearly a decade, Heber Cannon directed films for CrossFit HQ and brought the CrossFit Games and culture to a worldwide audience. Today, he’s one half of The Buttery Bros, a dynamic duo that travels the world making videos with their favorite athletes. Heber joins us to talk filmmaking, CrossFit HQ layoffs (of which Heber was a part), and the future of CrossFit Games documentaries. 

In this episode of The BarBend Podcast, guest Heber Cannon and host David Thomas Tao discuss:

  • Heber’s hectic travel schedule (2:30)
  • How Heber got involved with CrossFit and (eventually) CrossFit HQ (4:45)
  • The CrossFit documentary Heber is proudest of (7:36)
  • What individual streaming platforms mean for editing movies, and why different versions exist online  (11:00)
  • In hindsight, Heber wishes he would have left CrossFit HQ earlier (11:45)
  • Getting let go from CrossFit and Heber’s first reactions (13:00)
  • Heber’s current relationship with CrossFit HQ (16:35)
  • Start of Buttery Bros with Marston Sawyers (18:40)
  • Buttery Bros’ first big hit (21:30)
  • The most fun episode so far (24:51)
  • Heber’s dream guest/collaborator (28:00)
  • What to expect for Heber’s next CrossFit Games documentary (29:50)
  • The strength athlete Heber admires most (31:30)

Relevant links and further reading:

Transcription

Heber CannonHeber Cannon

 …is really kind of cool that I went from just graduating school to directing I think it was like 12-, 30-minute ESPN shows. That’s really cool. I think the thing overall the most that I’m most proud of is the movie “Froning — The Fittest Man in History.”

There was a lot of uphill battles at CrossFit in dealing with the heads of CrossFit to try and get that thing made. They loved the idea of making a YouTube video, but making an actual movie, it was something that they weren’t necessarily on board with to start with. I knew going into it that I wanted this to be respected as a film and not just a YouTube video.

David TaoDavid Tao

Welcome to the “BarBend Podcast”, where we talk to the smartest athletes, coaches, and minds from around the world of strength. I’m your host, David Thomas Tao.

Today, I’m talking to Heber Cannon. One of the most prolific filmmakers in fitness. Heber first made a name for himself in the fitness space as a film director for CrossFit HQ. While at CrossFit, Heber filmed, directed, and edited many of the documentaries that helped build mass-market awareness of CrossFit as a sport.

He was a constant sight at the CrossFit games. Often sprinting right alongside the athletes in order to capture footage that made audiences around the globe feel like they were part of the action.

CrossFit consolidated much of their media branch in late 2018, and Heber was one of the employees whose position was terminated. Since then, he’s continues making waves in fitness. Today, he’s one-half of the Buttery Bros, a duo of filmmakers chronicling their experiences and travels with some the world’s fittest and strongest athletes.

In today’s episode, we talk about Heber’s experiences capturing the scenes so many of us have come to love. We also discuss his time at CrossFit, his reaction to changes at CrossFit HQ and being let go, and what the future holds for him as a filmmaker.

Just a note, we’re incredibly thankful that you listen to this podcast so if you haven’t already, be sure to leave a rating and review of the BarBend podcast in your app of choice. Every month, we give away a full box of BarBend swag to one of our listeners who leaves a rating and review.

Heber Cannon, a man of many travels and many talents, thanks so much for joining us today. It’s a real honor to catch you at a point where you’re not just constantly in motion right now.

Heber CannonHeber Cannon

 Yeah. [laughs] You caught me in between waves, I guess.

David TaoDavid Tao

[laughs] What are you coming from and what are you heading to? Where are we talking to you right now and what’s next on your schedule as we ramp back up into the 2020 season?

Heber CannonHeber Cannon

 I am here in Salt Lake City, Utah. I just got back from Hawaii about five days ago, and tonight I’m catching a red-eye flight to Aruba.

David TaoDavid Tao

 Wow, OK. Is that a normal cadence of travel for Heber Cannon?

Heber CannonHeber Cannon

Going from Hawaii to Aruba is not a normal cadence, I think, for anybody.

 It’s a normal time frame of travel. Typically, for the last few months it’s been something to that effect, where I’ll be home for five or six days and then gone for anywhere from three to five is what we try to do these shows under.

