The Commons

A Conversation with Bryce Clarke and Joshua Cavalier, hosted by Jake Chapman

Jake: Who were Basilio and Deyvid to you guys?

Bryce: I got into parkour through friends in my neighborhood, and they brought me to my first big jam. Basilio was, at the time, the busiest parkour person in New York. He was teaching parkour classes in schools, and he was a front runner before Movement Creative really started taking off. Basilio was holding his own in terms of coaching parkour in New York. He’s the one who got me my first coaching gig. He was a mentor to me in my career path, and a role model. He showed me professionalism. He showed me how to take the rowdy and unkempt parkour and hone it in a way where you could still be that free, funny character, but you could do that within a system where you fit a role of authority. Then from there, if he had a commercial gig or some opportunity, he would hit me up to join him. He was the kind of guy who, if he knew you had a role you could fill in something he was doing, he wouldn’t hesitate to get you involved. He was a mentor. 

Deyvid "Wolf" Garcia

Deyvid was this maverick-type character. You took notice when he was in a room. For lack of a better way to describe it, Deyvid was the equivalent of LeBron James just coming out of high school into the NBA. He had all of this talent, all of this ability, at the age of 18. Just a year or two into his training, he could commit to things that other people just couldn’t even consider. He was a natural talent and he always surprised me. Deyvid was the future of New York City parkour for sure, and if he was still here today, people would be emulating the things he does. He could have been a worldwide phenomenon in terms of an athlete. He was the kind of athlete who only comes around every five years, and he was just a kid. He had a good spirit, he was young, pure unadulterated energy. 

Joshua: I only met Basilio and Deyvid each one time. I met Basilio when I was first coming into the New York parkour community. I met him training at a gym in New York called Brooklyn Zoo. It was only a couple of hours of training, and it makes me sad looking back on it. It’s like when you go to a jam and meet someone, and think, “I’m going to see more of you, we’re going to train together more often.” The way that he was able to encourage you to do things, it was like he had a paternal, or big brother kind of spirit. Him being there felt like it gave me more courage to want to do things, and this was one session, his energy had a potency to it. When he passed it was so weird, because I felt like we could have been friends like Bryce and I are friends now. His passing cut short the opportunity to be his friend. It was very shocking. I feel like working on this project was a privelege because I got to learn a lot more about Basilio through Bryce, and always kind of felt like he was there while we were doing things. It was this experience of getting to know Basilio in a way that I’d never had the chance to.

Basilio "Quiet" Montilla

Very similar with Deyvid, I met him at Sanctuary, which is where Riverside Parkour Park currently is. I’d never heard of him before or seen his Instagram or anything like that. He and two other guys randomly ran into me while I was training alone. I was looking at this big running pre, it’s a 15-16 foot running precision. Not many people had done it at the time, and it was this big thing I was working up to, like “I’m gonna be one of the few to do it.” And then Deyvid just came up to it, took one look and said, “I think I’m gonna hit this today.” I don’t even remember if he prepped, but within five minutes of saying those words he sent the jump and overshot it. Then he sent it again and stuck it, and then he sent it a third time and front flipped out to a cart-full. It was insane, and a humbling experience for me. He did two other NBD’s in that same session. I remember, it’s incidental now, but I remember he asked me if I was good at sending people clips after training, because people aren’t. I said yes. It was a lie, but after he asked me, I was like, “Fuck I’d better send him his clips right away.” He taught me to send clips to people after training. I remember thinking he and I would train more too. I wouldn’t say that I had the same connection with Deyvid as I did Basilio, because Basilio and I got to talk quite a bit, but it was more after we connected on Instagram that we became closer. He did the first frontflip precision at Battery, which is still ridiculous today. I remember when I saw the spot for the first time, it was after he’d hit the front pre, and I couldn’t believe it was even possible. He’s one of those people who burned very bright and lived very hard. He lived so much life in that short time. I’d rather he’d had the chance to blossom over the course of a long life, but I admired him for being the person who would do all the things that people always said they would but couldn’t. I wish I could have gotten closer with him. 

"Just a year or two into his training, he could commit to things that other people just couldn’t even consider. He was a natural talent and he always surprised me. Deyvid was the future of New York City parkour for sure."

Jake: How long have you wanted to memorialize these guys, and how did you decide that film was the way to do so?

Bryce: I will say that this project didn’t start out the way it ended up. In my mind I was just wandering around with Josh, and then as we started to sculpt the marble and do more interviews, we got a better understanding of what it was we were making. This is something that’s been long overdue since Basilio and Deyvid passed. We have people in our community who don’t know who these guys were, and that fucking sucks. They only know Basilio and Deyvid from stories, and that hurts. But I’m glad we made something where we got to talk about them and who they were. 

