David Belle’s
PARKOUR Interview with the Founder of the Discipline by Sabine Gros La Faige
Foreword by Director Luc Besson
This book is dedicated to… The two pillars of my life: My Father, who always told me that dreams do come true If you believe in them strongly enough (See Dad, I always believed!) My Grandfather, for his support and passing on his values. May they rest in peace. To my children – that I don’t have yet – but I hope they will read this book one day.
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"If two paths open up before you, always choose the most difficult one."
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Raymond Belle – The Father – The Champion – The Rescuer – The Initiator. A renowned gymnast and accomplished sportsman, he held several titles in athletics and records in high and long jump, javelin and rope climbing.
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FOREWORD At first sight, no one is more down to earth and rooted than David. Except maybe a tree. Precision, concision of words, of feelings. Each sentence is carefully thought and precisely targeted before being spoken. Nothing is left off to chance. He weighs each word as if to stand on it, like an edge, a steel pole or a ledge. He needs that confidence to express himself, to go forward< to fly. Once all the data he can rely on is listed in his mind, he’ll follow you anywhere. His trust is absolute. In you. In him. In elements. But the most impressive feature of this young man so deep-rooted in his surroundings is when he leaves behind the pedestrian world. Watching him flirt with gravity is something totally amazing. He plays with void, strokes concrete, flies on wind. He can come up with as many stories in mid-air as a ballet dancer on an opera floor. I felt the same kind of freedom when scuba-diving, where non-gravity allows you to plunge headfirst down underwater cliffs and make a turn on your fingertip. His training is often long, and no one really knows what goes on in his mind. But when he is ready, the action starts and it’s pure grace, sporting with everything including your eyesight. In the editing room, there were scenes I had to rewatch several times in slow motion to understand how he had done it. David has reached such a complete mastery not only of himself but also of the elements around him that he is sometimes hard to reach. To him, everything seems commonplace and useless. And he unwillingly makes you weigh your words and actions as well. Your heart speeds up when you have to tell him "You can rely on me", because you know it is impossible to let him down. Down means death to him. That may be the reason why he is more likely to trust a concrete edge than a human being. Concrete never betrayed him. His trust is a great honour, and I hope I deserved it. We first met a few years ago. At the time, my crew and I had come across the Yamakasi group and we were preparing a movie with them. But a problem arose: the names Yamakasi and Parkour had both been registered by an 8th man. I understood that this 8th man had originally 5
been part of the group but he had gone on and try his luck – on his own – in the US, a few months before. I offered to reinstate the 8th man in the group, but they all refused. Apparently, they were mad at him for leaving the group. Jealousy. Revenge. Nothing unusual. But truth was – as I understood later on while watching videos of this 8th man: he was much better and stronger than them. His name was David Belle. We organized a meeting between the Yamakasi, David, the producers of the movie and myself. David didn’t say a word and let his representative do the talking. Meanwhile, the Yamakasi were cackling like a bunch of chicken fighting over an egg. At the end of this messy meeting, I offered David a simple deal: "David, let them do this movie with us and then, I’ll make a movie with you, alone. You have my word!" He looked at me for a second and said, "OK." And yet, we had only known each other for an hour or so. He swiftly left the room and I never heard from him again until I introduced him to Cyril Raffaelli and the project District 13. On that day, he gave me his first smile. In a world where the place is going to the dogs, where bank managers play billions tossing a coin, where politics is all about media, where bribing, drug use and cheating happen faster than the laws fighting them, where earth itself is being worked out by our own treachery, it is good to keep some points of reference. David is one of them. He is a modern hero, who grew up between concrete walls and is tracing for us a new way, the one we should never have left: the way to human dignity.
Luc Besson
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CONTENTS Foreword
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Introduction
8
My Father the Hero
10
The Start
15
Learning
21
First Steps
29
Gathering Pace
39
Danger
47
Passing the Baton
56
District 13 – A Revelation
64
End of the Journey?
77
Thanks
87
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INTRODUCTION Why this book? I can’t talk about Parkour without talking about my father. Both are indelibly linked. Raymond Belle is the foundation of it all – of my life, of the creation of Parkour and its development throughout the world. Without him, there would be no David Belle and no Parkour. This book is not only a tribute to him, but an explanation of what he passed down on to me, all the philosophy of life that was at the core of this discipline and is still guiding me today. The aim of this book is not to give lessons and even less to put myself forward. I just want people to understand Parkour as it should be. For many, we are only "the guys jumping from rooftop to rooftop" whereas this discipline is so much more than that. If we jump from one building to another, it’s only because cities have been built; if we were living in trees, we would just jump from tree to tree, our houses would be rocks and we would jump from rock to rock. No matter where you are, no matter your environment, Parkour is about going where your body can take you, where your willpower leads you. Beyond the physical training method, beyond the discipline of movement and crossing obstacles, Parkour is an opening to a brand new world, a way to learn to know yourself better, and a new way of life. Today I can see that many people haven’t understood this quest for one’s identity, one’s true self, that Parkour is about. It’s not about jumping over obstacles in order to become the best or hurt yourself and take risks to prove you exist. Even if at the start there was a little bit of this in me, I soon learnt that excess was useless. My father used to say, "Don’t trigger negative things, don’t try and hurt yourself; life will give you enough opportunities to learn and know about pain and suffering." I eventually understood that I didn’t need to go through what my father had gone through to be a respectable man. And quite naturally I can respect others, even if they can’t achieve half of what I do in Parkour. Being a man is not about being the strongest, the toughest, jumping farther or higher. My father always laid great stress upon this: "Being a man is above all about keeping one’s word. If you say something, then just do it. Even the most menial of things." A man can be the strongest in the world, if he doesn’t keep his word, people around him 8
will eventually realize it and lose all form of respect for him. The young have a hard time with this today: keeping their word. They promise things, they like to brag, to show off, but these are just empty words. When time comes to put words into action, they simply vanish. Some traceurs* claimed the creation of Parkour and they sound like they did it all by themselves. But when they are being interviewed about it, they are unable to explain this discipline, to express its true meaning. But there was the story of my father and everything he gave me. I, too, could have said that I created this new discipline all by myself, I could have said all kinds of crap, I could have lied and put a label on myself: David Belle, Inventor of Parkour. But no. I didn’t. My father went through terrible things and his suffering brought me where I am today. I owe him this respect, this gratitude. After too many years when I didn’t really talk about this very personal matter, I’ve decided to tell the story of my father and the true genesis of Parkour. I want to talk about it for everyone who’s interested in Parkour or would like to start practicing it; all the young people who have so many questions about so many things and do not necessarily have parents on their side to help them, or feel lost the way I felt as a teenager. Of course, my father’s story isn’t an absolute reference – far from it – and he is not the ultimate example to follow either. But the young can look around them, in their own family, and there must be someone, a role model, they can follow; someone true with real values who can lead them through life. We all know someone in our relatives who went through extraordinary things in his or her life and can teach us to remain authentic and lead a good life. My father warned me about the pitfalls of life and protected me against negative people. If I had paid attention each time I was being told "Hey, kid, don’t climb on this wall!", I would never have become who I am today. Raymond Belle was my father but also my mentor. It would probably take ten books to talk about his whole life. I will never be as experienced and charismatic as him but at least I am proud to tell his story here, and pass on everything he taught me, word for word, without adding or omitting. * traceur: Parkour practitioner
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MY FATHER THE HERO The foundation of Parkour comes from your father and his extraordinary life path. One has to dig deep inside it to find the roots of what he passed down on to you, both as a father and as a man. Can you tell us who Raymond Belle was? My father was born in 1939 in Hué, Vietnam, the son of a mixed couple. His father was a French doctor in the colonial army and his mother was Vietnamese. He came from a numerous family – he had about ten siblings. They were quite well off, living in a nice house, owning horses. But the conflict for the independence of Vietnam turned into a war and his childhood turned into a nightmare. While he was on vacation at an uncle’s, he found himself cut off from his family by a front line that split the country in two parts. He couldn’t come back to his parents and he had to stay in this family where he went through difficult time. After a while, the uncle who didn’t want to take care of him anymore put him in a military school near Dalat run by the French. My father was seven at the time. It was a real shock for him. He hadn’t asked for it and he found himself overnight in an orphanage camp. It wasn’t what he had been raised to expect: he came from a wealthy family and all of a sudden finds himself in this miserable life, light-years from what he had known so far, a military school were you had to fight to earn respect, where your mother wasn’t here anymore to comfort you. In Dalat, it was Walk or Die - survival of the fittest. The Indochina war (pre-Vietnam War) was raging and those orphans were trained to become soldiers. They were taught fighting techniques, long walks in the mountains, assembling and disassembling weapons in the dark< Everything I learnt while in the army myself, at the age of nineteen. But he had to do it as a child; he had no choice. In order to survive, he quickly understood that he couldn’t rely on anybody but himself and he had to become the best fighter. How long did he stay in that "school"? He stayed there for nine years. After the defeat of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, he was sent back to France by boat. He found himself in a camp with other refugees in the area of Lyon. The French army took care of him and 10
pursued his military education until 1958. A former resident of Dalat who had been impressed by his physical abilities suggested him to join the prestigious Fire fighters' Squad of Paris. That’s probably the best advice he was ever given. All of a sudden, whereas he had been trained to fight and kill, my father found himself rescuing lives. It wasn’t originally his call and he had to adapt but he excelled in doing it. It gave a meaning to all his training in the Vietnamese jungle. He put his heart and soul into it. He would always volunteer for dangerous missions. If there was a roof or a façade to climb, he would go. His sense of courage, self-control and self sacrifice were outstanding: he could have given his life to save someone else. His squad comrades nicknamed him Kamikaze but that’s not the name I would have given him because it conveys a foolhardy, self-destructive feeling whereas he wasn’t ready to throw himself into just any situation. He was just the first one to go, before the others did. While his colleagues firemen were still in their fears, hesitating, he would go because he had already assessed danger and balanced the risks in his mind. Throughout his career, my father multiplied difficult rescues that earned him numerous honours and medals. His bosses knew they could always rely on him. One day as he was off, he was called back for a hazardous mission: taking off a flag from the steeple of Notre Dame de Paris cathedral put there by demonstrators. Quite ironically, it was a Vietcong flag. He showed me newspaper articles from that mission, dating back from 1969, where he is hanging in the sky on a cable under a helicopter getting close to Notre Dame. While reading the article, I was wondering why him and not another fireman? Then I understood that he had this little extra thing, and that thing was confidence. He had a total self-confidence. When he said he could do something, people believed him. He always had this self-confidence in every area of his life. After leaving the Firemen Squad in 1975, he worked for private businesses and was in charge of the security of big Parisian buildings like the Montparnasse Tower. And each time, his employers were impressed by his efficiency. When he was in charge, everything rolled on smoothly. Throughout his career, he also stood out with his athletic achievements. He was part of the Firemen of Paris gymnastics coach team, performing demonstrations for young firemen or public audiences. He was also several times national military champion in high jump and long jump. 11
Were his physical abilities a family heritage? Not at all. It didn’t have anything to do with his family. His father wasn’t into sports at all, and neither was his mother. My father worked hard to develop his physical abilities. And when I say hard, it is an understatement. He started training like a maniac when he ended up in the orphanage camp. At night, when other kids were asleep, he would get out of bed to go and run in the woods, climb on trees, do jumps, push-ups, balance. He would never stop, repeat his moves twenty, thirty, fifty times. He could hit trees bare fist just to make his fists tougher and more resistant, he would take boxing bags and throw them on his cheeks and nose to make them harder and less sensitive to pain. When he was telling me about those childhood memories, I couldn’t understand why he had gone through this crazy training, why he had hurt himself so bad. And then, one day, he confided in me that he had been abused while at his uncle’s< Unlike most children, instead of withdrawing into himself, he pushed himself forward to build a strong shell. At some point, alone in this camp, something clicked in his mind and he told himself, "From now on, no one will ever touch me again! Stop!" When he described me that specific moment, I got it: I had never heard anyone say this word so powerfully as he had. This "Stop!" meant so much. He had been through too much suffering and, for the rest of his life, he had decided he would never be a victim, ever again. So he quite literally changed himself, both mentally and physically? Absolutely. It was a thorough physical work coupled with an extraordinary mental strength. Even at the age of sixty, my father was still running and performing unbelievable running jumps. I saw him carry incredible weights. He would train throwing knives, razor blades on targets and his movement was always perfect. With my buddies – seven or eight teenagers – we would gather up and try to push him down in the grass but he wouldn’t move an inch and yet, he was on his own, his hands in his pockets, wearing flip-flops! His physical strength was phenomenal and yet, he always kept a smile on, never showing the slightest sign of pain or effort. I could only believe everything he told me 12
about his life and experiences. Besides, he would never brag and he also told me about his darker side, his weaknesses, his mistakes. He wasn’t trying to play the perfect father in front of his son. He never told me he was the best or the strongest. Never. Talking about what he went through in his youth, he told me a story that really made a deep impression on me. As he was being shipped back to France, he suffered from a testicular hernia and it got infected. He had to undergo an operation right then and there, in the middle of the ocean, on this boat full of refugees. He wasn’t given any anaesthetics – only a piece of wood to bite. They opened up and cut. I think it deeply affected him, both physically and psychologically, knowing the consequences of such a removal for a man. He was sixteen at the time and must have wondered if he would ever have children or even survive. His strength also comes from that. He was physically diminished but he wanted to show that it wouldn’t prevent him from living his life to the fullest, be stronger than others and go his own way. He was respectful of his superiors, of the military hierarchy, but if he believed something was wrong, he could oppose it, stubborn and unmovable as a wall. When he started in the Fireman Squad, a superior made him clean the bathrooms. He did it to show his boss he respected him, but he also made him understand that he would never do it again. No violence – just his words and confidence< My father was a free spirit, and he wanted his freedom to be respected. Sometimes, it backfired. Like most former soldier children, he had troubles adapting, drives he had to learn to control. I saw in him a man fighting his own instincts all his life. He had accepted to be part of the system at some point but, sometimes, the rebel within him was coming back to the surface. For instance, he would refuse to pay his taxes. For him, it was his money, a hard-earned money, and he didn’t see why he should give it back to the government. Compared to other fathers, mine was really out of this world. Once in France, did he try to get back in touch with his family, to go back to Vietnam? When in school in Dalat, two or three of his brothers managed to come and visit him. They told him his father had been murdered. Then he 13
found himself an orphan for good. And what had happened to his father toughened him up and he withdrew even more. On arrival in France, he was placed in a foster family but he remained a loner. After a few years, he was able to get in touch again with a few members of his family who had sought refuge in France as well. Cousins told him that his mother and brothers had also been brought back to France. He saw his mother again five or six times but the feelings were not there anymore. In Dalat, he had lived among kids who had actually lost both parents so he had learnt to erase all family ties the way they had. As if all feelings and emotions had been erased in order to turn them into little soldiers. He seemed totally detached from his family, especially his mother with whom he had never really had a great relationship. For some reason, it looks like she never really liked him as a kid. He remembered being left aside from the rest of the family. It seems like his mother considered him cursed because he was born the sixth or seventh child of the family and in some Vietnamese traditions, a child born in this rank is bad omen. My father had a hard time talking about his mother and his childhood, even though he remembered a lot of details. For instance, he told me that they lived in a house near the jungle and tigers would sometimes come close to the village. Some would even go inside houses< He seldom mentioned going back to Vietnam. Towards the end of his life, he would talk a little bit more about it. I wish I could have offered him the trip before he went; I wanted to make money for that. But he left on New Year’s Eve of 1999 before I could<
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THE START Growing up with a father with such an extraordinary life path, did you feel like admiring and imitating him? Actually, the very first person I did admire and take as a role model was my grandfather on my mother’s side. He brought me up from my birth in April 1973 until I was fourteen. I spent the first years of my life in his house in Fécamp, Normandy, and, after a short break with my mother in Boulogne-Billancourt (near Paris), I went back to live with him three more years in Vendée. My grandfather was a widower and he took real good care of me. He was a former fire fighter from the Paris Squad – like my father. He worked there for thirty-two years. He was also a WWII veteran. He became a widower at a very early age but never remarried. He had relationships and affairs, but no one ever really knew what was going on. I personally never saw anything and yet, I was living with him. Maybe when he went for a walk, he was actually going to see a girlfriend but he never told anything to anyone. I guess he didn’t want to impose a stepmother on his children. He respected them and me alike to the point of not showing up one day with a woman. He was a very quiet, unobtrusive man, and he also had an outstanding self-control. For instance, there was always a pack of cigarettes at home but he would only smoke one on Sundays after lunch. I was looking up at how he had managed to go on in life, how he had overcome adversity and I admired him for that. He truly was my very first role model. He was a straightforward man, very honest in his private life and respected in his work. My grandfather never fought with another man nor learnt any martial art. He was a total opposite of my father who had learnt to fight to death. He was teaching me another way of life. He never had the physical abilities my father had, nor his spirit. For my father, the outside world was a jungle where you had to constantly beware and protect yourself whereas my grandfather was more serene in his relationships with the outside world. It totally balanced my education. Without him, I probably would have fallen in excessive patterns the way my father did. I find myself balanced between those two men. A mix of wisdom and audacity, of respect and 15
rebellion, of restraint and action. Both my grandfather and my father are the pillars of my life. They made me what I am today. What was life like with your grandfather? I can say that I have been raised with a certain amount of discipline. My grandfather taught me the great principles of life, the foundations of how to behave in society. Thanks to his experience with the fire fighters, he showed me why it was important to have a healthy lifestyle or a wellkept home. He told me about times when he was being called in people’s homes and could find himself in a very modest place where everything was neat and clean and, on the contrary, go to very wealthy apartments where everything was a mess and dirty. He used to tell me: "Should anything happen to you, should people have to come to your home, you have to make sure that everything is neat and clean." He taught me to be polite, to respect others and tell the truth. "You have a mouth, so use it to speak. And rather than talking rubbish, just tell the truth or useful things, things that can teach something, that can bring something to others." He also pushed me to use my body, my physical abilities to do useful things, probably because he was hoping I would become a fire fighter myself. He kept repeating: "If you have to use your physical strength, do it for good reasons: rather than robbing a home, use this energy to help people." Thanks to him, I understood that we always have a choice in life, a choice that can take you on the right or the wrong path. "With a knife, you can choose to become a serial killer or a sculptor." Why were you raised by your grandfather and not your parents? My parents didn’t live together. They probably thought that the best option for me was to be raised by my grandfather. My father wasn’t exactly born a father and, since he grew up without his own parents and had managed pretty well on his own, he probably thought it would be a good thing for me as well. I believe that, to him, the best role model for his child was the patriarch of the family. And since my grandfather was a widower and living alone, I was kind of a present to him so that he could look after me and I could be under his protection. I personally have no regrets about their decision nor my childhood. I would see my 16