David TaoDavid Tao

Great. For those of you who are listening and don’t necessarily know who Heber Cannon is, you’ve definitely seen his work and you’ve heard his work. A lot of our experiences as consumers of fitness media over the past five, six, seven years — we’ll go into that in a second — have come through his lens and his mind.

Tell us a little bit about how you got involved in fitness and your media career’s evolved a little bit through that.

Heber CannonHeber Cannon

I like to always say that it’s been a combination of two things. My favorite types of movies growing up were Rocky and there was this movie called…what was the movie called about Billy Mills, Mom? My mom’s here with me now. I used to watch this movie about a professional marathon runner named Billy Mills. I forget the name of the movie, but I loved the movie.

I loved movies and I love fitness, and luckily, I was able to make a career out of making Rocky training montages.

David TaoDavid Tao

It’s every aspiring filmmaker’s dream. You’re not from Philadelphia originally, are you?

 

Heber CannonHeber Cannon

No, I’m not.

David TaoDavid Tao

You’re one of the fitness industry’s, I would say, most innovative storytellers, especially over the last half decade or so. When did you first get involved with CrossFit? Was it a job first or was it something you were passionate about first before you were doing it professionally and doing media professionally in that regard?

Heber CannonHeber Cannon

I had owned my own video production company. I had aspirations to go to Hollywood and make big blockbuster movies. That was the goal. I had just gotten out of school and I had been doing CrossFit for fun. I had been going to my local gym and I loved it. I actually paid for my membership by making videos for the affiliate, which was cool.

Then CrossFit had gotten ahold of some of the videos I had made, and I had gotten to know at the time Chris Steeler, Tommy Hackenbruck, and Miranda Oldroyd were all here within about 30 minutes of where I lived, and I was friends with all of them.

I said to CrossFit, “Hey, I would love to follow these guys throughout the 2010 season,” as they got ready for the CrossFit Games. This was the end of 2009. They immediately responded to my email within an hour, or within five minutes. I had a phone call set up the next day that lasted four hours. A week later I was doing contract work for CrossFit for all of 2010.

They went from not being a client at all to being my biggest client almost overnight. Throughout all of 2010, they were begging me to move to Santa Cruz, and finally I moved down there. My first role was to help them create the new show “The Update Show,” which ran for the entire nine years that I was there, 9 to 10 years.

Then the pilot for ESPN. We got CrossFit onto ESPN and my next role there was to direct the ESPN live shows and then the post-production shows that they do in the fall.

David TaoDavid Tao

Your work at CrossFit HQ, we see the products of it and it seems like it flowed so easily, but you were creating a lot of these media properties from the ground up. We took “The Update Show” for granted for many years; it was just something that was automatic around game season and during game season.

We saw the documentaries coming out and we came to expect those every year, and they almost became automatic for a time. We can get to, a little after this, how some of those properties are being rebirthed in some different forms.

These ideas had to originate from somewhere, and oftentimes the first iterations were just coming from your mind’s eye and your vision and the work of the rest of the people at CrossFit Media at the time. Of those properties, of those shows, documentaries, which do you look back on most fondly and which are you proudest of from a professional standpoint?

Heber CannonHeber Cannon

That’s a good question. Each one has its own element of coolness. The first 2011 ESPN shows…it’s really cool that I went from just graduating school to directing twelve thirty-minute ESPN shows, and that’s really cool. The thing, overall, that I’m most proud of is the movie Froning — The Fittest Man in History.

There was a lot of uphill battles at CrossFit and dealing with the heads of CrossFit to try and get that thing made. They loved the idea of making a YouTube video, but making an actual movie, it was something that they weren’t necessarily on board with to start with.

I knew going into it that I wanted this to be respected as a film and not just a YouTube video. I went in and I dug deep and by the time we got it on iTunes a year later, the next morning when it had come out when it was number three on the iTunes charts, they were immediately on board. [laughs] It was all of a sudden, a great idea.

David TaoDavid Tao

“We loved that from the beginning! It was awesome!”

 

Heber CannonHeber Cannon

Yeah, exactly. [laughs]

David TaoDavid Tao

How many films did you produce and direct during your time at HQ?