Joshua: I had just moved back to New York and Bryce and I had been talking about making a project. I had made another short piece pretending what it was like if I could never do parkour again, so Bryce and I were talking about mortality, what it was like aging as an athlete, and how you continue to try to preserve the spirit even as your body starts to deteriorate. With all that in our minds, we started filming random stuff, and then one day we sat down and started talking and the conversation naturally flowed towards Basilio and Deyvid. I had a lot of questions about them pent up, and the conversation blossomed from there. The north star for this whole thing was that we wanted to make a document for the kids in the community, when they get to our age, to know that it’s okay to have these feelings. To feel like there was a prime of your life, and to go through that process of aging in the community, finding that same fire you had in different challenges. Even though we made it for Basilio and Deyvid, we also made it for these young kids, as they get older, to feel like they’re seen. We hope to continue to make more pieces like this to serve the next generation of the parkour community.

Jake: It might have been an easier task to make a traditional parkour video featuring footage of Basilio and Deyvid. What drove the choice to reflect on their impact through the lens of Bryce’s grief?

Bryce Clarke

Joshua: I should preface this by saying that with the projects being made right now, I feel like parkour culture is in a renaissance. Things are blossoming in a way where people are taking creative risks. They’re able to show the mental landscape as opposed to just the physical landscape. There’s a whole new layer of expression that’s coming out. That being said, I felt like there was a gap in the narrative side of parkour culture, of being able to explore athletes, not for their movement, but for their story. Whenever I made a parkour video, I always had that ambition like, “What if I made this into a short film.” So Bryce and I started filming, and he’s so comfortable in front of a camera, and so comfortable being vulnerable, which is one of his strengths as a storyteller and a human being. That strength is just as important as his physical accomplishments. That plays as much into his role as a community leader and an athlete as any jumps he can do. In some ways, for every athlete, I think that aspect is more important than the physical side. When I think of people who have made an impact on me in the parkour community, it isn’t because they’ve done an amazing line, but it’s people who have left that impression on me as a human being. When coming to work with Bryce, it was as much about capturing that, as it was the physical accomplishments. I wish I’d had this same opportunity with Basilio and Deyvid, and it’s a little unsatisfying in that way, because I just wish I could have filmed this with them. But we can give as much attention to their spirit and their lives as human beings as to what they did in parkour. When it came down to it, it would have been impossible to do that with any traditional parkour video.

Bryce: I think Josh hit the nail on the head, and thank you for your kind words Josh, I appreciate it. I think renaissance is a good word. There’s definitely more information to be given than just, look at this line, look at these clips put back to back. I feel like the long format videos like ours help to make more safe spaces available to people in the community who feel like they don’t have an outlet. People who feel like parkour isn’t fully accepting of who they are, but because they do parkour, they fit in too. I’m proud to say that I think that parkour is only going to be one of the things we share going forward, and no matter how far we jump or what kind of trick we can do, we all kind of bleed the same. I know parkour made me feel invincible, like if I was strong physically, then I had this armor. That’s definitely not the case. And it think telling stories like these, people will see that you don’t have to jump as far as you think. That’s just a side dish. Parkour has always been a fairly soft and accepting community, for the most part. But I think now especially, we’re driving home the point that everyone is welcome. This one thing that unites us can help us see each other differently and communicate. 

Jake: For you specifically Bryce, you completed several challenges in the film, walked away from others, and one caused you a serious emotional release. What was the significance of breaking that kong to cat for you?

Bryce: There are a few points to it, but one of the biggest was that Josh and I took a plane to get there. I was like, “Wooh, 6 hour plane ride, it’s gonna fucking suck if I don’t do this kong-cat.” I knew going out to San Francisco that there were things I wanted to do for the video. There was a big running cat leap that we were planning on looking at, but we ended up training at UC Berkely instead, which I think was a good call on Josh’s part. But that kong-cat was something that a few others had done before, and Josh showed me a video of Paul Whitecotton, who was able to get a crane on the far wall. When we got to the spot, I was a little nervous because of the consequence, it was high enough that you didn’t want to fuck it up. It wouldn’t kill you, but it was really gonna hurt. I remember feeling more and more comfortable, but I had this abdominal pain, and I was worried that even if everything went right maybe I’d make my injury worse. Or that it would throw me off while committing. At the end of the day, the kong-cat represented this idea that I could still do this. I could still get on a plane with the intention of doing parkour at my destination, and I could still progress at the age of 32. It made me feel like I can still hold my own, which is my own thing I need to work on. But it made me feel validated in my practice, and like I conquered something that I wanted to do. I just wanted to do it once. If I see a challenge that scares me, especially if fear is the only thing holding me back, thinking about Deyvid and Basilio not being able to train anymore tends to help me push through that. That kong-cat felt like one of those challenges.