mother on weekends and I missed her but my grandfather was so involved in my education and he was caring so much for me that I never felt like I lacked affection. He had the little habits of an old man but he was always very respectful of my own world. For instance, if I wanted to practice a sport, he would enrol me at a club; and if I wanted to change, he’d let me do it. He took real good care of me and talked to me a lot. I felt more cared for from him than some of my classmates living with both their parents. Also, I always kept in touch with my father, even if I was living with my grandfather at first and then my mother. He would come and visit me on weekends, or I would go to his place. I have the feeling he wanted to stay away from me so that I would have to look for him, learn to know him, learn things by myself, on my own, without him forcing or imposing anything on me. And that’s exactly what happened later on, during teenage hood. Did you have any specific physical abilities as a child? Were you a daredevil? Actually, I was rather shy, reserved and withdrawn. But at times, I could be daring! My grandfather and I were living in some kind of a big manor in Fécamp that we shared with another family. The entrance was shaped like a pagoda with huge pillars and a Chinese roof. This manor overlooked the city and I felt kind of remote in this impressive mansion. Even my friends wouldn’t come over very often because they were too impressed. Even me, I was afraid at night and I would wait for my grandfather to go to bed before I could fall asleep. My imagination could run wild in this place and it felt to me like a fairytale castle. So I would do crazy things like climb on window ledges, hang over the balcony or climb on the roof of a little shack in the yard. My grandfather used to put barbwire on all windows to prevent me from going to dangerous places out there. He kept telling me all the time to stop climbing and jumping. He didn’t want to bully me; he just didn’t want me to get hurt. He had a hip problem following a bad landing after a jump, and he didn’t want me to become handicapped the way he was. And it was the same thing outside the manor: each time I saw a rock or a tree, I had to climb on it. I remember there was an embankment on the beach in Fécamp and I would go there all the time and jump even though the height was quite 17
impressive for a kid my age. I don’t know exactly why I was doing this, but something was pushing me. Did your grandfather enrol you in a sports club to channel your energy? My grandfather enrolled me in gymnastics, but I believe it was above all to please my father and also because he wanted me to develop my physical abilities in order to join a fire fighters' squad later on. I personally didn’t have any preferences; all I wanted to do was practice sports. My grandfather never forced me to do anything. I was doing gymnastics, but also athletics in school. I was very industrious; I was gifted compared to others but there wasn’t much of a difference to me. It’s not because I could do a flip or a high jump that I felt stronger or tougher. I was still very introverted, very withdrawn. I didn’t have any kind of identity at school or outside of it. I didn’t know who I was among the others because I wasn’t asserting myself. I was always very reserved and didn’t speak much with my classmates. In class, I wouldn’t answer questions teachers were asking me or I wouldn’t go to the blackboard even though I knew my lessons by heart. Simply because I didn’t want the sound of my voice to be heard. So I would rather pretend I didn’t know anything than express myself. And in my head, I felt like I won when the teacher ended up asking someone else. But truth was, I was simply failing school. There was a time when I was questioning everything I was being taught in school. I didn’t want any information to get inside my head without being sure it was true. If I was told that Louis the Sixteenth had lived and died in such and such way, I would put it in question and kept wondering: "But how do they know? They were not here to witness it!" Teachers were not reliable to me; they were just telling things they had learnt in books themselves. I always had this doubt in my mind and as a result, I didn’t want to learn. Except for basic things like "two and two are four", nothing would make it through my thick skull, and I just wouldn’t learn my lessons. Not because I couldn’t but because I couldn’t see any good reason to do it. I didn’t see the point in learning all that, what was the aim of it all in the end. I think today if we first told kids why such and such thing is going to be useful for them in life, they would be less 18
reluctant to learn in school. Instead of telling me the reason I had to learn by heart the life and facts about such or such famous historical character, the teacher just said: "Learn this by heart for tomorrow". As a result, I wasn’t interested one bit, and teachers thought I was a failure. And me, I couldn’t even spell without making ten mistakes in a sentence and I got discouraged. Did your problems in school worry your parents? My mother was probably worried because her brother was a headmaster, her sister-in-law was a teacher and, of course, her nephews were head of their classes. And I was the exact opposite. So there was some kind of a pressure both on my mother and myself. If I listened to my relatives, I was sometimes wondering what I would do with my life. Some people in my family thought I had no future whatsoever just because I couldn’t play board games! All those stupid remarks really upset me and I ended up thinking I really sucked, and withdraw even more. When I became a teenager, I started asking myself a lot of questions about life in general. I was wondering what I was doing here, in this life. I had the feeling I had been born in an era where nothing was happening and therefore I wouldn’t experience all the exciting adventures my grandfather had known during WWII or my father during the Vietnam War. Since childhood, I had been brought up listening to stories of fire fighters, soldiers, heroes and feats of all kinds so, of course, it was on my mind and influencing me. At the time, I was living in Vendée with my grandfather and I started talking a lot about my father. I would ask him a lot of questions about his past, his missions while in the Fire fighters' Squad of Paris. I needed to know where I was coming from, know more about my Asian roots on my father side even though it didn’t show on my features. It was working on my mind and, to my cousins on my mother’s side, I kept telling over and over again that I wasn’t like them. And you ended up looking for those roots at the source… I did, when I came back to live permanently with my mother. I was fourteen at the time, and she had moved to Lisses, in the suburbs of Paris. This is when I started getting more and more in touch with my 19
father. I wanted to talk to him, I wanted to move with him. I had reached an age where your body needs action but I didn’t want to go into just another sport and then regret it later on in life. You can have friends telling you, "Come on, let’s play basketball or football". Then you go and start liking it but without really knowing if it was your true calling. Of course, at first, I practiced gym and athletics in school and clubs. I had some physical abilities, but nothing fantastic. I was learning to use my body, but in a cool and controlled environment, in a nice heated room, with mattresses on the floor for protection. I found teaching in clubs too scholastic for my own taste. And the more I talked to my father, the more I realized I didn’t need all that. He would ask me: "What do you want to do with your life? Are you training because you want to become like such athlete who wants to compete, or do you want to do something really different? If you want to be different, then train in an area that will truly be useful, that will enable you to get out of any situation or help someone should anything happen on the street or in a building." The more I talked to him and the more I could see something coming into shape, coming to life in my head and this is when the true adventure of Parkour began.
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LEARNING & TRAINING Where does the name "Parkour" come from? The more my grandfather was telling me about the physical condition and abilities of my father, the more I was asking myself questions. I was wondering how he had managed to do all those things. I ended up asking my father himself; I wanted to know what kind of sports he had practiced to reach such a level. And this is when I heard the word "parcours" for the first time. (Parcours du combattant = Assault Course). He told me how, as a soldier child, he would wake up every night to go out and train, alone and on the sly, on the assault course, but also on other courses he had come up with by himself. To me, this word, "parcours", was very abstract and didn’t mean anything. He explained that there were different types of courses – or parcours – over there, like endurance course, agility course, resilience course, and so on. There was even a silent course where he would practice with his friends to go from tree to tree in the forest, overlooking French patrols, without being noticed or heard. Their minds were already focused on warfare. For many, nowadays, parkour is something fun but for my father, it was vital – a matter of life or death. This training would help him get tough, survive through war and protect himself against all odds. My father was very patient, willing, tenacious and dedicated. He would take each obstacle coming his way and find the best way to go across. And he would repeat the movement fifty, one hundred times, until he mastered it to perfection. And he was only twelve or thirteen. Compared to him at the same age, I felt totally behind: if something happened to me, I would get upset and cry as if I had been beaten up. I was still playing with my Playmobil toys when he was suffering in the jungle at the same age. To my father, Parkour was about sweat, tears and blood. How did you get initiated to Parkour? You have to understand that Parkour didn’t come out of the blue one day. My father never told me, "Here, my son. Now that you’ve turned fifteen, I am going to share a great secret with you," no. I had to dig, search, nose around, a bit like a journalist. I first had to discovered my father 21
and what was behind the man. Then I assimilated everything he taught me about life, how to deal with it, how to build it with a solid background. He gave me a large amount of elements regarding a certain philosophy of life but also sports advice for a better physical and mental preparation. It’s a mixture of those elements and the personal work I undertook for years that led to Parkour, step by step. Some people nowadays tell me: "Hey, David, you are the creator of Parkour", but I am not! I am not a scientist working in a lab or an engineer; I didn’t invent anything. It came from a long process started in teenage hood – if not earlier. I wasn’t interested in school anymore, and I needed something more authentic, more real; to get back to something fundamental. At some point, I took a break and told myself that life was short and I started looking inside myself to find out what I could do with this life, in which area I could excel and the rest would follow. I got that from my father. He believe that if you learnt certain bases, they would help you out in any other situation. What was this philosophy he taught you like? My father guided me, brought me answers on simple matters or situations everyone comes across one day or another in his lifetime. My grandfather had taught me the practical aspects of life – how to keep a house, take care of yourself or express yourself properly and so on. My father taught me how to behave, both with yourself and with others, how to face the outside world, attacks and pitfalls awaiting me. He tried to make me understand how things work in life, and all the things I would come across: work, friends, women, money< He kept telling me: "Don’t hang on desperately to it. If it’s there, good. But if it’s not, don’t hassle yourself to understand why you are not rich. Remain faithful to your core principles." He encouraged me to have right thoughts. I was only fourteen or fifteen but thanks to my father, I was more mature for my age. In a way, he had assessed his achievements and it was as if he had understood things that he could have avoided as a teenager or an adult, and he was passing that on to me. I knew he was giving me everything he could so that I wouldn’t make the same mistakes. He told me: "You’ll realize that it’s hard to juggle with five balls in your life. But instead of thinking it’s a hassle and complain, ask yourself if it is necessary or useful." He taught 22
me so much that nowadays, I always question the aim of something or someone new coming to my life. I understood that human beings in general are bad. Bad because they always end up hurting someone or try to take advantage of others. There are very few true, good and honest people on earth. And this is what we should be taught in school: be aware if someone is real, being able to make the difference between people trying to abuse you and honest people, recognize a real statement, listen to people and be able to see through them. Without my father, I would not have been able to do it. He was always telling me about examples showing that men and life are closely intertwined: there is no black or white. He never judged someone on his behaviour good or bad. He rather told me to look at the intention, whether it was a good or a bad one. For instance, a guy cheating on his wife can do it for good reasons, to save his marriage and conversely another husband is going to remain faithful but turn his wife’s life into a living hell. What mattered the most to my father was to respect others and be honest. How did those exchanges with your father took place? I had to go and look for him otherwise, nothing would happen. For instance, if I spent the afternoon in my cousins’ room and he was downstairs in the living room, he wouldn’t come to see me. His motto was: "If my son wants to know things about me, about my life, he’ll have to come and ask them." My father was sleeping in a tent in the yard, even in the dead of winter. I would look at him through the bedroom window and tell myself: "I have to go, I have to talk to my father. I’ve been here for two days, and I have to do it before it’s too late and I regret it." I had the urge, a vital need to do it. I wanted to talk with him about everything he had gone through. And when I was eventually with him, he could talk to me about everything and anything. He could lecture me on cooking, on cars, on human beings. He would tell me: "You are going to know women like this or like that and it will just be as many different experiences. But it has to bring you something, you have to learn to know women and, therefore, know yourself." He wanted me to avoid his mistakes and didn’t want me to lose my time in a relationship that wasn’t meant for me. Guys who think that they have all life ahead of them and that they are going to make the 23
best of it and get as many women as they can only end up hurting girls. What’s the point in breaking a heart? There is no positive energy in it. After everything my father had told me about women, I couldn’t show off in front of him. If I brought a girl at home, I could feel the essential question in his eyes: "Ok, son, you are bringing in a pretty girl. You can even bring ten. But can you tell me if she is the right one? Are you bringing her because you love her or because you are trying to show off in front of others, in front of your buddies?" Today, I just can’t play a game or be fake because he taught me so often to be authentic that I feel bad when I lie, cheat or do things for wrong reasons. My father had known many women but he confessed that he wasn’t exactly proud of it. He never told me "Hey, it’s great to have lots of girls! Go and have fun, David!" Actually, it was more of the opposite: "You can go out with a hundred women but, in the end, if you can’t remember each and every one of them, what’s the point? If you can’t remember names, faces, moments spent with them, then you missed something. You could have avoided going out with some of them and hurting them." To him, what really mattered was to find the right person, the one that would share my life. Those lessons from my father prevented me from making a lot of stupid mistakes, from starting something I couldn’t finish. They helped me develop a sharper vision of people and not be focused on looks alone. Do you feel you shared more with him than other children did with their fathers? I think I had a much better communication being away from my father than if he had been there all the time. Both my step-brothers had known him living at home but they have never had the conversations I had with him. I was proud of my elder brothers Jean-François and Daniel, even though I didn’t see the latter much. I can say today that Jean-François played an important part in the development of Parkour. He triggered certain things, asked questions, told me about my father, his feats, showed me photographs, documents. Both my brothers were strong characters, in very opposite ways. Jean-François was a good student in school, he became a fire fighter and pursued a career in the fire fighters. On the other hand, our elder brother Daniel – who was ten years older than me – followed a way more tortuous path with a tragic ending. He 24
fell into drugs that led to armed robberies and he was sentenced to jail for that. When he got out of jail, we thought he would be alright. He had found a job – he was working as a set designer for theatre and seemed very confident. But then, a few months later, he died from O.D. I believe his life and the problems he went though also had a big influence on my relationship with my father. I think he believed he had missed something with that son, that he hadn’t been up to it. He probably felt guilty and tried to catch up with me, giving me things he hadn’t had time to give Daniel so that I wouldn’t follow the same path. Daniel had been pushed in that direction by people who were not necessarily good, and he wanted to prevent me from doing that as well. Was it easy for you to listen to your father when he didn’t raise you? I have never been angry at him for leaving his home, his wife, to go elsewhere. I couldn’t be mad at him: he had his reasons, his excuses. And after looking at him for so long, I ended up understanding what was on his mind, the sufferings he had gone through as a child. It doesn’t mean that I didn’t miss him – I did. If I have children one day, I’ll try and do with them what I’ve never done with my father; or rather, what I would have liked to do with him. But in any case, I listened to him, I was very careful with everything he told me and I literally drank his words. In life in general the people I respect the most are not the ones who have read a million books, but rather those who lived things – you can see their lives passing in their eyes like a movie. I pay more attention to those people because I know they talk from experience, they learnt from their mistakes. And my father was that kind of a man. He knew where the traps and dead ends were and his advice helped me prevent falling headfirst into them. He kept telling me: "Living in such or such way is not worth it, then don’t do it," and gave me examples. I can still see him talking to me with so much calm and confidence. Thanks to him, I truly grew up faster and I have the feeling I didn’t waste time going astray. Of course, I could have just dismissed everything saying it was all bullshit, but I also heard the other fire fighters talking about him and I knew it was the truth. He never told me more than he had done. In his everyday life, my father never showed off. He never told his buddies: "Hey, man, I did this amazing thing today…" He didn’t need to brag about what he was 25
doing – people always ended up knowing one way or another. That was his strength. The only things he never told me about were maybe a few negative aspects of his personality that he didn’t want his son to see. My father had his faults – he wasn’t perfect – but his numerous qualities erased all the rest. And his good nature was often turned against him. People could use and abuse him for he couldn’t refuse help when he was asked. He can’t be blamed for whatever harm he may have done in his life because he truly was a good person at heart. Maybe you admired him because he wasn’t there often? Yes, that’s very likely. But above all I was trying to see in which way I was like him, because I didn’t look like him at all. I was a very shy and quiet little boy – the exact opposite of him. He was shining bright. When he walked down the street, people would turn around and stare at him. He truly had a strong aura. Sometimes, I would even tell myself: "I must have been adopted, there is no other way!" There was nothing, not a single element linking him to me as my father. Even when I was little, I would see him perform feats, like archery on the No Parking sign on the garage door. He would shoot from a hundred and fifty feet and hit the bull’s eye as if it was a piece of cake. The most amazing thing is, when I am successful in one area, my father was successful in one thousand! He could fix a car, cook, mend things, and so on. He was very thorough and careful in everything he did, always paying attention to details and yet, I never saw him take anything too seriously or be very focused! He was always taking everything easy and naturally, and I think this is what impressed me the most. He was like a cat, very feline. He could achieve something impressive and yet remain very calm, keeping his smile on, as if there was nothing extraordinary about it. And he did insist on that aspect of things: "Don’t be amazed, David, because that’s not all what there is to life. Don’t be amazed when you watch a circus acrobat because the guy you see performing on TV, well, he rehearsed his show all year long. And maybe when he rehearses, he juggles with eleven balls but when he performs in front of an audience, he removes two of them to look even more comfortable doing it. There is always a trick. Nothing happens at random. What would be very surprising would be if the guy never juggled in his life and started doing it with 26
nine balls as if it were a piece of cake. That would be amazing; it would even be a miracle." He had understood that if you have a gift in life, you don’t have to look for it: it’s there. But if you don’t, then you have to work for it: "If you want strength, then develop it; if you want to go high, then jump; if you want speed, then go faster." Willpower is useless if you don’t do things thoroughly, if you don’t go for it without asking yourself questions. The more you grow up, the more questions you ask yourself, the more excuses you find, the smarter you think you are avoiding obstacles. But the truth is, it is experience and going all the way into things that makes you go forward. And that’s exactly what Parkour is all about: move from one obstacle to the other and make it more difficult on purpose so that in real life, everything seems easier. My father kept repeating me that: "If two roads open up before you, always take the most difficult one. Because you know you can travel the easy one." By listening to and watching him, I understood something essential: I was always avoiding things when he was always confronting them. All those teachings are very close to martial arts philosophy… I just think that the philosophy in martial arts is based on the philosophy of life, just like Parkour. For instance, martial arts refer a lot to animals. But never mind that the philosophy you choose comes from martial arts, religion or elsewhere, as long as you can find a meaning to it. When I started Parkour, I found a way to exist. I wasn’t feeling well in my mind, and I wanted to get back to my true self and listen to my desires and not what others expected of me. I took a path that I chose and I found my true self along the way. And since I was outside the normal system, I developed another way of life. I would like to insist on one thing, though: my father brought this philosophy gently, without any cramming. He did it intuitively, without any constraints. In the army, soldiers don’t have a choice. "Do this, do that, get on the ground, do fifty push ups!" They are yelled at, forced to do things. They end up disgusted and it leaves marks on them. On the contrary, my father managed to give me the desire to do it by myself. He 27
never ordered me to do Parkour. He just showed me the way. It was my choice and will to follow the path or not. But above all, he made me understand that you can’t achieve anything without willpower. "I can hit you to try and make you do things, but if you have decided in your head that you won’t do it, I know you won’t." His thing was to try, over and over again. Even if it hurts, even if it is difficult, even if you fail. If you can tell yourself that you are going to try something and do it, then you are already different from others. And it was important to my father to do things differently, not to fall victim of daily routine, of what everyone else does. "If you want to develop your strength, then don’t be content with lifting weights for one hour in front of a mirror because in the end, that’s all you’ll be able to do: lift weights. Instead, find another way to train." Thanks to my father, I understood that the most important thing was to work on yourself, and how much effort you put into your training. His favourite motto was: "Become what you train for."