Heber CannonHeber Cannon

Four films. You had Froning — The Fittest Man in History; “Fittest on Earth,” the 2015 movie, which wasn’t ever intended to be a movie when we started it, but because of Froning’s success, I said they came in and told me the next morning they were really stoked how well it was doing on iTunes.

The next part of that conversation was, “Oh, yeah, the project you’re working on right now, we’re going to do the same thing with that.” Then we had to shift course in the middle of making that movie on what kind of audience would be taking that.

The next year we did “Fittest on Earth: A Decade of Fitness.” I’m super proud of that one as well…really cool, Katrin’s story, one of my favorites of all of them. Then “Redeemed and Dominant” was the final one, which set a new standard for our films there.

David TaoDavid Tao

When someone comes to you in the middle of a project and says, “You know what? Change what you’re doing, this is now a feature-length movie that’s going to go on broader streaming services.” As a creator, how do you change tack on that? Because you’ve already filmed everything. You already have your basis of footage.

It’s not like you can go back in time and get new footage, new B-roll from the event, things like that. How do you deal with that?

Heber CannonHeber Cannon

 I’ll be honest with you. We didn’t really change course. The biggest thing we said was we…I was like, “Hey, we’ve edited half this movie to music that you don’t have the rights for, to go on streaming services.” You have to now like, “I’ll do this. We’ll change course.”

We didn’t really change much about the story. Had we gone into it knowing it, we would’ve made it a little bit more easy for the audience to understand what CrossFit was. You had to understand the sport to appreciate that movie, but Froning and I made it up for an audience that didn’t know what CrossFit was.

I went back to them and said, “You got to go and get me the rights to this song from “Mad Max” and DJ Dillon Francis’ ‘Get Low.'” They did, and they didn’t. They kind of failed. [laughs]

They weren’t willing to pay the money to get both of the songs for some of the streaming services. If you watch it on iTunes, there’s different music than when you watch it on Netflix. To do that, I had to go and get new music created that matched the rhythm in some of those songs.

David TaoDavid Tao

Which one is the Heber Cannon director’s cut officially, with the music as intended?

Heber CannonHeber Cannon

The one on iTunes, that’s the one. If you watch any other version, I cringe at it. It’s just, “What’s up there?”

David TaoDavid Tao

Is there anything — It could be projects. It could be the processes you developed. It could be the shows — you look back on at your time at HQ and you wish you had done a little bit differently? I’m sure there’s a lot but anything that sticks out in hindsight. You’re like, “I should’ve just taken a different approach to this.”

Heber CannonHeber Cannon

A different approach to things I did at CrossFit? It sounds weird, but I was let go. I want to say that I had a great time at CrossFit, but I don’t know that I gained anything, and I would’ve been gaining anything as a professional standpoint had I stayed with CrossFit much longer.

Had I had the decision and could’ve left with the financial stability, I would’ve left earlier. I would’ve left after the Redeemed and Dominant. Throughout the 2018 season, I had some amazing experiences.

Went to Iceland and toured around Iceland twice that year. I went to Sweden. I got a lot of cool traveling done, but as a career, as a filmmaker, I wasn’t really doing anything new. As a company, they were becoming static. I also had a big gut feeling about what was about to happen as a company. [laughs]

David TaoDavid Tao

That leads me to my next question. Obviously, this is a subject that is sensitive to a lot of people. It’s something that I think is still very fresh for a lot of people. You had this gut feeling. When the dominoes started falling at HQ…In the media, we’re all outside of HQ. We’re hearing bits and pieces, and blips and snippets.

It seems like it wasn’t totally surprising to you. What was your first reaction when you knew that you were going to be let go?

Heber CannonHeber Cannon

Here’s how the pieces fell. I saw, not necessarily that I was going to be let go, but I saw that they were not so happy with the games. They were making changes internally about what this was going to look like. This was even before the 2018 games.

I went to the games, and I told my boss, Tyson Oldroyd, I said, “Hey, we’re not going to make this documentary. I don’t need to be away from my family for seven days. I don’t need to go to the CrossFit games. If things are going to change after this, please let me know. I don’t need to go waste a week of my life.” [laughs]

I can go shoot some beer at the games, and I don’t need to be there the whole time. We got back from the 2018 games. Everything was great. Everyone was high-fiving about how well the games went off. All of us filmmakers, we were stoked about the story we got. I had gotten really close with Laura Horvath throughout the weekend.

