Josh and Leo’ “Bite Fight”
While the dynamic duo Josh Malone and Leo Rosenbaier gallivanted and nogoodnik’d around the EU, they filmed their escapades for our collective benefit. Bite Fight is a beautifully recorded romp told through the lens of Leo and Josh’s mastery of self-expression via parkour.
Me: I’m stoked to do this guys, thanks for talking with me. The video was sick.
Leo: Yeah of course! Shouts out to Josh for editing it.
Me: How long were you guys sitting on the edit before release?
Leo: We got back into the States right at the end of June, and the video went through a number of different iterations before we landed on the final product, but I’ll let Josh speak to that.
Josh: Yeah, I was really excited about the footage when we first got home. I ended up making three different versions of the edit. So, the release is the fourth version of Bite Fight. After the first three, I looked at them and thought, “These are all pretty mid,” so I stopped working on them for a little while. Then after we got in touch with the Commons, I sat down and made the final edit.
Me: So what was the intent when you set out to make Bite Fight, and how is the final product different from that initial vision?
Josh: We didn’t have much of an intention when we started thinking about the video. We knew we were going to be traveling around Europe and decided we needed a camera, so we went to Walmart and bought the cheapest Sony camera they had. I just figured I would film a bunch. Even from the start I was worried about making a “trip video.” I didn’t want there to be too much b-roll of us on trains and shit. Parkour has seen enough of the Two White Guys Go to Foreign Country type videos. Coming home and editing, taking a break, then re-editing the entire project was really interesting because I had to work with a finite amount of footage, which at that point was almost two months old. I couldn’t acquire more footage or change the way clips were filmed.
Leo: I feel like this project was very different for us personally. A lot of times when you shoot a video you have your home base, and you have your spots, and you can plan and execute, and adapt on the fly if you need to. For us on this trip, we were just there trying to make things happen, definitely trying not to get hurt, and keep our plays tactical 100% of the time. Then we got home with this footage of the trip, and its like, “How do we take this contextless footage and turn it into something cohesive that informs the energy of the trip.” I feel like the edit that we landed on really balanced the pacing of the footage with the song choices and general aesthetics of the video better than the first three. It’s also really obvious when you watch the video that our movement styles are totally different. I’m doing more traditional tricking-style line building, and Josh is doing more of the big, tasteful, quick-hits. We talked about that beforehand, playing to our strengths, I mean. I feel like the video does a great job of bringing that contrast to the forefront. I really want Josh to touch on his physical state before we left for the trip too, because mans got fucked up. I mean fucked up.
Me: Josh would you mind getting into that a little bit?
Josh: I think we bought the tickets a little more than a month before we left. Then with a little over three weeks before we were supposed to travel, I destroyed my left ankle jumping off of a trampoline. I ended up with severe heel bruising and a sprained ankle. I literally couldn’t walk, and I spent the remainder of the time before the trip rehabilitating. Somehow I could walk by the time we got to Norway, but even a few days into the trip I still couldn’t take any impact. It manifested in the video because quite a few of my clips are single takes. I didn’t have the ankle strength to put myself through more than that, and so a lot of what you see is the only attempt I put into those lines. I was really stoked with everything that we got done, considering that I literally couldn’t walk three weeks prior.
Leo: Me too. We bought the tickets and got hyped to go kill it out in Europe, and then Josh gets hurt. I went hella doctor mode. I had him in contrast hot and cold baths and was feeding him pills left and right until he fell asleep. And we fixed him.
Me: I have this image of Josh in an ice bath while you just hurl handfuls of pills at him shotgun-spray style.
Leo: That was totally the energy of the situation. It was a bit more of a clinical environment than that, but definitely that energy. It held up too, at least until our last day. The last day we had the only moment of fear of injury on the whole trip. We were in Berlin at this sand park, and Josh was throwing this cast full and almost stuck it, then tried it again and wrecked himself. We thought he was toast, but we went clubbing that night and it was fine. It worked out well in the final cut ultimately.
Me: At first glance, this project comes across as “The Beans do Scandinavia.” Where did you travel to and which events form the backdrop of this video?
Josh: It all started when I got invited to OMFG and I was thinking, “Well shit, I’m not going to go to Norway for only three days.” The Kipa event was right after, and we were thinking of attending Heljam as well. We bailed on Heljam, and ended up traveling between Norway, Stockholm, and Berlin.