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FIRST STEPS What was your physical training like? At the very beginning, my father would make me do little physical exercises like walking on a fence to keep my balance, go from one place to another without touching the ground, climbing a little wall, jumping< He was just showing me bases and never tried to impose a style or a particular technique. And in any case, if I didn’t do the movement right, my body would tell me right away. If you miss your jump, you hurt yourself; otherwise, you don’t feel anything. The most important thing to him was to repeat: "By doing the movements a dozen, a hundred times, trust comes and by doing the same movements over and over again, it becomes automatic." As I was training, I could feel there was still plenty of room for improvement. I could feel it in myself. Parkour is truly a long distance discipline. So very quickly, I ended up doing my own stuff, on my own, in Lisses and around. I had to hang out outside, to try out new things, as many as possible. I felt it necessary to train on my own to improve even faster. At the start of Parkour, I was very lonesome, but I wasn’t alone in my head. I had this image in front of me, this picture of my father jumping higher, farther, doing better than I did. People on the street thought I was training alone but I felt as if someone invisible was showing me the way. Sometimes, when I got to see my father again, I would tell him what I had been doing for training, I would tell him about my jumps, and he would give me physical advice like working out my thighs to improve explosive takeoffs or how to turn my speed into strength for a wall run. My father was a guide to me. When I got home to my mother’s after visiting him, I had a better understanding of where the key to his achievement lied. If he could achieve so many things in his life, it was because he had worked out on his own parcours. I understood that if I fully and totally went into that, I could get closer to him and have a better understanding of what he had been through.
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Was there a desire to look like him? No. I think I just wanted him to be proud of me. I wanted him to be able to tell his buddies: "Hey, look, it’s my son." I wanted that kind of recognition, including from elders who had known my father in the Fire fighter Squad of Paris. I wanted them to say watching a video: "Hey, look, it’s Raymond Belle’s son! It’s the Kamikaze’ son!" Maybe at first I had this desire to go through what my father had gone through, to catch up with his experience. But I soon realized it was not possible and would never happen: I was in Lisses, not in Vietnam. And I wasn’t Raymond, I was David. I ended up understanding that, no matter what I’d do, I would never be in the same league as him, and I had to find my own path. Of course, it required a lot of imagination – he had gone through very real and tangible circumstances like a fire in a building, so I had to come up with my own situations. So for instance I would pretend that I only had one arm and I was wondering how I would do to go from this place to that place with such a handicap. Or if a jump felt too easy, I would tell myself: "Ok, let’s assume you are tired because you just ran for two hours. Would the jump be that easy?" I put myself in situations where I had to constantly excel. And little by little, you get a taste for it, it almost becomes like a drug because the body keeps asking for more. The next hardest part was to find my own obstacles, and not do again what my father had done before me, or do things I had already done. It’s a tendency we all have, to go to what is easier, what we know best. So I had to push myself to go and look for difficulty. I started with jumps that were likely to help me make progress, but without taking too much risks at first because I was aware of my mother waiting at home for her son who was training. That prevented me from doing crazy things and having an uncaring rebel teenage attitude like, "Well, if I hurt myself, I just don’t care!" Some guys are really proud to break a bone and they like to brag about it. But truth is, it only shows a total lack of respect towards oneself and one’s body. What’s the point in being ready to destroy yourself just to show that you don’t care? Once you’re hurt, you can’t move forward anymore. Whereas the aim of the game is to constantly improve, be more efficient than someone who doesn’t train or very little. If you hurt 30
yourself, you can’t be efficient anymore. If an injured stuntman told me: "Look, I drive a Porsche and I have a nice house…" , I would tell him: "Yeah, right. But you walk with crutches and you limp…" Money can be around, if your body is not well, you can’t say you achieved something or you have reached some truth. Because that’s the first wealth, the first reward of Parkour: be true to yourself. And I know if I had to jump from a balcony because there was a fire, I could do it. Even if I am tired, even after three sleepless nights, I could do it without breaking a leg. Talking about it, how do you jump from great heights without breaking anything? Is it an acquired skill? My father told me that he could jump from twenty-five feet as easily as from a chair. So I started practicing from a chair and I got the feeling of it. Then I went on to a table, and a little bit higher each time. Then you start feeling your weight increasing, the impact hurting. And no need to jump from twenty-five feet; you can already feel it from eight. But when your technique is good, when you repeated your jump twenty, thirty, forty, fifty times, the brain registers as well as the body, because this later also has a memory. When you wake up in the morning after an evening session of training, you think to yourself: "Ok, I did it fifty times and I feel good, I didn’t hurt myself. So I can make it a hundred, and even jump three or four feet higher." These are data that come naturally, little by little. That’s how it goes in nature alike: look at a gibbon monkey jumping from branch to branch; he doesn’t ask himself any question; he doesn’t ask himself how he’s going to catch the next branch. He just does it, instinctively. Not like a sportsman who is going to calculate every fraction of an inch, every hundredth of a second. Animals have this instinct in themselves. An animal will learn while still a baby, by playing, hanging on low branches. And without even realizing it, the physical strength is worked out naturally. Falling is also part of the apprenticeship. Little by little, the vision, the appraisal of distances and so on is worked out in a completely natural way. Then comes the time when the baby is in complete harmony with itself and its environment – the forest. All its movements are perfect, not because it is a better monkey, but simply because it has reached a perfect balance between his 31
weight, size, energy, speed< When they move around, you can tell that those monkeys have reached their full potential in a totally natural way. If you measure things too much, you lose your instinct. You can be as good and efficient as an athlete but somewhere along the way, you lost the true nature – and therefore the authenticity – of the movement. But doesn’t Parkour require specific physical skills at the start in order to evolve? Absolutely not. It’s as if you told me that one monkey is fit to climb a tree but not another one. From the moment you have two arms and two legs, you can move, you can climb on a table and jump to the ground. Everybody can do Parkour, everybody can clear obstacles. The only difference is that some are going to suffer and others won’t. Of course, some physical data are going to change the deal: a 130 lbs guy isn’t going to jump like a 220 lbs one. You also adapt Parkour to your age: at 30, you don’t move like you used to at 20; at 40, you don’t move like at 30 and so on. But no matter your age, your level, or the way you move; what really matters is to move. Everybody can find his or her own way in Parkour. Parkour changes you. And I repeat what my father used to say: "You become what you are dedicated to." Whether he was forty or sixty, I saw that my father kept on doing his thing without even questioning his physical abilities. He never had any doubts. He knew he could still move, run, jump. Did you go to gyms in order to work out? No. I worked out by climbing trees, hanging from a parapet or adding weight on myself, with a backpack, for instance. To me, fitness rooms are more of a game than anything else where you just build up muscles for the sake of building up muscles, to look good or try to be Mr. Universe. But in the end, it’s useless. For true Parkour followers, muscles have to be built in a natural way, outdoors, with whatever is available to you. A little bit like Georges Hébert’s Natural Method. He was in the military where he developed a training method for sailors who didn’t have much space on boats to keep in shape. He had classified his method according to movement groups: running, jumping, swimming, lifting, throwing, 32
climbing, pulling, carrying, and so on. For instance, sailors could put a wooden board between two barrels and work out their jumps and built up their thighs muscles. These were simple exercises. My grandfather had told me about that method, and it echoed what my father was teaching me. In Vietnam, he too had come up with his own training method. And even though it was inspirational to me, I ended up developing my own techniques to cross obstacles. I followed my feelings and adapted it to my own environment. Parkour truly has a development and techniques of its own because it’s about moving around an urban environment. Obstacle courses had been around for a long time but my father and I decided to perceive obstacles in a different way, and change this sufferable course into something positive, pacifist and useful. And I saw the difference with Hébert’s Method when I did my military service in the Navy in Vannes. Did you have favourite training spots in Lisses? At the beginning, I was often going to the Dame du Lac (Lady of the Lake). It was a park with a huge climbing structure. It was still open to the public back then. Everyone knew the place. People went there for a walk on Sundays. For me, this place was the essence of Parkour because there were so many obstacles in this one place. I could practice just about any part of Parkour there for three or four hours at a time. It truly was the perfect training ground. I spent a lot of time there. But there were also many other places where I liked to go. The aim of the game was to adapt to just about any surrounding, always keeping in mind that "should anything happen, what do you do?" I was a just-in-case type of person! A forest of trees or a forest of buildings, there is no specific spot, no compulsory place to train in Parkour. For instance, in an urban environment, you can go around the architectural elements and turn it into a training element in order to evolve in a positive way. And you can find a way to adapt to the urban environment. This is how I overcame the suffocating feeling of suburban districts. As if I had mountains for a landscape and found myself on top of them. When I was a kid, in Fécamp, each time I saw a dune, a hill, a rock or a cliff, I had to go and climb it. Then I got transferred to Essonnes (south of Paris), but my desire to get higher was still intact. So I had no other choice than go on top of 33
those tall apartment buildings. This way, I just erased this block of concrete blocking my view. And that’s what Parkour is also about: overcome and not let yourself be overcome. I ended up feeling very comfortable in that seemingly hostile environment. I would even discover places that locals themselves didn’t know about. Somehow, it seems like you enjoy the pioneer aspect of the discipline… Absolutely! What I liked in Parkour was to find a way, find the way. Search and discover. If someone told me that it was impossible to go through such way, I would tell myself that there had to be a way. I liked the feeling of knowing that I was the first one to go through this path, or that no one else had done that jump before me. As soon as there was a new way to be opened, I would go. The aim was to go forward, always. So I would look for new ways. And anything a human body could do, I would do it. I would sometimes find myself in places forbidden to the public but without even realizing it, just because I had taken a different path than the one where the restriction signs were posted on. I was often in mid-air and never considered myself as breaking the law. I felt like a bird, free from gravity, or like a cat, with the same desire to have a freedom of movement, to land where I wanted to. And I didn’t understand that it upset some people. I was climbing with a smile on my face, and this smile said it all: I wasn’t a thief, I knew exactly what I was doing and I was respectful of the place I was going through. Going around in different neighbourhoods looking for buildings to train on, did you ever get in trouble with the local gangs? I personally never had any troubles with guys from the hood. My father thought that those who get in trouble somehow looked for it. A guy looking for a fight is going to end up one day facing a bigger guy who’s going to beat the crap out of him. When you live a normal life and follow your rhythm without messing with other people’s businesses, you just go along your way flawlessly; you have a positive energy, and people around can feel it. When guys in the hood come across a Parkour group at night, they can feel their good energy, they see young having fun 34
doing jumps and somersaults, cheering each other up. They understand right away that they are not here to look for trouble. They come here to use the architecture around. Attitude is everything in Parkour: when you know where you are going, nothing can hurt you; and it’s the same thing in life. That’s what my father tried to teach me. And you shouldn’t pay attention to minor factors and other interfering elements along the way. When she saw you jump, wasn’t your mother upset at your father for giving you such ideas? No, because she knew him better than anybody else. Others could consider my father crazy, but she knew better that he knew what he was doing. At first, my mother didn’t know about Parkour and the risks involved. She thought I was training like a good boy, doing sports in the woods. Whenever she went shopping, I sometimes came across her and I showed her a little jump or something. It’s only later on, with pictures and videos, that she started really understanding what I was doing. She trusted me. I was respectful with others and I didn’t bring the cops back home. I would skip school every once in a while, but I did it to go training. Of course, the school thing brought problems. The principal always caught me because he didn’t like it, and it was always the same thing: "David, where have you been yesterday? Messing around?", "No, Sir. I was training." " What training, David?" " I climb, I jump, I run." "And how useful is that going to be to you in your life, David?" I was always asked to justify myself when I didn’t want to, explain what would be the use of it later on in life. I was just feeling good with it. I was a teenager who was successfully feeling good thanks to a sport he loved. And yet I could tell that they wanted to break me, to prevent me from doing Parkour. But when it comes to sports, there is no right time or day to practice. And when I saw all the things they were trying to cram in my head at school, I figured that, if any of it was of any importance at all, I would find out later on in life. And to be honest, I learnt much more reading books by myself than anything they tried to teach me at school.