Jake: In the film, you touch on how it feels to see spots where your friends completed challenges and broke barriers for themselves. What does it mean to you guys to watch a new generation of athletes struggle and break through those same challenges today?

Bryce: Part of it feels like watching history repeat itself. The other part is still feeling the joy of seeing someone complete a challenge that you remember yourself or your friends doing. Seeing the new gen do those challenges makes me feel like there’s still something I can offer, which is guidance. Because even if I’ve done the challenge over and over, they still have to break it for the first time. They have to go through the same process that we all do. I feel like what I can do is help them get to that place faster, and also help them to realize that they don’t have to hit that jump that day. I want to play both roles, I want to push them to do it, because my fire gets brighter when I see the look of accomplishment on their faces. But I also want them to realize that they can always come back, and if they don’t feel ready, that’s okay too. Watching the new generation train is very motivating, because I don’t feel like I need to keep up with them, and it’s fun to watch them get better faster than I ever did. I think that’s the key to leaving a legacy. Basilio established things in me that kept me training and pushing myself, even when I’m just at home stretching or doing the accessory exercises we all do. Basilio helped me realize that those were qualities I need to have, and my role now is to help the new generation realize that as well. It’s important to recognize that you’re equals, even if you’re separated by 10 plus years of age, or even training age. Because if I didn’t feel that way then I wouldn’t be out there training with them. I wouldn’t want to continue this if I felt like I was just the old geezer. I want to give these kids the same thing that Basilio gave to me, and hopefully they’ll fill that role for others as they get older. With New York City being as big as it is, it’ll just continue, and I get to watch it happen. 

Joshua: Most of the time I’m a very introverted person, and as a photographer as well, my goal a lot of the time is to be completely invisible. When it comes to the parkour community, that’s the one place where I’m glad to be entirely visible. I feel encouraged to talk to people. One of the cool things about going to a big parkour event is seeing the multiple generations of parkour people, and, like Bryce was saying, there are no barriers between them. Not age, not skill, and in the best communities that’s how it feels. It’s very cool to know that in spite of growing up in different cultures, situations, and times, there’s this physical level that we’re all able to relate to. It’s tangible, it’s real, and it’s right in front of us. I’m simultaneously old and young in my mind, like I feel like there’s so much I don’t know or understand, and I’m ass at so many things. And on the other side of that, I feel jaded, I have sciatica, I feel ike an old head attending jams in my Etre Fort sweats. But when you’re out training with the next gen especially, it’s like their fire is with you too almost by osmosis. And training with older community members, you get a sense of that wisdom, and that person’s spirit has ossified in a way where they’re sure of who they are. It’s a reason why I like to talk to people in the older generation, they’re like oaks, they have their roots planted, they know who they are. They’re aware of things they’re guilty of, they’re aware of things they never did, but there’s also an awareness of what they’ve accomplished, and the conviction they had to do these things. One of the things that I love about being a filmmaker in this community is that there’s this sense of participation and exclusion at the same time. You can choose when you want to engage, and when you want to step outside of that and view it with an objective lens. It’s a privelege. 

Jake: Why is it important to recognize the relationship between mortality, personal growth, and the pastimes we use to confront those ends?

Bryce: As I touched on before, when I started parkour it made me feel a level of invincibility. It definitely made me feel like I was better than the normal population, and the more I trained the more I felt that. Like I could stand on a rail like it was the ground, and it felt like normal people couldn’t just do that. It gave me this God complex, that I was better, not better than other parkour people, but better than your average person. I’ve had my own close calls with things that could have gone differently, and it’s made me realize that I’m not better than, I just have a different skill set. I think about Basilio too, and he was someone who was always very strong, then he had an accident, and it was just bad luck. Then I think about Deyvid, and we don’t really know what happened. Thinking of Deyvid’s last moments, I wonder if he felt alone, especially as he was dying. Did he feel alone? Especially relating it to mortality and what I can do now, I still feel as fragile as I was before I even started parkour, and everyone is. It scares me. Because when I was 19 and started parkour, I felt like I was gonna be more aware, I was going to be able to fend off death because of this new skillset that made me strong. Then when Basilio passed, the foundation of that crumbled underneath me. I wasn’t better than anybody because I could do a kong vault or land on a rail. None of that mattered. I think that taking a step back is important. As you get older, especially in parkour, it’s like Josh said, you can participate, but you can also observe. And just thinking of things that have happened, or things I regret doing or not doing, I think it’s important to look back and realize how far you’ve come. It would be easier if we knew what was up before we got to our destination. But the most I can do now is use my own experience to help others save some time going through it. Right after Basilio passed, there was something that pushed me to keep training, and for me it helped to keep my mind on what I enjoyed, but allowed me to confront my sadness. There was a person who used to be here and do this with me, and now that they’re gone, it’s always going to hurt. I knew that the best way forward was to keep training, and channel that in way that maybe didn’t help myself, but helped other people training with me to put a proverbial band-aid over the wound, and the band-aid was the parkour community. It was like getting other people to be around me and train was therapy. I don’t think the other people knew what I was going through at the time, or how much of an impact they had on my well-being. You don’t have to stop doing something you love, even when there’s a layer of sadness wrapped around it. This video makes me feel like I have some closure on the chapter of Basilio and Deyvid. The thing we wanted to create is created. It’s a reminder that things do eventually get better. 