I’d picked her out of…not a needle out of a haystack, but going into the weekend, I got really lucky that I got good footage of her because she had taken second. Lukas Högberg, same thing, got back. I was here actually in Newtown with my family vacation and heard that they had let go of half the media department. That was a shock. [laughs]

The amount of changes that they made was a shock. I called the night before because I had been hearing rumors. I said, “Hey, do I need to come home tomorrow? I’m here with my family. I could fly back.”

They said, “No, you’re fine.” The next morning, the same guy called me back. He said, “This is why we’re bringing you back. Technically, you were removed off of my budget.” I was under one budget, and they removed me. Basically, they fired me and then rehired me without me knowing. They moved me from one department to the other.

I was like, “Well, I’m extremely grateful that you guys would do that.” They were asked to cut the budget in half. That means the one side had to cut their budget in half. Then this side had to cut more than half their budget to bring me and Marsden on onto this side, if that makes sense, the side B.

I was extremely grateful. Then when I heard of a meeting from Greg Glassman that afternoon, talking about the new direction of the company, it made it very clear from his statements that I wasn’t a part of that new direction. The work I had been doing wasn’t going to be what CrossFit was doing anymore.

The conversation went from my end like, “Hey, look. I see that you guys don’t necessarily want to do these things. The audience really wants this, and I poured my heart and soul into this 2018 movie for the last few months. Could we try and take that and go and make it somewhere else?”

We were having these conversations. I did a big trip around Sweden and Iceland again to get some more interviews for that movie. Came back, and about a week later is when we were let go. [laughs]

I went into that day knowing that another round of cuts was coming. When I heard the new direction, it made sense that I wouldn’t be there. I just thought it was a matter of time. I didn’t necessarily make any big life changes at that point, but I was very well-prepared for the day I would be let go.

David TaoDavid Tao

What is your relationship with HQ like these days? Obviously, you were at the 2019 games, gathering a lot of footage. You were extraordinarily visible in the space as are a lot of former CrossFit-employed media personalities. What’s your relationship with the folks left at HQ these days?

Heber CannonHeber Cannon

Great. I have a great relationship with probably everyone. There’s a handful of people where it’s awkward when I see them. For the most part, I made it pretty clear when I left that I understood it was a business decision. It wasn’t a personal decision.

It was said to me by someone in the C-suite at CrossFit that they were making dramatic changes to CrossFit because of the success of our movies. Like, “You did too good. Now we have to change course because it’s led CrossFit in a direction that they didn’t want to go, and they didn’t want it known as this. It grew us too fast, and now we have to make these changes now.” [laughs]

I took that as I did too good of a job. [laughs] If anything, you guys didn’t give me enough direction. If that was the direction you wanted to go, I could’ve taken it further in that direction. I went this way because I was given a lot of creative freedom there and encouraged by everyone above me to do what I was doing.

There’s a few people that should be held responsible for that. Ultimately, it comes down to Greg Glassman’s company, and he can do whatever he wants with it.

To directly answer your question, I have a great relationship with everyone there. I understand everything’s a professional thing. Because of the work that I’ve done there in the past, they were extremely willing to work with us on what we’re doing now.

That’s why we had lost some access to the CrossFit games. That’s why we’re continuing to work with CrossFit on some of our projects, but at a very big distance.

David TaoDavid Tao

That’s a great segue into what you’re doing today. That’s the Buttery Bros.

Heber CannonHeber Cannon

Yeah, that is.

David TaoDavid Tao

How did that come about? It seemed from an outsider’s perspective, I see these folks getting let go from HQ. I wonder where folks were going to end up. It seemed like there was very quick turnaround and your partner who we’ll talk about in a second to this new property. The Buttery Bros.

Suddenly, there were sticks of butter everywhere and this big YouTube presence and these high energy videos. I’m sure it was a little bit more methodical than that at the beginning. What was the development of that like and when did you two decide that hey, this is something that we want to do and this is a direction we want to take our creativity now?

Heber CannonHeber Cannon

One of the big things for me was because of the 2018 movie not being made, we are sure the movie would be phenomenal, but we don’t want people to be talking about what the CrossFit games were. We want to talk about that CrossFit games are. Maybe in the future they’d let us make the 2018 movies as a throwback of what the CrossFit games used to be.