Do you think you could have become a delinquent without Parkour and your father’s teachings? 35
It’s hard to say. If I hadn’t had such a strong thing as Parkour in my youth, I wouldn’t have improved the way I have; I don’t know what I would have done with my life. At first, with my failure in school, future didn’t look too bright but thank God Parkour brought me what I was looking for. I needed to feel what’s real, I needed my body to face real obstacles in order to have landmarks and know where I was going. When you are outside and face obstacles, you know who you are. When I was training real hard and managed difficult moves or jumps, I was very proud of what I was doing. At night, I would look at myself in the mirror with all my scratches and I had the feeling I knew where I was going. I was concerned with becoming a good person. Even if I didn’t do well in school, I knew I would earn respect later on and people would respect me and see me as a good man, who loves life, who is strong both in his body and his mind. But of course, getting to that point is everything but easy. I could just have become an anonymous office worker. Even today, the line to normality is very thin. I can bang my knee on a piece of furniture and moan like a kid. Sometimes, I have to remind myself where I come from and all the efforts I put into Parkour when I was nobody and didn’t make a living. When I was a kid, I tried to have realistic dreams. And if I was carried away by silly fantasies like "I want one million dollars right here right now", I always ended up telling myself that there were a lot of needy people out there who deserved it way more than I did. And if I wanted that money, I had to earn it, to deserve it. And I applied the same principle to Parkour: if I wanted to be good, I had to deserve it and sweat tears and blood to get it. I wasn’t supposed to cry over a pack of candies but over the fact that I couldn’t cross a set of buildings. So you had a very strict discipline of life… It’s true that Parkour gives you the taste for effort and a certain sense of discipline. I was very careful with what I was eating. I didn’t drink, didn’t smoke. I was always in control. At an age where teenagers go to parties, have fun, go out with girls, I was spending my time training. It was a vital need, as if something was about to happen and I had to be prepared. When friends invited me to parties, pushing me to go there, I 36
answered them: "Later on. We’ll have plenty of time to have fun but training is now. It’s now you have to get in shape." To me, once you’re an adult, it’s almost too late; the man has already been shaped. Sometimes, when I was lazy, life made me regret it right away by giving me a good lesson. When I was getting upset in front of an obstacle I couldn’t cross, I would tell myself, "See, David, if you had trained on this before, you wouldn’t be stuck here, getting all upset, and you would have crossed it easily." There was a time in Parkour when I imposed very difficult things on myself, and I never gave up. I would get all worked up, putting myself in situations worse than boot camp. And I even ended up hurting myself. One day, for instance, I tore the skin from my arm repeating a movement on a tree branch. I was bleeding like a pig but to me it was a test, as if the tree was telling me: "You won’t make it, kid. Forget about it…" So I took the challenge up. I ended up talking to obstacles as if they were looking at me and asking me to prove myself, to show that I wanted to make it, that I was able to make it. Actually, those obstacles are like mirrors: you work on yourself, you face yourself. How did you manage to keep this rhythm and not get discouraged? I was working on my willpower and determination, as my father had taught me. When you lose your motivation and courage, that’s when you feel the pain. If you don’t feel good in your head the physical pain will be sharper. But if you have trained and have absolute trust in yourself, pain is nothing. Parkour requires a total commitment. If you want to learn something, you have to go into it, completely. You have to get rid of all the locks, have a target and stick to it. No hesitation, no turning back. Take athletes for instance. In order to know exactly what they are worth, change their routine, like waking them up at three a.m. to go and train in the woods. A real athlete won’t think twice, won’t wonder if it’s a test from the coach. He’ll just wake up and say, "Ok, let’s go." That kind of athletes aren’t too many. There are very few like them. With most guys, you have to tell them ahead of time that you are going to do a night outing in order to prepare and motivate them. A real athlete can wake up at any time, and always be ready. He doesn’t even take time to wonder if he wants it or not. But in order to always be ready like that, you have to have had a rough time of it. Even tired, a guy who 37
has internalized the training of Parkour will always be better than another athlete who will hesitate because he doesn’t have the right shoes, because it rains or it’s cold or God knows what. When training, some young are losing their head, taking too much time arguing. Life is short. There is a rhythm to do things. Of course, you can’t master everything happening in your life, but there is a good rhythm to take to move forward. Music can help with Parkour. It can help you put more energy into it. Personally, rap music is my thing; it puts energy to the movement and a specific rhythm in my course. To explain what it feels like, it’s like a metronome. In order to move swiftly in Parkour, you have to find your own internal metronome.
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GATHERING PACE When did you feel Parkour was your only way out in life? I had come to a point when it was my one and only reason to live and that was all I did. I would do Parkour all along the way to school or my gym club. And coming back as well. After school, I trained until late at night. I caught up the best I could, sleeping in daytime during class. After a while I realized I was much better off outdoors. It felt to me like that was the real thing. So that’s when I decided to drop out of school and my gym clubs along and put all my heart, energy and time in Parkour. I was thinking: "What’s the point in doing back flips on a mattress? It won’t ever happen outside, on concrete. Jumping from a building doing a back flip would just be dangerous and useless…" I didn’t see the point in carrying on with my training to manage three, then four flips. What would be the use outside, in town, in real life? Absolutely none. So I willingly walked away from those sports, from training indoors and contests. To me, it was training for others, for competition, but not for me nor my life. I also walked away from certain relatives, friends and other adults. I was purposely putting myself aside, building a shell. I was putting a kind of protecting bubble around me because I knew all the other adults but my father would tell me things to stop me like, "Watch out, David, be careful, you are not your father…" If I had listened to them, I would have put an end to it all and I would have found myself completely lost, without anything to make a living. You were not afraid to drop out of school at 16? I know it may seem strange that I had such confidence at such a young age but I’ve never been worried about my future. I was a bit worried because of my mother who had to face what people thought of it and negative comments about it from other adults. But I was genuinely happy and didn’t have a problem with it. Sure, I wasn’t a good student, but I could communicate with others and, to me, that was what really mattered. And deep inside, I knew I had found something with Parkour that would only bring me good things in life. I felt like a lonesome gold digger who has found a goldmine. And I was encouraged by what my 39
father, my brother Jean-François and some of my friends told me. When I was doing Parkour, the best reward was when an old man sitting on bench called out and say: "Hey, kid, I’ve been watching you for an hour and what you are doing is really great. I didn’t do that back when I was in the army…" I hadn’t even noticed the old man but he was there, watching me. And getting positive outside feedback made me stronger; I felt I was on the right path. How did things go when friends came along with you on Parkour? At first I was on my own because it was important to me to find myself without any kind of help or anyone watching me. But little by little, friends started getting interested and I wanted to share what I was living, the teachings of my father. I always gave a chance to anyone, even a young who didn’t have a sports background. I would say, "Ok, come over," to anyone who wanted to train and was curious enough to find out more about Parkour. I was open and didn’t consider Parkour a private property. When I started training, I knew what I was doing, and I knew why I was doing it. When others joined in, I tried to put some order in their desires, raise their curiosity and make them understand what Parkour was all about and how to practice it. I let them ask me questions the way my father had done with me. I was trying to see if they were following the right path, if they perceived things the way I did. And when they did, they kept coming back because they understood that Parkour could bring them more than the rest, video games, football or hanging out, something deeper. Those guys usually gave up whatever sports they were in to come and train with me. You were kind of challenging each other… We were looking for jumps and set our minds to it with our imagination, a bit like a hunter in the Amazonian forest coming back to his tribe with a trophy and narrating how he had done it. Going to bed at night and pondering about the jumps, I truly had the feeling I had achieved something. I was really proud. When I was sixteen or seventeen, I had a driving force, a willpower. I would never let go, I had to do the jump, 40
even if it was the end of the day and it was getting dark. My friends were not so sure and some would tell me: "Forget about it, we’ll come back tomorrow." But I didn’t want to; it was now or never. I wanted to prove to myself that it was the right way, my way. And I wouldn’t leave before I had managed to cross the obstacle. So I would often find myself alone, my friends being all gone. Instead of coming home at eight, I would come back at eleven pm and, of course, I was being yelled at. But I was happy, proud of myself: I had kept my word. Each time I said, "I can do it" or "I can make it", well, I did it and made it. When I managed to go through a difficult path, I was happy and proud of myself. Sometimes, I would hear locals talk and I could tell they were more and more amazed. It wasn’t "your kid’s stuff" anymore, it was genuine admiration. Did you like having an audience? No, I wasn’t looking for that at all. I didn’t do Parkour for cheers and applause. Of course, when I overheard a father tell his kid: "Look how this man moves; you can tell he knows what he’s doing, he’s very careful with each movement", that was inspiring. I was hanging on to positive feedback, but I wasn’t looking for it. I wasn’t doing Parkour to show off because it wasn’t my thing, at all. When girls were passing by in the street, I waited until they were gone to pursue my training. It’s kind of hard to do that when you are fifteen or sixteen because you want to show off with girls but it’s useless for the movement itself. It can even be disruptive. I had friends who waited for girls to pass by to do their flip and then just crashed. That taught me a good lesson and I asked my friend why he had waited one hour doing nothing and all of a sudden, just because there was a girl, he did his flip. He ended up on his face. It would have been better to rehearse during that hour, without paying attention whether girls were here or not. He would not even have noticed them and he would have made it. That’s what being real is all about. In Parkour, there is no plan, no show. When a girl asks you to perform a jump just for her, that’s a trap. It’s not the girl who is bad, that was just the idea that came to her mind at that moment. A bit like the media asking you to do a jump again because they want spectators to be impressed. Then you do it for wrong reasons, you waste your energy for nothing and the jump loses its all of its value and meaning. 41
So there is no sense of aesthetics in Parkour? It’s of minor interest. Parkour has to be instinctive and natural first and foremost. When you start putting emphasis on the aesthetic side and doing artistic figures, it’s useless and even dangerous. Art is meant to be beautiful, a distraction. Parkour is a hardcore sport, a discipline that has to bring something, be beneficial. It’s not meant to be nice-looking but efficient. There are three main rules in Parkour and that’s the priority: do it, do it well and do it fast and well. When you are in front of an obstacle, the first thing to do is to find out if you are able to cross it. How you achieve it, who cares?! What matters is to know if I can save my life running as fast as I can and jumping from here to there. Even if I hurt myself doing so, can I make it? And then, when you can make it, you can start thinking about doing it well. Which means jumping across that gap that could mean death and land on the other side without hurting myself, getting back on my feet without any mental or physical injuries. Then the last step is to do it well and fast. You mentally get ready by thinking you only have one minute left before the whole thing blows, before the roof collapses. Can I do the same movement in one minute only? By doing fast and well, this is when Parkour becomes efficient. The rest, the somersaults and pretty jumps are not necessary. When you add acrobatics, your attention is focused on the salto and you get rid of all the rest; everything Parkour is about, which is jumping, climbing, moving from point A to point B. Practicing Parkour isn’t about fun, with piercings everywhere, green or purple hair or nice shoes. It’s unnecessary. In Parkour, if the guy understands why he’s here, why he’s doing these movements, that’s great. If he learns to cross obstacles without hurting himself, that’s what really matters. Then, if he puts style into it, putting his little finger in the air like that, who cares? If a guy feels good when he jumps, if his landing is good, then he got it. When I move, I’m not trying to look nice; my aim is to jump fast and well. When looking at me, I want people to think: "He trained and didn’t hurt himself." Sometimes, I’ll watch a stuntman do his thing on TV or on a movie set and even if the guy has a great physical condition, when he lands, I can tell right away if he hurt himself really good. He may bite the bullet and won’t let anything show but once in his dressing room, he’s going to 42
grab his elbow and moan. Most people in the audience won’t realize but I can tell, even on screen, when a jump failed. How did Parkour become such a phenomenon with youth? It all started with my brother Jean-François who brought a video tape of our training sessions to the TV show Stade 2 (a sports show on French Channel 2) at the end of the 90’s. My brother had asked us for footage to bring our sport some recognition. I agreed because I wanted more people to find out about this discipline and show our positive spirit. I wanted people to understand that this sport could be practiced in a group and enable the young to move about in a positive way. Going to Channel 2, Jean-François came across journalist Francis Malto who watched the footage and said right away: "Ok, when do we start the shooting?" One week later, they came to see us and did the shooting with my friends and I in Lisses. You can see me moving around Dame du Lac and in the streets. After it aired it raised a keen interested among a lot of young. Reports and amateur videos flourished and Parkour was brought to light. Those images had also been seen by producers or directors who started different projects – shows, commercials, movies – and this is what truly started the phenomenon as we know it today. It also brought splits and clashes among traceurs training with you… Groups started to form and others split away. We took different paths because we didn’t see things the same way. Some were jealous because I had been put forward in the Stade 2 video. I didn’t look for it but, on the other hand, it was a kind of a recognition for all those years of hard work and training. But as the media phenomenon grew bigger and bigger, I didn’t feel too good about it. I felt like something was being created that didn’t suit me and no one seemed to care about my father. Some friends chose group names, stage names. They thought it sounded good for the media, the audience. But I wasn’t at all into Samurais or Ninja Turtles stuff. I wasn’t going to prevent them – they were free to do what they wanted. The only thing is, afterwards, some of them didn’t have any recognition whatsoever regarding the origins of Parkour. They acted as if my father’s heritage and what I had brought had never existed. They 43
didn’t give a damn about Parkour; all they wanted was fame. To me, it felt like Raymond Belle had been erased and all my work had been useless. I knew it had taken me three years to perfect such or such jump and they acted as if they could perform it overnight. They thought they had made it when Parkour had actually just begun. At night, when they went home, I went out again and trained two more hours. I didn’t want to give up. I only got some rest when I slept. When I saw how they behaved, I realized there was a big problem and it wasn’t taking us anywhere. Parkour was only starting to be known and people had already lost its true meaning, what was behind this discipline. If my friends had been fair and honest, if there had been some recognition of my father’s input, then it could have worked. And when the media started getting more and more in touch with them, I withdrew even more. I let them do their movies, shows and interviews. They were talking nonsense to journalists. They didn’t grasp certain things. Parkour was closely connected to a story – my story. I think I made a mistake not speaking up at the very beginning of the popularization of Parkour by the media. I made a mistake not telling the whole story of my father and what Parkour meant to me deep inside. But back then, I just couldn’t. My father was the word and I was the action. Talking about him or me wasn’t my thing. For many young who joined Parkour or journalists coming for interviews, I was just David, getting his kicks by jumping all over the place and his father was a fire fighter. But very few indeed knew or understood the origin of it all, the real reasons and true meaning and values I was putting in Parkour< So you felt cheated somehow… Absolutely. I felt like they were taking a hold of the origins of Parkour, as if the discipline had been developed by each of them. Some went even as far as saying that their own father had taught them Parkour! Of course, the fathers of some of them were sportsmen or in the military, but none of them did what Raymond Belle did, none of them had had his training nor mine. I didn’t expect at all that some of them would have the audacity to claim the genesis of Parkour. I was naively thinking my father would be put forward but people acted as if he didn’t even exist. Some even went as far as pretending that crossing obstacles has always 44
existed and since the mists of time, Man has always moved around in his environment. Sure, but no one ever did it Parkour style. I’ve been around the globe and never found anyone telling me: "Hey, man, we know your stuff; we’ve been doing it before! Nobody. Not even in India. I’ve been to schools teaching martial arts, and none of the students knew how to do what I did. Everywhere in cities, street sports have developed like BMX, basketball, break dance, skate boarding or even climbing walls, but no one has ever developed a technique to move about your surroundings, to cross urban obstacles the way I have developed it with my father. If it hadn’t been for my father, I wouldn’t have developed Parkour. I would just be David Belle, doing a bit of athletics, gymnastics and martial arts, but that’s it. But still, you must be glad that Parkour is acknowledged and developing… I don’t refuse Parkour to develop, on the contrary! Even when we drew apart with friends who had come to train with me, it doesn’t bother me. Some came and trained with me for years and did get the spirit of Parkour. Then they moved on and created their own structure and went some way with it, like Stéphane Vigroux who created Parkour Generations in England. This is great for the development of our discipline. But others didn’t understand Parkour at all. After watching some participants, I realized after a while that they didn’t do the things I was looking for in Parkour anymore, they didn’t have the same mindset anymore. During some trainings, public shows or movies, it was going downhill, it was baloney. Some brought a fun side to it, a freestyle spirit. Sure, it looks good and spectators love it but with saltos and other nice figures, the movements are not the same anymore. It turns into a show and that’s not what Parkour is about. I’m not saying I didn’t do acrobatics myself – I did – but it was after training, after the Parkour, just for fun, to relax and unwind. It was a way to chill out, like a soccer player who is going to do a somersault after scoring. When I was training with some friends, they sometimes put all their energy working on something freestyle - everything the young liked at the time – but I personally thought it was useless. I didn’t want to waste my time working on a salto like this or that because I knew in a real life situation, 45
I wouldn’t have time to do it. When I did acrobatics, I was actually training in depth. It looked like I was having fun doing it but truth was I did it for a specific reason: I was working on the basics, I was improving my perception of space and distances< When others trained with me, they soon realized how hard it was and that it was really my thing. Some didn’t understand why I could do things they couldn’t, but they had a tendency to forget that I had repeated the movement five hundred times before. Some felt frustrated because they didn’t succeed right away. Others were upset because they felt physically stronger and yet, they couldn’t cross obstacles. Those did Parkour for wrong reasons. They wanted to be stronger than David Belle instead of doing Parkour for themselves. Hence their failure. Actually, their arrogance spurred me on to do even better and show them how much I liked this discipline and how I did it. We should be motivated by the love of sports, not challenge or competition. I have to admit that it was also a mistake to put some acrobatics in my first videos but when I did those demos, it was to ignite a spark and have the young start thinking, "Hey, I don’t know why he’s doing it but he makes me want to put my sneakers on, go outside and move!" To me, it’s an achievement when someone feels like going in the street, climbing, jumping, working out< It’s so much better than staying inside three hours playing video games. It’s useless and virtual. Go outside into the real world, that’s what really matters; no matter what you do out there – as long as it’s for a good reason. But with what was being shown by freestylers or acrobatics lovers, the public got confused and started mixing it all up. It is very important to me to put an emphasis on the fact that Parkour is no sport of nutcases jumping over buildings and taking insane risks to show off.