Leo: When Josh was asked to attend OMFG he started hitting all of us up because he didn’t want to go alone. I figured I could go as his bodyguard hahaha. We even practiced me shielding him from hypothetical cameras. It ended up turning into an insane three weeks, and some of the best memories of my life. We didn’t even fight, me and little Joshy.
Josh: We got into one fight because I bit you too hard.
Leo: Josh bit me too hard. *Absently rubbing the old wound near his shoulder*
Me: What’s a bite between friends right?
Leo: Exactly, it’s like the oldest prank in the book. Go bite your homie, you know? Got his ass. That’s actually where the title comes from. We were on our Bite Fight shit out there in Europe, and kept saying it everywhere we went, “Bite Fight! Bite Fight!” It was kind of a mantra for the trip. That much close quarter contact with your boy, sometimes you just gotta bite the fucker. And we have different bite styles too. Like I’ll bite you a hundred times over the course of a day, but they’re gentle. Josh is going to bite you once and bruise you for two weeks.
Josh: I think that’s part of why we didn’t really fight at all. Any time I had any pent-up aggression I would just bite Leo and start laughing my ass off.
Me: Sometimes you need a nibble, it is what it is! So, when did you last travel to Europe to train, and what was the best part of returning to film Bite Fight?
Josh: The last time I trained in Europe was in Greece for Art of Motion 2020.
Leo: Mine was in Greece in 2017 actually. I got to train a lot, but I went with family, so I didn’t necessarily travel for training. The best part was the independence. In the past I’ve traveled a lot, but I’ve always been accompanied by family and so was forced to follow and stay with the group, etc. Just getting the freedom to romp around Europe with your boy is a totally different experience. Especially the first little bit, we were roughing it in Brumunddal. We were camping in the woods while everyone else stayed in the gym, going back and forth from our campsite to the gym to hang out with Bastian and Silke, smoking and drinking, it’s just a different vibe. We basically didn’t even do any training at OMFG. We would show up in the morning and just socialize, then go find a micro-spot away from the gym setup and train there. All of our training missions were outside of the jams we attended.
Me: In typical Bean fashion, training at the non-spots. What was the most unexpected experience on your travels?
Josh: Well we didn’t have any housing planned when we arrived; we were just playing it by ear. So when we got to Stockholm, we ended up staying in an Airbnb with Bastian Dratva and Silke Solfrank. We were staying in a kids bedroom on their bunkbeds, big Lion King mural on the walls, sleeping feet from the Little Tykes Play Kitchen. Bastian and Silke played mom and dad to us the whole time. We didn’t expect to spend so much time with them, but they were awesome.
Leo: I have to second that. We arrived in Sweden with basically no plan, but everything fell into place, and we ended up living the most peaceful Swedish life with Silke and Bastian. And then Archie Aroyan came through near the end too and it turned into a full house. Really good times.
Josh: There was this great video that Leo took of me when we were with Archie. These Europeans are all trying to eat breakfast and shit, while Leo and I are pretty much ready to go. In this video I’m sitting next to Archie at breakfast while Archie has the biggest “athlete” meal I can think of. So Archie’s got this huge bowl of protein and oatmeal, a whole plate of fruit, he just stretched for a half hour before eating, and Leo pans over to me and I’m sitting there vibrating with my Monster and vape, like, “fuck breakfast let’s do parkour.” That video speaks volumes.
Me: That’s fucking hilarious, and I agree with the sentiment. What is you guys’ favorite clip of each other from the video?
Leo: Mine are kind of tied. My favorite is the ender, because of the mission that it became to get the angle and film the line. There were a lot of angles to figure out, and filming it was a cool challenge. I also love the way that Josh hits the leaves; I think it came out beautifully. I also really liked the dive roll that Josh did over this curved pipe.
Josh: My favorite Leo clip to film was this line at a pier in Oslo. Leo’s shoe comes flying off, and it was such a whirlwind of emotion. In that moment I initially thought you broke your foot, and then you throw your shoe off, and I’m getting the most perfect shot of your shoe flying through the air, and I’m suddenly so overcome with joy. Then my favorite to watch was his line at the beach, where he does a series of skills that he’s done singularly before, but to watch him put them all together was so nice.
Leo: Miss you Joshy!
Josh: Miss you Leo!
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