Tonight's episode is a little different. It's not about RDAP, sentencing credits, or how the Bureau of Prisons works. It's about what happened when the worst years of my life came to be — and I'm interviewing my nephew, Scott Goldman.
Scott is a drummer who's been playing for three decades. He played with Laura Branigan, Melissa Manchester, Neil Diamond, and Kate Bush. He was a development executive for Charlie Sheen during his motion picture career. He co-hosts Watch Geek Time, a podcast centered around watch history, heritage, collecting, and horology. He's an IT expert, a pizzaiola, and a chef.
Growing Up Like Brothers in Malibu
Scott and I grew up more like brothers. It's almost like my sister — his mother — and my mom were pregnant at the same time. I would come over every holiday, and he'd come to my house every weekend. We were extremely close. I don't think we spent more than a week apart when we were growing up.
We moved to Malibu when Scott was 11. He actually became friends with Emilio Estevez first — they met shooting hoops at the elementary school at the end of a dirt road. Then he met Martin Sheen, and then Charlie Sheen, long before Charlie even thought about becoming a movie star.
Childhood Memories
Everything from go-kart riding to bike riding. We used to sneak out of the house at 3:00 in the morning and go out on Ventura Boulevard with a one-and-a-half-horsepower Briggs and Stratton lawnmower engine.
Scott remembers the guy down the street on Sunny Slope who had the lawnmower shop. His sign said it's $15 an hour to work on your stuff, $50 an hour if you want to watch, and $100 an hour if you want to help. We'd sneak into Cavanaugh Motors at the end of the street and break into the cars. One night Scott got one of the cars started because they used to just leave the keys in there.
The Charlie Sheen Years
Scott was more than just working for Charlie Sheen — they were friends, and have been for a long time. When I asked him whether Charlie was really crazy during the whole "winning" era or if it was just an act, Scott said there were certain things he could speak to and certain things he might not be able to. He said it was obvious Charlie was going through a growing spurt, to be kind. There were some issues going on then.
But Charlie seems to be better now. He's actually sober almost eight years. When I pressed him — nobody's going to see this, between you and me, is he really sober? — Scott looked me right in the eye and said he knows for a fact that he is.
How We Lost Touch
When I got heavy into my thing, I lost communication with Scott. The falling out happened when I asked him to help me move. He told me he was busy — he wasn't even in Los Angeles, he was in New York playing. I was furious. I said, "You should come home." He said, "Don't ask me to pay for the ticket, either."
It was that kind of thinking — expecting people to drop everything for me — that began the slow collapse of the bail bond business and put me in federal prison.
Reconnecting From Prison
While I was in prison, I tried relentlessly, without success, to contact Scott's brother Lon. I was working at the chapel, and a group of Jehovah's Witnesses would come in weekly. I asked them to locate him, figuring there must be a roster of all the Jehovah's Witnesses. They were unable to find him.
Then I got a letter out of nowhere from Lon that said he'd looked me up, found out I was in federal prison, and gave me a number to call. But I'd already maxed out on my 30 phone numbers — you can only have 30 phone numbers on your calling list in federal prison through Trulinks. So I wrote him back and asked for his email address.
The first email I sent said, "Get a hold of Scott." And we contacted each other. The hoops and fire to be able to send an email back and forth was something else — Scott joked that he thought the authorities were going to show up at the door.
ArDapDan and Preparing for Prison
Before going to federal prison, I researched everything I could for preparation. I found ArDapDan on YouTube — he's a federal prison time consultant who provides a very needed and noble service. From him, I learned that I had to write a personal narrative. He said if he interviewed me, he'd give me a discount on the personal narrative.
I didn't know that in two days I'd be getting calls from people I did not want to hear from. Everybody knew I was trying to keep it a secret — I was just going to slide into the night and go to prison, disappear like I went into Tijuana for five years and come out the other end.
Writing the Book and the Screenplay
When I was in prison, Lon had mentioned writing a book. I really wanted to write one. I did three years and I would take notes. When I got out, I had 70 pages of notes.
Scott and I discussed the prison story. As the artist he is, we drafted the screenplay — James Capria, Scott Goldman, and myself, with Scott as the lead writer. It took months and months of rewriting. We have three scripts that are good to go, with a fourth in progress.
Arago: Not Just Another Prison Show
The series is called Arago — not Aragon. The name is a play on slang. It's based on my time spent inside, but it's not simply another prison show. Most prison shows begin when the person enters the institution. Arago begins with a man who already spent decades building a psychological prison that he eventually enters. The walls you build around yourself on the outside are not terribly different than the walls built around you in prison.
The Arago character is free to break the fourth wall. He can turn to the camera and speak directly to the audience — to explain prison speak, to warn about certain characters, to bring the audience into this world. Nobody else in the show is aware of it. The story is told through Arago's point of view.