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DANGER Do you get excited by danger? No, it never excited me. I was even very uncomfortable with it when I was a kid – danger or void. To overcome that, at some point, I told myself that, should anything happen, I had to be ready. It’s almost in spite of me that I dealt with danger. I flirted with it just to know what it felt like; a bit like someone who’s going to get cut to know what it’s like, what it feels like, but not necessarily looking for pain. I’ve been hurt all over my body and I know what it feels like to have a broken arm. I know what pain is and it is not something I’m looking for. On the contrary, it helps me be even more confident and accurate with my movements. At the beginning I may have lacked experience or maturity but I have always been very aware of danger and the risks I was taking. You don’t come to Parkour thinking there is no danger or risk to be hurt – there is. It’s as if someone wanted to learn boxing and was stunned because he got a broken nose. Those who don’t want to get a bit hurt, who don’t want to have scratched hands, shouldn’t come to Parkour. What do you rely on when you jump very high? Luck, the help of God or your physical abilities? I believe in my work. When I manage a difficult jump, people congratulate me as if I had achieved something impossible but the truth is, it’s all about work. They don’t see all the previous jumps, all the years of training to get there. Others call me insane with a death wish or other things like that. If I were insane, I would already be in a lunatic asylum, a wheelchair or dead because someone insane isn’t afraid of anything and is not aware of danger and could jump from just about anywhere. But I have the notion of distance, height, I know about the speed and energy I have to put into a successful jump. Even if it is kind of crazy to jump from one building to another, you have to protect yourself from that craziness. And the only way is through practice and self-confidence. I don’t stop in the middle of a jump thinking, "Hey, this is kind of crazy, huh?" No, I know what I’m doing. In my head, I know the steps I went 47
through to get there, I know I went through them all and therefore I am confident, both about myself and my jump. How do you do to gauge the danger or know if a jump is possible? Focus and observation are very important. I have a very accurate and efficient vision thanks to Parkour. As soon as I get started, I feel a transformation, as if a veil in front of my eyes and my brain was lifted: I can see lines and distances in my head. I can encompass everything in every direction like a chameleon. Movement in Parkour is a matter of attention. You observe the obstacle, you mentally get to it and the movement has to follow – basically, let your mind go and your body follows. If you move according to what you have in your head, your movement is better; you move fast and well. You should not forget that Parkour is a sequence of obstacles. When you jump, the aim is to get back on your feet, run and jump again right away. If you stop running in the middle of it, your movements lose energy. When you jump, you are already focused towards the next obstacle and when you roll on a landing, you have the energy and the dynamics to keep going right away. And it’s those dynamics that prevent you from getting hurt and have impacts on your body. If a guy thinks that he is going to stop right after his jump is going to let his guard down and get hurt. The aim of Parkour is to never suffer, in every sense of the term. The body knows how to protect itself instinctively: when you fall, you put your arm forward and when someone tries to punch you in the face, you have the instinctive reflex to put your hand up to protect yourself. You don’t think about it: you just do it. And that’s also what Parkour is about: managing to develop the instinctive reflexes of your body. It’s pushing forward the natural response of the body… Absolutely. When I get ready for a jump, I don’t stand still and upright. On the contrary, I flex and move a bit forward; I look ahead and information come on their own. I don’t need to ask myself: "Ok, now, how far is that jump?" I know it from the data sent by my body. In a boxing fight, a guy who is standing a bit backwards gives his opponent the information that he is scared but if he puts his head down in his fists 48
and moves forward, not only does he give the information that he is ready to fight but he also has a better stance to perceive things and anticipate his opponent’s moves. In Parkour, I saw guys who were not 100% into it; they jumped but there whole body or mind wasn’t to what they were doing whereas it should be exactly the other way around. You have to be there in Parkour. Jumping involves taking decisions, it’s a real proof of maturity: with a jump, I take a risk so when I tell my body "Do it, jump!", I know I have all the data and I know exactly what I’m doing. I can understand a mother’s worries when she sees her kid doing Parkour and thinks he’s crazy and going to fall, but the kid has to answer: "I know what I’m doing, Mum. And I know myself better than you ever will." By dint of training, I reached that maturity and was able to tell my mother: "Trust me". Can you have fun even with a small jump? Absolutely! I can have fun doing Parkour one foot off the ground as well as thirty or fifty. It’s not height but the way that matters. It’s being in one spot and tell yourself you can reach that other one in a specific amount of time. It’s being stuck at some point and thinking to yourself, "Hey, if I went this way and then that way, maybe there’s a way out." It’s seeing an obstacle from a distance and realizing that you can cross it with some practice. Of course, you get your first big sensations when you reach a height where you know you can break your leg or, if you miss, there is no other way out. In front of a huge gap, you start thinking "Wow!" but this is when self-confidence and work come into play. You have to know yourself thoroughly before you reach such heights, such jumps that you could break yourself. You learn to cross a lot of obstacles when learning Parkour but you must be aware of your abilities and your level. It’s like giving a four-wheeler to someone used to driving a compact: very soon, he’s going to ask himself "What can I do with it?" And soon he is going to understand that he can go out of his urban setting, get off the road and go on small dirt paths, cross rivers. Little by little, he’ll be able to encompass the capabilities of his car and he’ll know where he can go with it. It’s the same with my body. Thanks to Parkour, now I know exactly what I can do with it. Like automatic piloting. I know I can jump from one roof to another without falling. I know I can 49
do it again. I know it, I do it. Without asking myself any question. It’s the same when I take a glass on a table and put it back: I don’t ask myself if it’s going to break or not. If you drop the glass, it’s because you were not focused – you were talking, thinking about something else. You drop things when you are not focused on what you are doing. If, when taking the glass, I think, "I’m going to take it and put it right there", it’s impossible to drop it. I know. And I have the same certainty with a jump. Nothing can twist or shoot me, no wind can throw me off balance. If I feel confident, if I’m focused and have the speed, the spring, the strength, then there won’t be any problem. You must have an absolute faith in yourself or you can never go forward in life. That’s my philosophy. Can you decide not to jump if it’s too difficult? Of course! Parkour is also about knowing your limits. I’ve never overestimated my strength. You are being smart by knowing your level and refusing a jump and not follow someone who actually has the ability to do it. Sometimes, when I was facing a difficult jump, I was torn between the David saying, "It’s your way, Parkour brought you here and you have to go across", and the other David who thought, "Well, that’s kinda high and doesn’t look so easy, huh?"» That’s why I preferred jumping alone or with people I could trust, in order not to have peer pressure. Some people have a tendency to listen to their friends and get caught on a little game of going better than everybody else. And that’s when it becomes very dangerous. With Parkour, you shouldn’t be looking for an outstanding performance. It’s noxious and you mustn’t play with that, you mustn’t play with your life. I have far more respect for guys who don’t show off and brag around and about. Someone who shows off and boasts all the time, of course, you want to test him and tell him to show what he can actually do< And most of time, they make fools of themselves. Those who end up making great jumps have felt the urge to talk about it at some point because they are impressed themselves and proud, but you have to walk away from that. The most important thing is to be ready, ready to perform the jump that will change things. Guys who swagger and brag too much about Parkour may have to perform a jump to save someone one day and they will find themselves bloody 50
stupid they can’t make it because the jump is three feet higher than what they are used to doing. Have you ever been hurt jumping? In twenty years, I haven’t sustained a significant injury. I’ve had minor incidents little sprung ankles, hurt knees, stitches, but nothing too serious. Most accidents occurring nowadays are due to filming. They jump just for the camera. I jump because this is what my life is all about, it’s vital to me. They do it for the show. They know they are going to be on YouTube and they are going to be admired. There are even some guys who never jumped before but they are going to do it because they want to impress their buddies. And that’s when they fall. If they had done it for a good reason, for themselves and not for the camera disturbing their mind, it would not have happened. If you get into filming or photography, you already alter the spirit of Parkour. It means you jump to show off and brag; it’s more about yourself. At first, I didn’t want any photos or video. I just wanted to train for the sake of training and not jump because someone was watching or asking me. I may have triggered the whole thing by showing what I was doing at first but I didn’t want that. I made videos for producers and advertising agencies to give them ideas and have them want to work with me. But those videos ended up on the net; and it wasn’t my idea. There was a time when you typed David Belle on a search engine and nothing showed up. Nowadays, everything is out there. It doesn’t interest me. Parkour is not on the net; it takes place outdoors. Once again, you have to be real, not bluffing. With Parkour, one shouldn’t feel invincible either… Of course, we are only human after all. Parkour is not about becoming a super hero. It doesn’t teach you to fly or gives you Superman or Spiderman powers. It’s just a discipline enabling you to pass obstacles, jump, climb in a natural way. And it enables us to surpass and improve ourselves both physically and mentally but it doesn’t turn us into aliens. We know it can enable us to save lives should anything happen, like someone trapped on a balcony when a building is on fire. But you don’t spend your life on roofs, waiting for something to happen either. No, it’s 51
just about self-awareness. Like people learning to perform heart massage and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and they get their first aid diploma: they don’t feel like they have turned into doctors but yet, they know that should anything happen, they’ll be able to assist. If someone has a problem, he can address Parkour practitioners. Most people out there are not necessarily aware of that. Did you have problems with people living in the buildings? At first, people didn’t understand what I was doing on their roofs or balconies. Some didn’t accept that I moved around in their environment. And it became worse when the group size increased and it was four, five or six of us running, climbing, jumping< I often came across very hostile people when all I was doing was train in a positive way, to improve, without anything else in my mind. Some people told me: "Get out of here, you don’t have anything to do here" and so on, and I simply answered: "But I’m not disturbing you, Sir. If I step back from your path, you can walk on no problem. And if I break a leg, it’s none of your business. I’m not a relative of yours, so it’s my own business…" But most of the time, I didn’t feel like talking and having to justify what I was doing. I just told myself that I would come back at three am, when the guy was sleeping. One time, I even found myself at odds with a nun. I was getting ready to jump from the wall of a church in Evry and she chewed me out. A nun, for God’s sake! She, out of anybody else, should have understood that I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I thought that with all her years serving God, she would have seen in my eyes I wasn’t bad, I wasn’t a thug going to tag the wall of her church. And on top of it, instead of caring for me, she kept on, saying that if I fell, she was going to get in trouble! She couldn’t care less that I could hurt myself. Quite ironically, she is the one who tripped on a step< She didn’t fall but I still told her: "Watch your steps, Sister!" Had she been nice to me, I would have left. But here, I stayed and did my thing regardless. People shouldn’t worry: when someone is doing Parkour outside, he knows what he is doing, he knows the risks and acts accordingly. Of course, if I saw a little kid fooling around on the edge of a six-stories building, I would call rescuers right away. 52
And how did things go with the police? I have had my ID checked a million times – sometimes even several times in one night. And each time it was the same fuss, like, "What are you doing here at 3 am? You shouldn’t be out here. Gimme your papers," and so on. And whenever cops got any interest in what we were doing, they just couldn’t make the difference between young who wanted to do fishy things and young who were training. The same questions regarding why we were out on a school night or why we were wearing jeans when we were supposed to practice sports always came back. So I answered that if one day you have to run from a fire, you won’t necessarily be dressed in sports clothes and you have to know how to move and jump with a pair of jeans. I have to admit that we sometimes had a rebel and know-it-all attitude that could get on the cops’ nerves. So they always ended up telling us to stop what we were doing and go play elsewhere, or go home because people were sleeping< We were not always aware of how late it was nor the noise we were making; we were in our own little world, in our bubble, our Parkour. Training with several people can be disturbing for the neighbourhood because of the noise when we make comments on our jumps or shoes slipping on the walls, and so on. We were so into our thing that we didn’t think we were doing anything wrong. We naively assumed that people understood we were not thieves and just training. For heaven’s sake we were not dressed in black wearing masks and carrying tools in backpacks! Jeans and sneakers were our only tools! There were only a handful of times when cops understood what we were doing and let us do it. Most of the time, they gave us a hell of a bad time. There were fishy things going on next door but we were the ones they picked on when we were nice and never offended anyone. Most of the time, if we were courteously asked to move on, we would. But cops didn’t respect us as human beings. To them, we were numbers only. They wouldn’t even look at us in the eyes when they asked us our ID papers. There was no exchange. Cops have a big ego issue and they use and abuse their power when all they should be doing is protect the weak and needy. Most of them chose to become cops for wrong reasons – to carry a weapon, wear a uniform or impose the respect they never got when younger, to brag around. To me, being a cop means representing 53
law and order and be modest, and not play cowboy or the strongest guy on the block. When a bozo calls the cop telling them there’s a weird guy climbing on the walls outside, all they hear is weird guy and don’t question it. They get there right away, with their sirens on and they are very aggressive. And the guy who called, well, maybe one day I’ll save his daughter climbing to his balcony and he won’t even know it was me training the other night because he never took time to discuss and get to know me. Nowadays people don’t care about anything anymore and make judgements without knowing. In France, people lock themselves in their homes whereas there are countries where doors are open and nothing is being stolen. Over here, we are taught to beware of everyone, we become paranoid and stressed out and it rubs off on every single one of us. A guy walking on a wall has to be a crook, a criminal or a drug dealer< What kind of a system are we living in where you see that some people can take us for criminals and shoot us just because we are running on a rooftop?! How is it possible that some people can’t even make the difference between a young looking for trouble and a young just practicing his sport? Do I have to wear a t-shirt saying I’m not a thief?! There was also the issue of how dangerous your sport is. Did city councils or officials try to prevent you from practicing? At the beginning, we never encountered any problems with city councils or officials. Today it’s different. Some cities like Lisses are in favour of Parkour because it brings an economical activity to the place and keeps the young busy. But other cities are considering forbidding climbing or jumping from some places. I’m pretty sure very soon will see sign popping up everywhere to forbid access to traceurs the way skaters have been forbidden from some places. It’s insane: they want to prevent our freedom of movement; it’s as if they wanted to prevent us from singing in the street! When I started Parkour, I thought I was free, but it’s not the case. We don’t do any harm and yet people are reluctant. We are just moving around in a different way, without following the ribbon of asphalt laid out for the common run of people. So it is disturbing. The whole system and mentalities alike are so hard to change. I’m sure if tomorrow I invented a flying eco-friendly car, I couldn’t use or market it. 54
It would be so nice, instead of waiting three hours in an airport to just take your flying car with your buddies, put on some good music and go to India or China without even questioning it. But it’s just be impossible because the system, politics and lobbies would not allow it. They want to put fences around us like you would for babies in the stairs. And even if we prove to be mature and sensible, we are still prevented from doing what we want to. Is there a way to change things? I don’t know. I often wondered how I could change this negative vision people have, and show them I’m not bad because I climb walls or jump from roof to roof. Getting Parkour some recognition from the media can help. Starting clubs and organizations can also help parents and authorities feel more secure about it. People have to understand what Parkour is about. My father passed something on to me that can be useful and help others. I never developed it hoping to please people and have them tell me, "Whoa, your stuff is out of this world!" But deep inside of me, I know the value of Parkour, and that’s all that matters to me. If tomorrow the whole and entire world tells me that it sucks big times and it’s useless, I’ll keep on smiling because I’ll know, deep inside, that it’s not true. I know for sure. Even a small guy sweeping the street could climb a façade one day to save a kid if he followed the teachings of Parkour. And then, he’ll go on with his work, as if nothing had happened and parents looking at him with a dropping mouth. Parkour practitioners will be the first to help and rescue people. I’m sure in the future when fire fighters are called for little matters like a cat in a tree, they will tell people to ask around if there’s a Parkour practitioner to help out, because fire fighters have other more important things to take care of. And for practitioners alike it’s also very beneficial. I remember ten-year-old kids who asked me to help them climb on Dame du Lac. I did help them because I was comfortable enough that I didn’t need to pay attention to my own movements and I could safely help them out. Some of those kids really got the bug and practiced for several years. And when I see them again today, they have a smile on their face talking about Parkour and telling me all the good it did to them. 55
PASSING THE BATON Do you think the philosophy of Parkour can bring something positive to the young living in suburbs? We are already starting to initiate and train youth workers dealing with young with problems to Parkour. Teenagers can understand a lot of things thanks to Parkour and it can bring them positive values. It can also help them channel their energy but it may not necessarily be enough. As long as their environment doesn’t change, they are not going to change either. And as long as the outside look on them doesn’t change, the current situation is not going to change. There’s a common expression, "young from the suburbs" (in France, suburbs of big cities are usually underprivileged", but what does it mean exactly? To me, there’s a kind of racism and rejection in the word suburb . When some people talk about "the youth from the suburbs", it’s another way to say "those Blacks, those Arabs", except that it’s politically more correct. People are racist but they hide their hatred and intolerance behind this suburb word, and it’s convenient for them. There are suburbs where there are no problems except for a few punks who do not respect anything or anyone. But most of the young people are good guys. They have their own suburban way of talking, they wear suburban clothing, but it doesn’t make them thugs. They respect others and urban structures and they help each other, no matter their ethnical background. Media and people usually mix up those young – the majority – and a small number of individuals who wants to be heard and does damages. And things often get out of control because they have no other solution to be heard since they are non-existent in the public eye. They need to express themselves but they don’t have any way to do so. That’s why they burn cars, because that’s what is readily available and it’s going to be highly visible. Or they are going to break something because it will make noise and they will be heard. As long as there won’t be a solution to listen to them, to give them opportunities for a better world, suburbs will remain areas of trouble. Before a guy is even born into one of those dirty suburbs, you already know that he is going to rebel. When you live in a cage, when concrete buildings block the horizon, you know you can’t accept your situation. The solution would be to raze it all to the 56