For us, we felt like we kind of let these athletes down. They were my friends and every year, they’re so excited for the new exposure they’re going to get. I wanted to continue to make something that grew their status.

We went from October, when we were let go of 2018 to December talking to various outlets, talking to distribution companies, financial people about how do we make a 2019 movies and what would that be like.

One of the big things we kept coming back to was we can’t have a big sponsor on the movie because then potentially it wouldn’t be…then Facebook might not buy it, or Netflix might not buy it because it looks too much like that commercial for that one company. It worked for CrossFit because it was their thing, but it’s not always like that.

We wanted to make it white labeled. We wanted also the UK to be making it. We wanted to retain control. While we were trying to figure that out, we were on a shoot for a commercial with a CBD oil company. That didn’t end up panning out. The commercial never ran. [laughs] It put us in that freezer’s garage.

I was like, “We should vlog this.” We vlogged when we were in Dubai a little bit but didn’t make anything out of that. A few weeks before, we shot this little workout. We thought it was tons of fun. We edited the commercial for these guys and turned it over to them.

I turned to Mars and was like, “Hey man, you have some free time this week. Why don’t you knock out a vlog of that acid bath being and see if people like it? I think it would be funny.” He sent me the first two or three minutes. I was like, “This is going to be awesome. We’re going to do this.”

We went through a bunch of debates about what the name would be. I had my wife create a logo. It worked out well in timing that we released that first video right before we got to Water Palooza.

We put it up on Wednesday. Started walking around the venue on Thursday. Within two hours of us posting it, it had way more views than we ever thought we would. We way had more subscribers than we thought. We thought it would be two or three weeks before we got to that amount of subscribers.

Within a week we had 20,000 subscribers and almost 70,000 views. Since then, that video in particular has continued to be one of our most popular.

Immediately when I saw the success of that, I saw “Hey, we could probably make that a financial thing.” We keep making those, because they are super fun to make and be a part of. If we are successful in doing that, it’ll put us in more places where we could film more documentary that allows us to be with these athletes and getting behind the scenes with hem for a big feature film later.

Immediately it became like, “Hey, this can be the vehicle that gets us around to make this a bigger project.”

David TaoDavid Tao

In many ways the Buttery Bros is a means to an end, which is to create these bigger features.

Heber CannonHeber Cannon

That’s how it started. [laughs] I think after about five weeks, by April we were like, “This is way fun. I want to continue doing this.” By no means did I say it’s a means to an end. I would say that we’re very invested. We have way too much fun doing it. Our hope is to continue to grow that as big as we can. It’s been the funnest, most rewarding thing that I’ve done since probably the Froning movie.

That movie’s been really rewarding but this has been like a new rewarding, creative chapter.

David TaoDavid Tao

I want to talk about some specific Buttery Bros projects and what’s to come in a second. The name. You said you’re going back and forth on the name. Your wife designed the logo. Where did it come from? What’s the background there?

Heber CannonHeber Cannon

Any time we’d be shooting and you’ll see it pretty often in film making top from millennial groups. [laughs] A younger generation.

Any time we’d be setting up a shot or Marston and I would shoot something on the competition for the games or behind the scenes or with athletes and it’s well-composed and it’s smooth and particularly in slow motion, we’d always be like, “Oh that shot’s butter.” We loved the idea of buttery.

We started our company which was called All Butter Inc because we shoot all butter all the time. Then from there [laughs] it became a concern that we would be limiting our audience to just a bunch of bros if we kept the name bros but we decided it’s very specifically like Marston and I are not necessarily a big audience thing.

We dove in with that and we’ve been happy with the results.

David TaoDavid Tao

What has been the most fun? You bring up fun when you talk about this. You bring up the fact that this has been just a wild, fun ride. What’s been the most fun Buttery Bros project so far?

Heber CannonHeber Cannon

Oh man. That’s hard to top. I had one really fun episode, two episodes that we did actually in Southern Utah where I was able to bring my family and kids was just awesome. My kids up in helicopter and seeing their reactions. That’s hard to beat.