Jake: My fucking heart.

Joshua: I think that even if the film was never released, if no one else ever watched it, I don’t think I would care. I made this for Bryce. It was made for him to watch, and I guess metaphorically for Basilio and Deyvid to watch to some degree. None of this is going to last. Ultimately we are all ash, and everything we know is going to be dust one day. You can’t really memorialize anyone forever. We could make a five hour epic and it wouldn’t matter. There’s this wonderful quote from a film called “F for Fake,” which is one of Orson Welles’s last films. The quote goes, “What of it? Sing anyway.” We do all of this stuff—we’re   compelled to sing because we love music. We’re compelled to laugh because something is funny. We live these things with people because we’re compelled to, not because we’re afraid of being forgotten. It’s almost like the whole film of Unbroken itself is incidental. What matters is that we made it. We went through the act of remembering and the act of grieving. It’s like we have a reason to grieve, to confront these sad feelings, because it can maybe do something for someone else. The easiest thing in the world is to withdraw, resign, and live every passing moment in the backseat of your own life. I had a major surgery several years ago, and I almost died. I woke up from the surgery, and my abdominal muscles were just gone, destroyed because of how they had to open me up. You spend your whole life preparing your body, and one day it’s gone. You spend your whole life accumulating knowledge, for your brain to die one day. In the same way that we make our movement tangible, the more we can put into the world for others to interact with, putting more into the world so that we can live more deeply through the experiences of each other, that’s what matters. It doesn’t matter how much sorrow or pain there is, there’s always this persistence, this very human persistence. 

"A spirit cannot be unbroken until the past is broken"

Jake: What final message would you like to relay to people who watch this video and cry their eyes out like I did?

Bryce: After people watch this, I would like for them to go to Deyvid and Basilio’s instagram pages, and like all of the posts so that the algorithm doesn’t delete their profiles. It would mean a lot to me for people to go look these guys up and see who they were. Basilio helped all of us and Deyvid inspired all of us. Also, please go watch the World Chase Tag match where we played against GNF. Deyvid is evading and he pulls an insane dive roll through this gap, straight into a double kong. And the pretense, is that he said minutes before competing, “Man I really want to hit this dive roll,” and he did it while competing. Like it was the easiest thing in the world. One of the things I’d like people take away from this video, is that I lost two people close to me and those people did parkour. We aren’t the only community to lose somebody. I want people to realize that I didn’t quit parkour despite how sad their absences still make me. I want people not to quit. It doesn’t have to be parkour. Just don’t stop, because it’s like you’re dying too. What would I do if I stopped doing parkour? I have no idea. I want people to remember that despite what they go through, not to quit. I owe it to Basilio and Deyvid to fill my life with experiences that they would have enjoyed too. 

"I want to give these kids the same thing that Basilio gave to me, and hopefully they’ll fill that role for others as they get older. With New York City being as big as it is, it’ll just continue, and I get to watch it happen"

Joshua: I say the same. I hope that people who maybe haven’t felt closure in the same way we have, far be it from me to assume this video will fix anyone’s problems, but I hope that this video can be an impetus for those people to confront that journey on their own. I hope that people who watch this and are in that place, feel courage in knowing that others have been there too. When you’re young, death is something that either terrifies you, or it’s so distant it doesn’t even seem real. I want young people who haven’t dealt with this yet, or are maybe just discovering this naturally, to know that there’s a language for it. I hope that it makes it so that even if the reality of death is scary, it can be beautiful too. The actions of these people who aren’t with us anymore can be beautiful and meaningful because they’re impermanent. There’s a sense of weight to the things we do, because we’re not here forever. What is death but another challenge to approach? At the very least, I hope that people can relate, and learn about these two wonderful people whose actions are still reverberating even though they’re gone.