ground and rebuild it anew. Suburban architecture was a failure from the start. And the young are not responsible for those buildings. They just happen to live there. If architects, politicians and so-called smart people had thought about it before building those bloody concrete structures, if they had just wondered, "Would I want to live here?" , then maybe things wouldn’t be what they are today. And I’m sure that if wealthy kids were put to live in the suburbs in the same conditions – dirty hallways and elevators, stinking staircases and neighbours playing music super loud at three a.m. – I think they would also become very angry and turn into "young from the suburbs". Everybody says, "Those young, they have to learn respect…" But did they respect us when they built those things? Nope. How do you expect the young to respect that? The place itself doesn’t inspire respect. It feels like rabbit cages< That’s an incentive to do stupid things. If you have enough energy, you just want to destroy those cages. You don’t even think about it, it’s just an instinct. And when a young tells me he screwed up, I almost feel like telling him that he didn’t screw up, it’s the place that’s screwed up. How does it work when a youth comes to you to learn Parkour? The first thing is to figure out why the kid came to see me, why he wants to learn Parkour. I try to find his real motivation, what made him want to move. If he only wants to do saltos and spins, then I tell him to do gymnastics or freerun – everything but Parkour. If he wants to do videos or movies, I send him straight back home. When I teach Parkour to a young, I don’t want to know what he’s going to do with it. He can become an actor, an acrobat, any artistic job, or become a fire fighter or a rescuer, never mind. I don’t want to know. He comes to learn the basis, and that’s it. If there’s an aim behind Parkour, then it’s not good. Some guys dream of a career like mine without really knowing if it’s the right path for them or not. I had to sweat blood and tears to find out what my path was. Some even show up hoping I will help them out and pull strings for them to work in the movie industry. I always turn them down because I’m not an employment agency. The only thing I have to give is what my father gave me. People are always driven by interest: they do such and such job because it brings them so much money, they do this or that because of what it could bring them. With Parkour, you do it for 57
yourself and yourself only. And you have to forget about everything that gravitates around it because that’s what destroys the spirit of it. My father would never have behaved like that. To him, being appreciated was better than a golden belt. I can’t teach Parkour to someone who wants to make a lot of dough or be better than his buddies. Parkour is about training to be better, not the best. When I’m dealing with skilled athletes, I know from the start they will do Parkour for a couple of years and then move on to something else – skating or skiing< Parkour will be an entertainment to them but they won’t have understood the true spirit of this sport. When young trainees come to see me and give me videos telling me to check out what they are doing, I just take the tape and throw it away. What I’m interested in is what the guy’s got in his head, if he has self-confidence, if he masters the technique, if he has understood the principles of Parkour. I just can’t deal with guys who do Parkour because they saw videos on the internet and thought it was kinda cool and want to do even better. But if a youth comes to me and says he just want to train and learn to move his body in his environment, then ok, I start getting interested. The principle of Parkour is to know what you are capable of, to gain self-confidence and not to compete with others. To me, in this sport, there are only people who start from scratch, who fight and learn so much along the way, who will be able to understand every step, every link in the chain of Parkour. Are there any physical requirements to practice Parkour? No, except for a basic medical check-up. When a youth comes to practice, we just check his medical background – that he doesn’t have any problems with his back, vertebras, hips, heart, any broken bones and so on. Anyone can start training for Parkour. The aim of the game is that we all get to the end of a session. Not necessarily at the same time nor in the same fashion, but we all get there. When there’s a newcomer, I check his basic physical abilities, like asking him to stand on one leg or stand on a small wall. It give me an idea about his balance and how he moves. Sometimes, I even push him to see how he reacts, how he lands and what his reflexes are like. I can make a diagnosis like a doctor with a patient. Every individual has to train according to his or her own morphology. But you can’t tell in advance who’s going to be gifted or 58
not. A tall guy may think it’s going to be easy because his size is going to help him reach the top of a wall more easily but a shorter guy will have to develop a true Parkour technique to reach the top of that wall. Therefore he’ll have a more efficient impulse than the guy who just raised his arms. Physique doesn’t matter in Parkour. It’s the way that really matters. I know of a very short guy who moves in Parkour in an incredible way! When he walks on the street, people stare and say, "Poor guy!". But when they see him doing Parkour, their way of seeing him changes drastically. And he feels good, he knows he is good at what he is doing and it shows on his face. He erased his handicap thanks to Parkour. Do you give a lot of advice? I give basic advice but people have to be able to develop their own technique the way I did when I started. I don’t expect them to do exactly what I’m doing. I’d rather see them move in their own way, show me their way. It’s an exchange; I’m not here to say, "Do this or do that". Guys shouldn’t come for me, to say that they trained with David Belle. They have to go and look for what my father gave me. When a young person asks me: "Can you show me how to do this?" I simply answer: "No, I am going to show you how I do it. Then, you’ll have to learn with your own technique, your own way of moving, your style, your abilities and your limitations. You are going to learn to be yourself, not someone else." The only advice I can give is train, train, and train again. And each time, go over what you’ve done before. With Parkour, I often say, "Once is never". In other words, someone can manage a jump one time but it doesn’t mean anything. It can be luck or chance. When you make a jump, you have to do it at least three times to be sure you can actually do it. It’s an unavoidable rule. It got on the nerves of some guys who came training with me but that’s the only way to improvement. Do it the hard way and stop lying to yourself. When you come for training, you have to train. Even if it means doing the same jump fifty or a hundred times. There’s no miracle: whoever is willing finds the means, the one who isn’t willing finds excuses. When a kid moans and groans and tells me he can’t do such a jump because he doesn’t have the right shoes, I tell him to give me his shoes and I do the jump. When a trainee’s got it all – the speed, 59
the spring, the technique – he can do the jump. Laziness sometimes prevents the jump but most of the time it’s fear. Talking about difficult jumps and fear of void, what kind of technique should be used to overcome that? You can fight fear by putting yourself mentally in an emergency state, finding good reasons to do it. To motivate a guy, I can tell him that, instead of talking about that jump for an hour like he just had, if he finds himself one day with five pit bulls chasing him, he won’t think twice and will go for it. Motivation is the key to everything in life. If I have to fight a big guy with no good reason, I won’t really be eager to go. But if my mother is being attacked right behind that guy, then yes, I will just go for it. And he can be the strongest guy in the universe, I will still kick his ass. That’s how I work. When I was training for Parkour, I came up with a million stories to surmount difficult obstacles. A fire, something about to blow up, a relative to rescue, a kid trapped somewhere< It’s as if this emergency state enables me to unlock something in my brain and all of a sudden my vision of the surrounding environment is altered. I have a more acute perception of things, I can see ways that others don’t and fear is gone. My strength is multiplied, a bit like mothers who find an incredible strength to rescue their child when there’s an emergency. They don’t think about it when they do it – they don’t ask themselves if they are going to be able to do it or if they have enough strength or if their child is going to die< Their only thought is to rescue their child. And so there’s an instant connection between their willpower, their energy and their actions. The same applies to Parkour. Training has to lead to an instinctive reaction. When a guy stops and asks too many questions about where to put his feet or hands, I’ve already been across the obstacle. I believe a beginner won’t make big jumps right away? Absolutely no. You don’t take someone thirty feet above the ground right away, even if he tells you he’s not afraid. I alone take the decision. I make him do a precision jump one foot off the ground and he has to 60
repeat it twenty times. I am extremely cautious with chance. Everyone can score a basket or throw a knife on a target once by chance. But if the guy can do it twenty times in a row, then I know it’s for real. It should never be forgotten that Parkour offers different levels. Some are readily accessible and can make you believe you made it through, as well as a level for experts only, those who have been training the way I have for ten or twenty years. What matters the most is to do it step by step. You sure don’t start with pull-ups one hundred and fifty feet off the ground! If you fail after twelve pull-ups, you’re done with. You’re dead or in a wheelchair. There is no magic nor miracles in Parkour. You have to work and get tough. Sometimes you can find yourself in Parkour hanging with one arm so you have to train to face that but you are going to start hanging with one arm six or seven feet off the ground. And when you can hold it for three or four minutes and feel comfortable with it, you can increase the height little by little. You have to go through that with Parkour and never move on to a more difficult level before you are absolutely sure you can do again the same previous jump, the same previous movement, with a perfect mastery of all the physical elements and outside factors like wind, rain or even oil on the ground. In the end, you must be able to perceive those elements without difficulty, without pondering for hours. Can a practitioner train on his own? Doing Parkour alone is dangerous. I realize now it’s better to be with someone. When I was a beginner, I went with my father’s advice – I had a mental guide in a way. Practitioners have to look after each other, see if their friend has the right spring or not, if he has the stamina to do the jump. If not, he should be talked out of doing it. And it doesn’t matter if you didn’t manage a jump another friend did. It’s not a contest. Nowadays youth should be able to get over this ego problem and stop being like," I’m limping but I’ll still do it". The only thing you’ll get out of it is a cast for weeks or worse. You have to listen to your body and don’t let others influence your judgement when they push you to jump but you don’t feel like it. I saw guys who had never done Parkour before take their camera and tell kids: "Go ahead and jump, I’m filming! You’ll see, I’ll do a great montage so just jump!" It’s absolutely stupid and reckless. 61
Parkour teaching is underdeveloped in France. Are you trying to do something about it? It’s hard because it requires a lot of coordination with many things, many people, many public institutions, city halls, districts, volunteers and so on. It also requires training structures to teach basics and nothing is really suited for that at the moment. I personally won’t teach large groups. I’m not interested. With my brother Jean-François and other Parkour followers we try to organize things properly but it takes time and, above all, it requires money. I would like to set up a big training centre. My hope is to convince sponsors and patrons to help us because only them have the means to help and support the development of a sport like Parkour. I met some of them in the movie industry like Luc Besson who offered a piece of land on his site of Saint Denis (north of Paris) to build up a structure dedicated to Parkour. It could be used for national or international seminars or even for the movie industry to give stuntmen training in Parkour. Another way to gain recognition is to prove the usefulness of Parkour. For instance, fire fighters often ask you for advice… Absolutely. I often go to the Fire Fighters Squad of Paris to give advice to young firemen. And I was even recently asked by a SWAT team in Belgium. My wish is to see it develop especially among professions involving danger. When I go to lecture the firemen of Paris and talk about my work, I have a deep respect and I don’t show off because a young fireman may jump less far than I do but he saves lives on an almost daily basis. In general, I have far more respect for jobs saving lives than jobs where guys strut about in a suit and tie. A guy can only be so proud because his company has two hundred employees and a good turnover but the day he goes bankrupt, he’ll cry like anybody else. But a fireman who jumps to rescue a little girl caught in a fire won’t say a word and won’t get a bonus for doing his job. My experience with Parkour might enable fire fighters to be even more efficient in their job but that’s all. And I’m not bragging about it. What matters to me is to know that thanks to Parkour, one day, a fire fighter might be able to get out of a dangerous situation or catch up a ladder if he slips. One day, a 62
lieutenant told me: "If Parkour can save one or two of our men, then it’s worth it." It will bring them more self-confidence, more freedom of movement and maybe remove some stress and they will be more efficient. It’s when people like that ask me to teach them Parkour that I think what I’ve done and what my father taught me has become meaningful. What about you: have you ever considered joining the fire fighters or the army? No, because I never had the drive. While I was doing my military service, soldiers were more motivated to go to the local bar than back to the gym to train some more. I remember turning the lights of the big gymnasium back on in the evening and training rope-climbing on my own. Compared to my Parkour training, army felt like an amusement park. I couldn’t feel proud about crawling in a pipe under a road because compared to what I had been doing back home, it was nothing. And when someone bragged about achieving the obstacle course, I told him it was bullshit and should he find himself in a real warlike situation, he might fail on his first big jump because there will be no safety harnesses or ropes out there and he’ll completely freak out. It takes time, steps, to prepare someone to jump from a height without a cord. And most of the time, there is no time to do it in the army. If a guy jumps once without safety features, he knows he has a real strength in him. Even if he looks physically less apt because he didn’t spend hours doing push ups, he’ll be stronger in his head and that’s what really matters in the end. It’s the same thing with a boxer who always fought with gloves and another one who fought bare fist on the streets. When I was with the fire fighters, I realized that my father had already done it all. When I was walking in his footsteps, breaking the regiment’s record in rope-climbing the same way he did, I didn’t feel anything glorious about it. I just think that I didn’t want to live my father’s life: he had already done it all, in the army or with the firemen, and probably better than I did or ever would do so I had to find my own professional path.
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DISTRICT 13: THE REVELATION Is the cinema/movies an achievement for Parkour? I’m not sure yet if it’s an achievement, but doing movies is the best thing that has happened to me in relation to Parkour. I tell myself that I am lucky to have been in the right place at the right time. I feel that I have found my place in acting and choreography. Even if movies aren’t essential to the running of the planet, but serve to keep people dreaming. I know why I am here today. I know why I am in a movie or why I get called upon to choreograph a section of an American production. Before I got into film, I went through heaps of jobs where I was asking myself what I was doing there. When I was looking at a security screen sitting on a couch for 8 hours, I told myself all my training was serving no purpose. But in film, I feel my training in Parkour finally brings the goods. People ask for my advice and expertise to set up a scene. They have confidence in me, I don’t have to do a big jump for them to prove that I’m David Belle. I take great pleasure in working: if people are getting frustrated trying to work out how their actor is going to be able to move across the terrain or how to include this or that element in a scene so that the character can do some Parkour, I can help and it’s the best, it’s my domain. Becoming an actor, is this a childhood dream? Not really. When I was little and was asked what I wanted to do, I always answered: “I want to live”. I didn’t have a career in mind nor a strong urge to work. But one thing was always clear: I couldn’t picture a career that forced me to do long hours of study, like medicine, or that put me in a permanent state of stress. The job that I thought was cool when I was younger, was working for travel companies. Travelling to different countries on the other side of the planet, visiting the best destinations and tasting local delicacies, that would have pleased me. I didn’t search for a job that would necessarily earn me lots of money. I wanted a job to be harmonious with who I am, my way of being a wanderer and not fixed to anything, and film is without a doubt one of the best solutions to this desire of freedom. 64
What is your favourite thing about working as an actor? Film gives me the opportunity to flourish without having to fight and it also gives me the chance to evolve as a person. Being an actor, expressing myself on camera, allows me to erase the blockages and frustrations I had from being locked up at school and saying nothing. When Luc Besson came to see me and told me he had a role for me in a movie that might interest me, I said to myself “he’s crazy, he doesn’t even know me!”. How could he know that I would be capable of learning all these lines off by heart and deliver the lines perfectly on camera in front of all these movie people on set? It’s like he was setting me a challenge. I would have been happy with a non speaking role just to work with him, but here I had to go further. In the beginning, I had lots of trouble feeling comfortable on set: they told me I was good, but I felt ridiculous, like someone who does a simple forward roll and is told he’s an amazing acrobat. Then finally I started to enjoy myself, I started to understand what it is to act. There’s a moment when you start to get the role you are playing, you don’t notice the set, the camera or the crew. At this moment, you know that you’re really in your character, that you’re part of the story, that you’re playing your part. Did you take lessons in the beginning? I took classes for a year with Pascal Emmanual Luneau at Pygmalion Studios, he coached lots of actors like Anne Parillaud, Jean Renau and Marion Cotillard. In my eyes, it was absolutely necessary to have this basis and it gave me a good understanding of what it is to be an actor. For me, it was like a new beginning. I didn’t consider myself anything special because I’m David Belle “the Parkour master”, I was humble and worked as hard as all the other students. To get into this school, there’s 15 days of auditions and then they choose the candidates. When I got my letter of acceptance, I was beside myself. Here at least, I didn’t have to do one single jump for them to accept me and I was happy because they could see some potential in me. I was in their classes at the same time as Alexandra Lamy, the heroine form “d’Un Gars, une fille ”. It wasn’t easy to get up in front of everyone, to be assessed by the teachers and the other students, sometimes I felt like I was on trial. But in the end, I was 65
very happy that I went, it gave me confidence to be able to do what I knew I was up for. Your first film was with Brian de Palma, that’s a rather encouraging start… For Brian de Palma’s film, Femme Fatale, I played a very small role as a French policeman. The funniest thing was I didn’t even know which director I was auditioning for. When I got to the shoot, that’s when I realised that there was Brian de Palma and Antonio Banderas. I couldn’t believe it. I thought it was crazy to find myself on set with Banderas. Thereafter, I can’t say they didn’t give me a chance, everything was done so that I could grow and improve in this environment. For district 13, I was under less pressure, I really wanted people to believe in what I was doing. I wanted to give them the most authentic Parkour scenes. It was my heartfelt desire to give to the screen all my years of hard work and to leave a trace. I pretended as though it was the last film I would do, as though this was the last chance I had to show what I could do. Do you find similarities with Parkour? When you’re rehearsing for a movie scene, you’re not practising to make it perfect, you’re trying to make it natural and believable as the character you’ve been asked to play. The performance is not screaming your lines louder, it’s when you’re believable. What’s beautiful in Parkour is when you see a person do a movement and you know they did only what was necessary to make that movement. They didn’t do a fancy trick to get the story across, it was simple and beautiful. When I see an animal in the field or the forest, I find it magnificent simply doing what it must to get across a river or up a tree. It doesn’t ask itself if it put the correct foot in the right position, it just does it naturally. It’s not trying to impress or to do it perfectly. In film or in Parkour it’s the same: one who is good is one who leans toward the natural, the less you seek to appear, the more you exist.