Then this most recent one that’s about to drop, it will be dropping probably by the time this podcast is up and it hits the interwebs in about 90 minutes where we are down in Hawaii, last week in Hawaii was epic. That was a really fun, cool experience and got to see parts of the island that I would not have otherwise because of the connections we made and our history at CrossFit. Just had an amazing time.

David TaoDavid Tao

When you work with athletes, when you visit them or you’re travelling to a location with them to shoot, how do those conversations start? Is it just like, “Hey, we’re the Buttery Bros. You know who we are. We want to take you to an exotic location and film a bunch of fitness and surfing and boogie boarding and jet skiing.” Or is it a little bit more of a process behind it?

Heber CannonHeber Cannon

 It’s basically most the athletes that I’ll just reach out to and just find out where they are and say, “Hey.” It depends on the project. Like Miami, the event, Wodapalooza called us up and said, “Hey. We want you to come out and make a video.”

“All these people are going to be here. You’re going to be staying in a mansion and you’ll be going jet skiing on a yacht.” Is what we were told. We were like, “No. We probably couldn’t do that. OK fine. Yeah, we’ll come.”

Other times where it’s one individual athlete like we’re here in Salt Lake with Mat Frasier and Brooke Wells. It just happened that they were going to be here. That event called us to try and get us to come out. Fit wanted us to come to Salt Lake so we coordinated with them and Mat Fraser’s agent and said, “Hey. You guys are going to be here. Let’s work together.”

Basically, with any athlete, we just have a reputation and a long term relationship with them that even if they don’t know us it takes just a quick conversation about what we’re going to do and they’re on board or like, “Hey Mat. We’re going to be here. You want to play?” “Yeah, let’s do this.”

We have a good enough relationship where it’s just a quick phone call to set something up and then pitching them on whatever ideas we come up with. That process becomes a little bit more complicated.

David TaoDavid Tao

What are your goals for the show?

Heber CannonHeber Cannon

Goals would be to get a little bit more into tourism stuff. We’re very fitness-based. We’re very CrossFit-based. I would love to continue travelling the world and bringing my kids and family and my wife and exploring new parts of the world with them as well as continuing to just have tons of fun with it.

Whenever it becomes stagnant or we’re continuing to do the same thing, I think that for me, I wouldn’t be growing doing that. As long as I’m continuing to grow creatively and having fun with that, we’ll keep pushing and making them.

David TaoDavid Tao

Who’s a dream guest that you have or a dream athlete, someone to partner with on a video who you haven’t done anything with before?

Heber CannonHeber Cannon

Kevin Hart.

David TaoDavid Tao

That was the quickest answer I’ve ever heard in one of these interviews. Easy.

Heber CannonHeber Cannon

Easy, man. I’d love to work with Kevin Hart on a…get him to come work out. I know he’s a big fitness guy. I know. I listen to his podcast or books.

I can’t remember where I heard that. I think it was on his book where he talked about — I loved this — for years with him and all his close guys that traveled with him, his close group of friends, they used to do drinking challenges and some gambling involved with that.

Like, “Hey, if you lose this bet, you got to go drink this amount of alcohol,” or whatever it was. It was all of these detrimental challenges that were bad for your health and bad for you as a person. Then lately, all those challenges have become like, “Hey, if you don’t do this, you got to go run on a 5K with me in the morning.”

He’s changed his attitude and direction towards, “Yeah, these challenges might suck, but they’re actually going to benefit you in the long run,” which is a very CrossFit mentality thing. Like, we go do this workout every day, and I’m like, “Oh my gosh,” in the middle of this workout that is terrible. When I finish I’m like “That was awesome! Let’s load them up again. Let’s go.”

David TaoDavid Tao

It’s like having burpees as a penalty if you’re late to class.

Heber CannonHeber Cannon

Exactly. It sucks, but it also helps you. I love that attitude. I just love his general presence. Yeah, if I could get him on a show, it would be epic.

David TaoDavid Tao

What can we expect from the 2019 Games documentary? I remember when you all announced that it was coming, it was a very stoic Instagram post. It was the two Buttery Bros, just still shot, like documentary 2019 Games, it’s coming, just announcing to the world that you’re bringing them back.

What can we expect for that documentary? Do you have any sense of timeline. I mean we’re recording this podcast in September 2019. It’ll probably come out a month or so from when we record. Any timeline as to when we might be able to see something?