The Lime Metaphor
Scott describes his storytelling style using what he calls "the lime" — not the green one, but L-Y-M-E. He tells writers to think of an above-ground pool in your backyard filled with wet concrete. It's not going to harden unless you start adding the lime. The concrete is the world we've created — the prison and all the politicking that goes on in there. The lime is the real stuff: Carolina Lanes, the black and white footage of my father, the actual real events that shaped our lives. That's what hardens the story.
Episode Structure and Titles
Scott titled the episodes with single words. The first one is Tooth. The second is Hooch — prison wine. The third is Cars.
The Boxing Flashback
The Cars episode opens like a 1950s boxing epic. It's a total reenactment filmed in black and white, supposed to look a lot like Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci's Raging Bull. It features my father, Art Aragon, fighting Jimmy Carter of the Bronx, New York, at the Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles. The footage runs out and you don't realize you're sitting in a chapel watching this on a wall until the film starts to go.
Every episode starts in a fairly ambiguous way where you may not be really sure where you are — whether you're in a federal prison or somewhere else. Episode four actually starts in a guard's house. The irony is that because it's prison-supplied housing, it already looks like a cell.
The RDAP Journey
By episode seven, our protagonist Arago has made the move into RDAP — the residential drug abuse treatment program. The first season, which is eight episodes, is his journey to RDAP. In episode five or six, he's moved into a new cell. Your celly goes with you, but ultimately his original celly can't cut it, so he gets a new one.
The Characters
Lester and Miss Burns
FMC Fort Worth had a high concentration of transgender inmates — most of them transitioning from male to female. They put them there because it's a medical center and it's safe for them because they're all older people. I made sure to get into a prison that was a medical center because there's less violence — it's an easier yard. When I got into RDAP, they put Miss Burns with me.
Idaho
Idaho is a miracle character. He went from being a white supremacist to beating the living daylights out of white supremacists. When Scott asked him what he was doing, he said he was the head chef at the Cheesecake Factory. RDAP changed his life — he was someone who beat the crap out of everybody, and the program worked for him.
These stories of rehabilitation are miracle stories. Not everybody makes it, but the ones who do — they did what they had to do to get out and they've done what they have to do to stay out.
The Book: The High Cost
I had scripts and a developed series, but the package didn't have any underlying published source material yet. I remember driving home and Scott telling me that an industry conversation made it clear that a book would strengthen the chain of title and the marketable identity of the project. I started that day — I already had 70 pages.
I wrote The High Cost. The book is a full first-person account. It forced me to confront a lot of stuff that the early screenplay material didn't. The screenplay was limited to the prison — it didn't focus on any of the wreckage from the previous 40 years. When I had to confront that, it was at times very difficult for me to do.
I asked Scott to write the foreword. He said he was honored — and joked that as a professional writer, if he sent me something bad, maybe he'd be in the wrong business.
Where the Series Stands Now
We have scripts and a developed series with Sunset Pictures, a very accomplished group. They have to give Warner Brothers first look because their bungalow is on the Warner lot. We were very close to a deal when Netflix tried to merge with Warner Brothers, and then the Skydance people — Larry Ellison and his son — came in and mucked up the deal. That put an embargo on any relationships between anybody with a bungalow on the lot.
All the lawyers have cleared our material, which means they've read through all three scripts and vetted everything. The next obvious stage is to find people who love the material and want to attach themselves to it. Scott met with a director, but in his gut he doesn't feel like he's the right guy.
Scott wants someone who really understands what he calls the "keyhole look" — a drama where the audience is looking through a keyhole, their back against the wall like a fly, watching everything unfold right in front of them. He encourages people to watch The Pit with Noah Wyle to understand the style he's going for.
Lon's Reluctance
My brother Lon — Scott's uncle — didn't want to be involved because he felt some of the characters say things that are offensive. He doesn't curse or lie. He's one of the most beautiful people we know. He lives in a quiet, sheltered world, and when he watches this, he'll understand. But that's his style — he said, "I'm out," just like that.
James Capria
Our third co-writer, James Capria, is in production. He's an AI guy, building an entire show out of AI and not having an easy go of it because he doesn't understand that you need a hybrid — you need actual principal photography to use as reference material. Otherwise, everything looks like AI. He's in Austin and can just drive over and see it.
More Than a Prison Story
This is more than just a prison show. It's about how the walls you build around yourself on the outside aren't so different from the walls built around you inside. It's about rehabilitation, about miracles, about doing what you have to do to get out and stay out. And it's about two family members who lost touch for years and found their way back to each other through a book, a screenplay, and a shared determination to tell the truth.