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The film industry isn’t necessarily the best place for someone who seeks to be free. How do you manage to be at ease in this medium? I can't all the time. It depends who I’m working with. It’s hard because everyone is playing the game in this industry. In film, it’s tricky to maintain your authenticity. I’m coming from Parkour and discovered the medium of film where people try to make me believe that all of a sudden I’m really important, that I’m a great person, wheras they don’t even know anything about me, they don’t know who I am. In this industry, you are surrounded by people who make you feel you have worth, they make you believe that you deserve more and you can gain much more. They compare you to a known person and say: “What’s-his-name earned millions...“. They incessantly dangle the carrot in front of your face, and the risk of losing yourself in all this is high. I have a tendency to tell myself: “I never asked to have this life so I want to be well looked after“. The film industry encourages a spoilt child mentality because you are surrounded by people who take care of everything for you. If my father was here, he would slap me. He’d tell me: “What you just asked that assistant to do, you could have done yourself”. My father was never lazy, when he asked me to take out the rubbish it was because he was busy making dinner, not because he was sitting down watching the TV. Genuine people, like my father are rare to find in the film business. It’s a network where you greet everyone and make small talk but you know very well that when you go home, you’re all alone, these people aren’t calling you. When they flatter you and tell you that your work is great, I’m not sucked in, I know that generally they are being false. I sensed that straight away. I sense it still. When I’m contacted about a job, I need to feel out who I’m going to be working with. I try to see behind the eyes, who it is truly that I’m speaking to. When Luc Besson gave me my chance, I knew instantly what an opportunity it was and he quickly understood who I was. No doubt, for this reason we have a simple, honest, frank and direct relationship. I will be as loyal to Besson as I was to my father. He’s a man who sticks to his word. He’s given me lots of advice on this career choice, he has helped me and he encourages me still, including in the development of Parkour. When District 13 was released, the thing that pleased me the most was the text he sent me: “I am sure that your father would be proud of you“. That touched me more than 67
anything else, more than people clapping at preview showings. It was after all, Luc Besson that said this to me, that wasn’t nothing. The only regret that I had was that my father couldn’t be here to see all this and for Luc to say directly to him: “You can be very proud of your son“. How come you weren’t involved in Yamakasi, the film produced by Luc Besson that brought your discipline to the attention of the general public? I was supposed to be involved in the film but things turned pear shaped with some other members of the cast. I felt that some of them wanted nothing to do with me and that our morals and feelings about Parkour weren’t the same. I preferred to leave and to not make the film. I think my attitude upset Luc Besson in some ways. Normally people fight to be in these productions and I left without asking for my dues. He called me back. I felt that he understood how important Parkour is to me and could distinguish between truth and lies in this situation. Luc promised me that we’d make a film together and he stuck to his word. Lots of time went past but I was patient and it payed off. He called me back and we were able to make District 13, which was released in 2004. I remember an anecdote from the end of filming that has stuck with me. Luc hugged me in his arms and said: “Ah! At least You are all in one piece!“. Contrary to other Traceurs who said they had lots of potential, that boasted that Parkour was their thing, I never broke anything during filming. 5 years after the first release, we find you again in the role of Leito for District 13- Ultimatum. What drew you in to the sequel? The film delves deeper into the main characters, we see more of how they operate in their day to day lives, their psychology and relationships with others. We get to understand my character Leito more. The past shows that he doesn’t belong to any clan of the District, not the Chinese, nor the blacks, or the Arabs, or the gypsies or the whites. It has lots of bits similar to Parkour, Leito has lots of things gravitating around him but he lives his life the way he wants, moving over obstacles, erasing them like the ancient wall of District 13. He didn’t choose to be born there and he doesn’t want to be enclosed in this trap built by these men. 68
In the sequel we also learn more about some secondary characters like Molko, played by MC Jean Gab’1. We see better the life within District 13, the different ethnicities and how they co-habitate and they have adapted to this hostile environment. The dialogue is closer to what we would say also. We find a sort of suburban humour. At the script reading, the story pleased me because it also allowed for plenty of action and Parkour related sequences. We rediscover Leito and Damian, the cop, 3 years after the end of their first encounter. Leito realises that nothing has changed, that the wall hasn’t been brought down, District 13 continues to be a ghetto drowning in chaos; he continues all alone, his fight to separate it from the rest of the country. Damian calls upon him as he has fallen into trouble and has landed in prison.. How was filming? It wasn’t the entire same team as the first film but I adapted to the director Patrick Alessandrin without a problem. He’s a man who listens carefully and lets the actors do their thing. For him, we are actors responsible for our own characters. He lets us bring our skills and he directs with them. I like this way of functioning, we can give what’s within us. With Cyril Raffaelli, who plays the cop Damien, it was the same. Each of us went in our own direction since District 13 but we never lost sight of each other. I was happy for him that he worked on great projects like the sequel to Hulk. It made me happy. Both of us have followed our own paths, without stress. I am not anxious about my career in movies. Up until now, projects have landed in my lap, I haven't gone out searching for them. It makes me laugh hearing certain actors always saying: “I have this and that coming up…”. You’d think they are machines programmed to advance. I don’t want to be involved, nor begging for roles or doing films for the sake of doing films. How do you prepare the choreographies for the action sequences in films like District 13 - Ultimatum? This is determined by the preparation and the shooting. The work is done as a team, with Luc Besson, Patrick Alessandrin and Cyril Raffaelli who co-ordinate the combat stunts. During the development of the film, 69
Luc writes the scenes with brief instructions like ‚ the character exits the room by escaping through a window and across the rooftops ‛. When we meet during the rehearsal period of the shoot, we discuss the best way for the person to accomplish the scenario described whilst using the principles of Parkour. This is then refined during the shoot: in terms of choreography, I think about the way myself and my partners are going to do the movements and how the displacement can translate into the setting. I try things out and suggest other ideas. We adapt to the set or the set adapts to our movements. There’s nothing that is imposed or fixed in the choreographies. We try stuff out. The essential thing is that it is spectacular. When I think about a Parkour sequence, I have a tendency to make want to make it realistic but I also have to make it spectacular because it’s for a movie. Film brings you a new parameter, you’re no longer facing the obstacle alone, there’s the camera, the director, the crew: how do you keep your concentration without being distracted? I don’t risk being distracted because I’m doing it for pleasure. Even if it’s a film shoot, I’m doing it for pleasure just the same as if I was training. I keep this in mind. And I know also that in preparation and during rehearsals that I gave my word to the producers and the director in saying ‚ yes, I can do this jump ‛. So I do it. If I’m not feeling it or I’m tired, I feed off of their energy and concentrate on the promise I made. I said I'll do it, so I’ll do it. It’s a question of respect. In any case, no one has forced me to do a jump. No one. I’m the one who chooses and decides for each jump, where I’m going and how I’m going to do it. The production, the director, they decide on the set, the story to tell, and I decide on what is possible to do or not. If I really don’t feel it at all, I don’t do it. And no amount of euros could make me change my mind. It’s just a film, just a movie. I’m not going to kill myself or injure myself for a film that some guy is going sit on his couch watch. He’d watch it once or twice and his life would continue, whereas I would have smashed myself for a film that may be excellent but that isn’t going to revolutionise the world in any case. The most important thing for me is to put all of my energy into those jumps, into my scenes and to make a film that isn’t going to suffer from the comparison to American films. 70
We’re not here to prove that it’s real. At some point, we have to rise above this ego thing that pushes actors to prove they can do a real jump. The only result from this is that the actor will hurt himself and hold up production for 2 weeks because he overestimated his ability. Can you have double for some scenes? For the Parkour scenes, no. I want to do them myself. It’s what makes me legitimate and I don’t want that taken away from me. Luc Besson respected that. He respected my wish to not have any doubles for District 13 and District 13 – Ultimatum. The only thing is I can put in safety measures either because I’m tired or because the insurance company demands it. If I’ve done the jump once without safeties, that’s enough for me, if I have to start again I give myself the opportunity to have a safety harness. When a kid asks me if it was me that did a certain jump, then I feel proud to say ‚ Yes, I did! ‚. Other Traceurs can’t say as much. They’ve had stunt doubles. And it bothers me to see that they’re not honest about it, parading in front of the public and in front of journalists even when in certain scenes they’ve had stunt doubles. When I know this about them, I can’t have respect for them. Instead of boasting, certain actors should look at themselves and who they are. Daniel Craig, who plays James Bond, doesn’t boast, he doesn’t hide the fact that he has a stunt double because he is honest and knows he doesn’t have to be ashamed of the fact. He knows he’s a good actor and he brings a real element to his characters. Some Traceurs believed they could be the king of the castle in films because of where they came from and because they could do a few acrobatic tricks that no one else was doing. But reality caught up with them. They realised that it wasn’t that easy to fool the directors, that they’re not idiots. And they also found out that actors could also apply themselves to Parkour and even master it better than them. This was the case with Cyril Raffaelli. Certain Traceurs were wary of him, they encouraged me to have my guard up because he hadn’t followed the same path as us, but I did just the opposite to what they told me. I approached him because he was different to me, and we became friends.
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You’ve worked with Mathieu Kassovitz on Babylon A.D. How did it go with him? For certain scenes in the film, Mathieu Kassovitz researched Parkour and wanted me to work with him on the choreography for some of them. I was un-contactable at that point because I had left on a trip, but they managed to track me down via EuropaCorp. The collaboration was great. I was able to work with my mates, people who I really trust. I presented my work to the American production team and the lead actor Vin Diesel. I set up a scaffold in a big studio and made a choreography with 6 or 7 guys. The American producers were impressed and Vin Diesel even asked that I have a bit of dialogue in the film. That wasn’t what I set out to achieve, but the fact that it was coming from Vin Diesel and Mathieu, I had no hesitation! Up until now in this industry I’ve continued moving forward without really looking for work or searching for opportunities. I don’t even seek to be contactable or available, things just happen naturally without being forced. I get a phone call, suggestions are made. This makes me happy because without making any claims about my ability, this all came to me. I could view all this as a gift from the gods but I also think that it’s not a coincidence if I am called upon for my skill set. For me, it’s just a natural result of all the effort I have put into my training. You’ve also been a part of shooting the next big Disney production: Prince of Persia. How did you come to work on this project? The film Prince of Persia: Sands of time is directed by Mike Newell and has Jake Gyllenhaal in the leading role. It’s an adaptation of the video game known worldwide. Because it’s based on a type of Parkour, they needed a choreographer to help them determine all the action and movement sequences. They called me a few days before filming because they were having trouble setting up these scenes. It was the producer, Jerry Bruckheimer who specifically asked that I personally come on board to sort out the Parkour choreographies in the big studios in England. Because of this, I felt comfortable being on set even though I was the little ‘Frenchy’ on a big American production. I was able to work how I wanted to with my own team. 72
You didn’t have any trouble joining a large American production with all the constraints it entails? Not at all. At the start, to ease the tension I told myself: ‘ If they’ve called me, then they know why ‚. I didn’t have any doubts. From the smallest advertisement to the biggest movie, I was able to make my choreograpy how I felt it should be. And in this instance, that didn’t change, even when I had a hundred strong crew around me or big Hollywood producers and the director of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I didn’t freak out about their big budget or their expectations. Things were done simply. They included me in how they envisaged the scene and I explained how I could see the choreographies working on the set. I could have been under a lot of pressure but I felt at ease because it was really something that I’ve mastered. I told them: ‚Is the set stable here? Ok, so the hero could climb up here, like so, then jump here, in this direction, the rocks could fall on these characters at this point…‛ I was totally in my element and my imagination. I had heaps of ideas. I hope they were happy with my work. In the end, seeing it will be worth it. It was a very short but enriching adventure. Who knows if one day I’ll find myself working on the next production from Jerry Bruckheimer, perhaps a small role on Pirates of the Caribbean 4 or they may entrust me with some of the choreograpy? It would be the ultimate, working under the Caribbean sun, that would be a big change from working in faraway places of Serbia! Would you ever shoot a small name film that doesn’t have any Parkour in it? For now, what interests me the most is action films but I’m not obsessed with Parkour or physical roles. I’m very conscious that the base of cinema is acting. It’s not because you know how to jump, climb or fall that you’ll become a good actor. You have to know how to express emotions, open up, expose certain things otherwise you do a ‘Jean Claude Van Damme’ your whole life. He can be proud of what he does, he’s worked on heaps of films and provided for his family but I am sure he would have liked to work with Robert de Niro or Edward Norton, 73
names that are recognised as real actors. Me, I’m interested in acting with these kind of people and becoming a real actor who can be films such as ‘ Jean of Florette ‘ as well as ‘ Crystal Trap’. If I get asked to be in a small budget film and that it allows me delve into the character and really work on it, I’d accept the offer even if there wasn’t a single jump to do. In fact, it’s the novelty of it, the challenge that attracts me to do it. I don’t want to be asked to do Parkour over and over for my whole career. I think if I evolve in the film industry, you’ll see me in more low key roles where you wouldn’t necessarily recognise me. The most important thing for me is to try to achieve my best. If I have a career like Van Damme, I’d have no regrets but if I can achieve other things, I will. My desire is to go to the end of the world and to the edge of myself and to stay true. In this industry I want to work with people who are genuine, whether they are directors, actors or technicians. In District 13 – Ultimatum I did some scenes with Philippe Torreton, and that was no laughing matter. I had in front of me, an important man, a famous actor. I took my job very seriously, to always be ready when the camera was rolling because I never wanted a problem to because of me. I was in awe of him and really happy when he complimented my work. In the end, he came to me with a project idea that he wanted to develop with me, I couldn’t believe it! I told myself it’s a win-win situation. If I see my name advertised next to an actor of this calibre then I would have made it. You can only grow when faced with such greatness. If things go well for you, do you think you can resist the pressures of the industry, the fame? I think I can resist it today, even if it came all at once. I’m going to try to live normally as it’s the best way to stay true to yourself. I’m not expecting anything from films. I don’t desire to be recognisable in the street, or to be told that I’m the best. You could yell to me: “Oh David, you’re so hot, you’re the best“ and I would be indifferent. When I was in high school, girls didn’t notice me. So it’s not because I’ve made a film that I’ve developed some sort of charm or a particular talent. I worked at being an actor and I’m not looking for any other recognition. The destabilising side of the film industry is the way in which we value a film, this value is based on how many ticket sales the film makes as 74
opposed to the work we have put into it. I’m under the impression that I make more money than before from doing less physical things and investing myself less. I try not to worry about it, telling myself I have achieved plenty of my childhood dreams and I shouldn’t complain or search for more. I have enough money to cover my groceries, my rent and my holidays. Whilst travelling doing Parkour, I saw poor families. For example, in Madagascar I met children who had nothing, living in misery but always carrying a smile. We can’t complain about what we have. But of course the system makes us think that we always want more. We want the best fastest car, but in the end, rich or poor, you end up in the cemetery. In my real life, I don’t need Brad Pitt’s salary to be happy. From the moment I have what I need to look after what little family I have left, to cover my mother and sister, I don’t have any doubt that I won’t need anything more. I’m not in competition with anyone even if I partake in the system, in the film industry where they encourage this sort of lifestyle. Myself, I am here to do my job and they pay me for that! To me, being an actor is to be a translator, to play a character and to respect this role. If people say thank you to an actor, it’s not because they earn 15 million bucks, it’s because they gave them a good time, and because of them they felt some emotions. However, glory and money are things that fascinate youth.. But the young are fascinated by money because they think it’s necessary to live, they are lead to believe that you need the hottest car and a starlet on your arm or you are nothing. I’ve seen happy couples that didn’t have a lot to live off. We long for this love. It’s not the case for a guy who is loaded but who is never there for his wife and kids and the only way he can show his love is to spend thousands on presents for them. Later in life that kid will remember that his father bought him such and such and it was worth yadida, but you ask him about the real moments he had with his dad and he won’t have any to recite. If you take your kid fishing for a day, it costs you nothing but he’ll remember it for the rest of his life. Myself, I only had moments like these with my dad. At night, he would grab me for a wander, and we would go walking for hours in the forest. He told me about his life and I didn’t notice the kilometres passing. I 75
could also sit for hours in his tent, chatting till the early hours about the things he had lived through and to me, that is worth more than all the gold in the world.