Heber CannonHeber Cannon

Yes. The documentary, funny enough, we did a trailer. There’s a teaser for it online that we put out right at the first week of the Open called “The Fittest.” That was intended to be a series about the Sanctionals.

After the Open, the Sanctional stories became kind of bland. So many people qualified for the CrossFit Games. The tension at the Sanctional events weren’t as cool as we were hoping, so we shifted gears. Now instead of a series of shows, it’s going to be one big, long feature film.

The release date for that, I would say, is very similar to what we had in years past, making a movie, putting it on YouTube. You can do it really quick, putting it on other platforms. They have their own QC, things that they have to go through, quality control things. It takes them a lot longer.

We will probably not finish our movie cut until the end of December, is what our goal is. Our drop-dead goal is end of December. We might tee stuff along the way.

The movie then takes two or three months when we hand it over to our distribution company to then put it on to platforms where you can watch it fully. To answer that, probably March or April is when you’ll be able to just fully enjoy all the 2019 goodness.

David TaoDavid Tao

Also, I know I’m definitely looking forward to, and I’m sure a lot of listeners are, who is a strength athlete? As we get to the end of this particular episode of the BarBend podcast, I’d like to ask just a few more rapid-fire questions.

Heber CannonHeber Cannon

Hit me with them.

David TaoDavid Tao

Who is the strength athlete? Could be in CrossFit. Could be a powerlifter, weightlifter, you name it, who you most admire.

Heber CannonHeber Cannon

Strength?

David TaoDavid Tao

Strength athlete.

Heber CannonHeber Cannon

What athlete do I most admire?

David TaoDavid Tao

Yeah.

Heber CannonHeber Cannon

That’s a deep one. I’m going to say Mat Fraser, which sounds cliché, but I’m going to say why. Mat, I’ve seen grow both as an athlete and a person. I feel like I’ve really opened up to him and learned who he is as a person, a lot more, especially in the last 12 months, since I was let go from CrossFit.

I was let go. He saw that we were kind of vulnerable. He opened his doors wide open to us. Just seeing how he treats his inner core of friends, I feel like I’ve broken through on a new layer with him. He’s just a phenomenal person. Him and Sam have an amazing thing going on, and respect that dude a ton.

David TaoDavid Tao

What is your secret talent?

Heber CannonHeber Cannon

Secret talent, I play the cello.

David TaoDavid Tao

You play the cello?

Heber CannonHeber Cannon

Play the cello.

David TaoDavid Tao

Do you still play? I played the clarinet back in marching band. You still actively play?

Heber CannonHeber Cannon

I don’t, only because I don’t have a cello. The listeners won’t be able to see this, what I’m showing you, a picture of me when I was a little kid. That’s me playing the cello right there.

David TaoDavid Tao

That is Heber with a cello that is larger than him.

Heber CannonHeber Cannon

Yep, that cello beat me up. Yeah, I played the cello, regularly practicing from the age of 4 all the way until I was 16. Then I got over it in my teenage years. One of my older brothers chucked my cello, so I don’t have one. I got to track one down, but I can play the cello.

 

David TaoDavid Tao

Awesome. Where can folks keep up to date with…? We talked about the Buttery Bros a lot, but where can folks keep up to date with the work you’re doing with Buttery Bros and also just you personally? What’s the best place to find you?

Heber CannonHeber Cannon

Probably the place where I’m most active to connect with is Instagram. You can reach out to me on @hebercannon or @butterybros. I manage both those accounts. I try to respond to every message I get or every comment I get. We’re just stoked to be doing it.

To show that gratitude, I try to respond to everyone on those. That’s the best place to hit me.

David TaoDavid Tao

Awesome. Heber, thank you so much for taking the time. I’m a huge fan of your work and have been for a while. It’s fantastic to hear. It’s great news for the fitness community that there’s a lot more to come. Thanks for joining us today.

Heber CannonHeber Cannon

Thank you.

 

About David Tao

BarBend's Co-Founder and CEO, David is a veteran of the health & fitness industry, with nearly a decade of experience building and running editorial teams in the space. He also serves as a color commentator for both National and International weightlifting competitions, many through USA Weightlifting.

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