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END OF THE JOURNEY? When you first started Parkour, you didn’t really know what would come out of it. Today, after twenty years, do you feel like you found your way? I don’t know. I don’t necessarily think I reached an aim with Parkour. I’ve always been like that, always changing, always looking for something else. When I was doing odd jobs, I never stayed very long. I did it to reassure my mother and show her I could earn a living but I would soon get tired of it. Parkour made me understand that if I wanted to stay in that system it had to be simple because I would never have the strength to fight through my work to have the right suit and tie, the right car, the right house and so on. From the start I didn’t want to deal with a system that crushes you. I knew that I would make my life out of something easy and flowing. And if it hadn’t been for my relatives, my family supporting me, I think I would have become an outcast. I would have gone to a small island, lived in a shack, surfed all day and invited friends over for barbecues. I never had this desire to conquer from the start, this desire for wealth that so many people in our society have today. I could easily give everything up and find myself living on my own in a wood or a small fishermen’s village. To me, becoming an actor didn’t deserve that I fight for it. I seized opportunities to move forward but I couldn’t have stepped on people on the way to get there. I know my destiny is marked out anyway. As soon as I cast my first stone, it sent waves and if positive things come back, it’s because it had to be that way. I am aware that the things I do with Parkour and cinema allow me to make a living today but I also know that I don’t need to make fortunes to be happy. At the moment, I feel like I want to go all the way as an actor and I still want to be involved with Parkour. I’m 35 and anything could happen. I’m ready for just about anything, including being completely forgotten and no one remembering my name. I know it won’t change people’s lives. I’ve already achieved a lot in my life and I want to use the remaining time to do things I like, useful things like helping out the young. Otherwise, I would feel like I wasted my time.
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Are you going to fight to keep Parkour alive throughout the world? I’m a bit out of Parkour today but I know it’s here. It’s like a cook getting out of his restaurant going on with his life. He runs errands, visits friends but he knows he still got his talent inside. And if a friend asks him for a good dish, he’s going to fix it – for fun, not to show off. And I want Parkour to be like that for me now – sessions for fun and not thinking I got myself tired repeating useless movements. I did what I had to do and followed my training the way I had to. What I still have left to do now has to do with passing on, especially by creating training centres for the young. I want those kids to understand what Parkour is truly about and be able to transmit that philosophy "be strong to be useful" as well. I will continue to have a deep respect for Parkour and I will do my best to try to make it stronger and give it more credit. I want to do that for Parkour fans and followers, to show and prove to them that it’s a sport you can practice in the long run. I also want to get rid of the business side of this discipline, of the value the media gave it. When TV journalists come and see me today, if I tell them about a jump two feet off the ground, they are not happy and always ask me if I couldn’t do it from the top of a big building instead "because it’s more visual" they say each time. I can understand the fun side of it and I can understand some people want to start Parkourlands on beaches like skate ramps, but don’t get me involved in that, I don’t want to have anything to do with this business side. I want to keep the simple and natural aspect of Parkour. I try myself to be careful about what I do on a professional level. I did a lot of commercials – especially abroad – and I often pay attention to the product or the brand to make sure they don’t go against my principles and make sense somehow with Parkour. I was offered to do a commercial for a very famous chain of fast-food restaurants and the pay check was good but I declined. I don’t want Parkour to be used just for the fun of it. I want to show and put forward the useful side of the discipline one way or another. Do you think Parkour can go forward on its own, without David Belle? Life itself is about going forward and I don’t need to be there for Parkour. Some people expect too much from me. If young people have 78
understood the spirit of Parkour, my way of thinking as well as my father’s, that should be enough. Some blame me for not being here anymore and not helping them during their sessions but my father wasn’t there behind my back when I was training. Parkour has a life on its own now. It even developed at the speed of light thanks to internet, without me having any control over it. I sometimes feel overwhelmed but it also shows that I was right and my father’s teachings would lead to something great. And that’s what I actually wanted: to have this discipline acknowledged and developed. When I see practitioners getting caught by the bug, without trying to show off or anything, I think to myself that it was worth the years of pain and suffering of my training. The fact of watching young people put on their sneakers and move with the same energy I had when I left at night to go and do my jumps, that’s my biggest victory. The rest doesn’t really matter to me. Was there a time when you doubted yourself and the success of Parkour? I have had doubts but never to the point of giving up. There was a time when I felt destabilized, and that was when I realized I would never accomplish what my father had done – I wouldn’t go to war and I wouldn’t fight fires and save lives. Then I wondered what was the use of it, why I had given so much to Parkour, why I had accumulated so much energy. I felt as frustrated as a professional boxer who trained for six months and is eventually told that he won’t get to fight< I kind of lost it at that point. I slowed down with training and started doing things I had never done before like smoking. I felt like I was breaking self-imposed rules and discovering a new world. I knew I wasn’t fit for Parkour anymore and I felt almost guilty. I ended up learning to unwind and finding a balance. Now, when I smoke or spend a good evening with my friends, I just enjoy the moment without even thinking about it. And when I have to be fit for Parkour or for a movie, I can be careful and I can get back to a strict healthy lifestyle. Some people don’t understand when they see me smoke today – they say I betray my own principles. But my father smoked two packs a day for years – no filters, the worst kind. And yet, he could run long distance and always be at the lead. And seeing what he went through, you can’t really blame him for smoking. I 79
personally had this long training period during which I didn’t allow myself anything – no alcohol, no cigarettes. I wanted to keep a clear mind – everything had to be sharp, I had to keep a clear vision and perception of things. Today, I allow myself a few cigarettes and a few drinks to unwind. My grandfather used to say that excess is what kills a man, and I don’t feel like I am being in excess here! I think if I had kept such a strict self-discipline, I would be suffering today. There’s a lot of pressure to deal with. I think I proved myself and went through every step of Parkour so now, I can allow myself a certain kind of balance – staying clear and focused when I do Parkour or my job in the movie industry, and having fun when I’m with friends or at home. As opposed to what some may believe, I don’t think God is going to punish us because we allow ourselves some good times. I don’t judge people on their misbehaviour or their mistakes. I try to live for what’s right and good as much as I can but above all I try to live my life the way my father and my grandfather taught me. Was your grandfather disappointed that you didn’t eventually join the Fire fighters' Squad of Paris? Not at all. To him, what mattered the most was for me to be happy with myself and my family. He kept repeating: "No matter what you do as long as you do it well." When he got sick, I stayed by his side all night at the hospital right before he died. He couldn’t speak or move anymore but his eyes said so much< I could feel life leaving his face and body and I whispered in his ear that he didn’t need to worry, that I had carefully listened to everything he had told me and that I would look after my mother. It hasn’t been easy to keep on with Parkour everyday without him and without my father. I sometimes felt like I was dogged by life. When my brother Daniel died, when my grandfather and my father passed away two weeks apart, I really started wondering what was the point of it all – what was the point in being good when your close ones are taken away the next minute. I managed to get over this sorrow and not be afraid of death anymore by putting myself in their shoes so to speak, up above and I know I would like to see my close ones go on with their lives, be happy and stop crying over my death because it is of no use. When something hurts me, I try to think about my father and what 80
he would have done in such a situation – would he have cared for something so menial? He resets me in a way and puts me back on tracks. I know he is looking at me – looking after me. He is next to me and helps me. When something great happens to me, I can’t help but think he helped me out – there’s no other way. For instance, meeting Philippe Torreton wasn’t chance alone. I know my father is sending me invisible waves. How did your father pass away? My father decided to leave. He shot himself in the head. He had prepared me to that outcome with letters and asking me to hang on no matter what, not to worry, that he would always be here for me. "I’ll be with you more than I ever have when I was alive," he wrote me. When I think about his departure, there were many warning signs, especially when he wrote: "The guard dies but never surrenders." That was his choice – he decided the time of his death. Looking back at what he had achieved and gone through, he felt like he didn’t have anything left to do on earth and that he would do more harm than good if he stayed and suffered among his loved ones. In the end, he ended up alone, broke; he’d even pick up cigarette butts off the floor to finish them up. He never failed when it came to helping others but he failed in his own personal life. Living alone, he spent too much time in his memories; he felt nostalgic and useless in the end. Not being active anymore didn’t help either because he had spent his whole life helping others every way he could. Were you mad at him for his decision to leave like that? At first, yes, I was. Even if he had prepared me with his letters. I was mad at him for leaving too early – I felt like he hadn’t told me everything, it felt like closing a book without reading the last ten pages. I was losing my mentor, the only person that could have a straight opinion about what I was doing, who could tell me if I was on the right path. I was destabilized. But very soon, I understood I had to go on because there was my mother, my sister, people who relied on me. My father was handing that responsibility down on to me somehow. And it prevented me from going too far into Parkour. It also enabled me to 81
break away from my father’s path and find my own. After his death, I told myself that from now on I would move for the father of all fathers. I had the feeling that if God could see me in Parkour, he knew I wasn’t lying and I wasn’t a dishonest person. There I was, alone, training in the woods and I put all my love, all my energy in what I was doing, telling myself, "If God exists I know he can see me. Otherwise, I do it for myself and I’m also happy about it." I think that in the end, when we die, God takes our eyes just to see what we have done while on Earth, what we saw during our life and what we did, right or wrong. Is faith important in your life? I believed in my father before I believed in God. And when I lost him, I felt like my belief in God was even stronger because I realized all the love and everything my father had given me. To me, you don’t have one million options: God either exists or He doesn’t. And my faith makes me feel like God loves us so much more than a mother loves her newborn for instance. I can feel this force, this power. From what I know, God doesn’t expect anything from us – there’s nothing Man can do that God doesn’t already know. So following our path and believing in Him must be the only thing He expects from us. And to me, it’s useless to pray to Him to get something like money. To me, He already put everything we need on Earth for us to manage by ourselves – all the resources are here for us to survive and live. If people die of starvation nowadays, it’s Man starving them, not God. Human beings now want to play God – they claim natural resources for their own benefits and make other humans pay for them. The rules imposed by Man are not the right ones. In an idealistic world, the one who can build a house could trade his skills for the fruit and veggies of the one who can grow them and so on. That’s how the world should work but we tried to be smarter and we ended up deep in shit, all by ourselves. Today’s economical problems didn’t happen by chance. We had everything we needed to be happy on this planet but Man destroys and changes everything.
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According to you, consumer’s society plays a big part in what Mankind has become… The system conceived by human beings created need: you always need to have the best equipment, the latest devices. Even if your DVD player works well, you need a smaller, more efficient one. You are made to believe that it is important and you end up thinking that you need all kinds of stuff to live. But truth is, you could easily go without it. Women are made to believe that they need such cream or lotion, same goes with men, and we end up with one thousand products in our bathrooms. When I’m in the jungle, I realize how useless all of this is. It’s totally unnecessary in our lives. And I feel like I could very easily walk away from it all to get back to what’s essential. Don’t get me wrong: I do buy things myself; but the minute I own them, they stop existing. I know it’s here but I’m not dependent upon it. If my DVD player works, that’s fine. If it breaks down, I don’t care. I don’t want material things to interfere with my life anymore. When I have money, I don’t want to blow it all because I know buying things always makes you want more. I invest my money in something useful like a house for my mother. And if I can buy a big house for myself one day, I won’t fill it up with useless objects or things that could tempt others. Space is to me the ultimate luxury. So if there’s a big garden, all the better: I’ll be happy. I’m not interested in Ming vases and five hundred year old stuff. I’ve been used to living with very little. Water, air, food, a shelter< Simple things bringing us back to what really matters. When you are thirsty in the desert, you don’t ask for a soda; all you want is water, just plain water. People kill themselves at work to get more trivial things when what really matters is life itself and being alive. When I am being asked what I do in life, I just answer: "I live" very simply. True happiness is when useless material things don’t affect you anymore. When I see a billionaire with four bimbos at his arm and twelve cars in his garage all upset because there’s a scratch on the hood of his BMW I can’t help but feel sorry for him. I’d rather take care of my close ones, of real problems that could actually affect my life. I’m happy when people around me are happy, when I can bring them good energy. A two-hour long conversation with a close one is enough for me to feel good. We know we had a great time together and we didn’t need any money for that. We 83
have to find happiness in ourselves. I can be loaded and go to the Bahamas; if I haven’t solved my own problems, I’ll be as miserable over there as I was when I was living in the suburbs. Nothing affects you anymore when you are feeling good with yourself. A guy can call you names, you won’t even feel like answering back. The other way around, if you are not feeling well, you’ll answer back and step into an unhealthy game of violence. I understood I couldn’t go anywhere with that dark side inside me – it could be destructive – even if trying to outsmart or be the strongest can give you a feeling of pride and power. But truth is, it won’t take you very far in life. And I want to thank my father and Parkour for that, because they opened up my mind and made me see society in a different way. I know I won’t change the world and I am not going to fight for that. I’m going to live a quiet life and I’ll fit in the system because Parkour brought me there but I won’t fight to stay there anymore than I fought to get there. How do you see yourself twenty years from now? If things keep rolling the way they do now and I follow my path, in twenty years from now I’ll be in a house on a beach, a small nest I won’t want to leave anymore and I’ll be peaceful, at last! I don’t want to be stressed out – I feel like stressed out people completely missed their lives. They are lost indeed. They pretend during daytime because they live their lives at 200mph from dawn to dusk, always rushing, with their cell phones. But when it stops at night and they are faced with themselves, they are completely lost. And they’d do anything to avoid that – watch TV, play video games, go on the internet – so that they won’t have to think. Very few people actually take time to work on themselves – turning off the phone and TV altogether and facing your own self. I have learnt to live on my own. I appreciate my friends, I love my family but when I want to break free, I can easily cut myself off from others. I can live disconnected from everything and face myself. That’s when true wishes and desires appear. Personally, I always go back to the same things: I want to walk, see a sunset, travel to China or elsewhere. Thanks to Parkour I can see things under a different light – I see them with more hindsight and attention. Some people will pass by a piece of furniture all their lives and never notice there was a secret drawer in it 84
because they never had the curiosity to look at it under a different angle. People are not listening enough to their desires and don’t go out of their daily routine enough either. If they want to travel the world, they should just do it, and not wait. Could you live a life without adrenaline? It’s been a while now that I don’t move for the same reasons. What matters in Parkour are the first steps – understanding the meaning of what you are accomplishing and telling yourself that there is more than one way – put all your heart in what you are doing – even something as simple as a walk in the woods. Don’t lock yourself up in one thing alone but try and discover other sports, other cities, other countries and open up to others. I don’t want to stubbornly stick to Parkour. I don’t want to be like an old 80-years-old Kung Fu master stuck in his black tunic and who wants the world to believe that he can still fight young practitioners the way he used to. I want to do other things. I don’t know exactly what yet but my only certainty is that I don’t want to end up my life counting the number of cars in my garage, asking myself which yacht I’m going to take or in which summer mansion to spend my holidays. My childhood dreams remain the same: have a little place for myself on this earth where I can stay on my own for four months if I feel like it, then move somewhere else for another four months. Parkour gave me that freedom. One day I’m here, in Paris, and the next, I can spend three months in Asia. I want to be a citizen of the world. And if I go to Africa tomorrow, I want to live like they do and not impose my Frenchy stuff – I’ll get rid of my sneakers and my jeans because I wouldn’t be comfortable with them in the jungle. I’ve learnt to adapt to my environment. That’s what Parkour is also about. So adrenaline or not, I just hang on to what is true and real because that’s the only thing I can relate to. When I go to a small village in the mountains, I can talk for hours with a little old man just sitting there watching his flock of sheep. And with Parkour or the movie industry, it’s the same: I’m always looking for the person who is going to tell me interesting things, who is going to make me want to do things, who knows new things, without forcing things or trying to convince me at all costs. And at the end of my life I also want to be a little old man, 85
" old" in the sense that I lived things, I travelled, and I’ll have stories to tell and experiences to share with young ones. What is your overall feeling regarding what you’ve accomplished with Parkour? I feel pride and satisfaction. Nothing can twist the truth – you can pretend at being the best, being successful, but the truth always catches up if you lied. I feel good about myself – I can look at myself in a mirror – and I respected what my father told me. And I feel like I deserve all the good things happening to me today – I feel like it’s the reward for all my efforts, like a gift, a well-deserved one. I don’t feel like I cheated to be where I am today and I feel proud of it. I think after this book is over, I’ll stop talking about my father. I’ll leave him to rest in peace. I’m tired of having to justify myself, justify Parkour. It’s been over ten years now that this discipline is recognized throughout the world, from New-York to Tokyo via Rio de Janeiro. Today, thousands of traceurs just get their kicks moving in various cities and passing on their knowledge to new ones who also want to move. No matter what happens to me tomorrow. My personal failures will be my own business. What’s essential is that I managed to pass my father’s message on thanks to Parkour. Even if I end up in the street tomorrow, I’ll be satisfied because Parkour exists, because thousands of people throughout the world practice it and feel good about themselves thanks to it. I can be forgotten, but Parkour won’t be forgotten.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank all of those who always believed in Parkour before it became widely known. Thanks to my mother who always supported me and often worried about me when I went out, and to my brother who was the first to bring Parkour into the public eye. Thanks to my little sister – I love you even though I don’t say it enough. Thanks to the Belle family of Sarcelles – I was always welcomed and well fed there! Thanks to the Sables-d’Olonne and the 91 crews and my friend Vidda. Thanks to my Dodo< (you know better< nothing happens by chance!) Thanks to Luc Besson for the opportunity he gave me, his support and trust in my projects. Thanks to Mathieu Kassovitz for his friendship and the adventure of his movie. Thanks to Cyril for his advice, his generosity and our brotherly friendship. Thanks to the women who drove me to put my story on paper in this book and put a beginning and an end to it: Pascale Parillaud and Sabine Gros La Faige. Thanks to Parkour practitioners – may they pass the tradition down and practice this sport with pride. More generally thanks to all enthusiasts who believe in their flame and their humble determination. I read one day a sentence that said: "Follow your heart and your face will glow throughout your life." It speaks to me and rings like a philosophy.
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