AnnaMay & Dave from Geek World Interview David Belle

GW Dave: Hey, how's it going? This is Dave from Geek World.
GW AnnaMay: And Anna from Geek World.
David Belle: I'm doing fine.  Thank you so much.

GW A: Thank you for taking the time...
DB: I'm a little thirsty cause we're already going into our third interview but I'm holding up ok.

GW D: Great, great.
GW A: Why don't we start off with a question about the movie District 13: Ultimatum.  We were wondering how District 13 changed from the end of the last movie to the beginning of District 13: Ultimatum and how that effected the character of Lieto?
DB: Well I think you can realize at the beginning of the film in that scene where you see him placing the mines on the wall in his head he's saying 'wow, things haven't changed, promises were not kept, I'm gonna start changing things myself.

GW D: Yeah, we love that scene, we thought that was a really great way to start off the movie and really funny too even though really awesome.
DB: Thank you very much.  I really had a good time doing that scene also.

GW A: It seems like... You and Cyril Rafaelli have really great on screen chemistry, so we were wondering if you guys are also friends off set.
DB: Well as a matter of fact he happens to live two kilometers (that's like a mile and a half) away from me.

GW A & D: That's really funny.
GW A: When you and Cyril practice the stunts for a movie like District B13 or District 13: Ultimatum do you ever get competitive while you're practicing?
DB: Well yes there is a definite sense of competition but I would say it's a very positive sense because it is not to say look I'm better than you but just keep in mind that when we're shooting the film we're both extremely tired, fatigue is a factor and we're trying to show look I can do it, you can do it, this worked well for me, make sure yours is good when you do yours, and the idea is to keep our creative tension high because we have to throughout the film.  So I would say it's competition in a very positive sense.

GW A: How do you prepare for a big jump?
DB: Well you have to rehearse it beforehand and take a few smaller jumps beforehand in order to warm up.

GW A: Of all the stunts and jumps that you've done in movies what's one that you are most proud of?
DB: I would say what I'm most proud of are those jumps where I really had no safety net, no cable, nothing, and when I see those on the screen I say 'well that's just me and the camera and just beauty of the stunt and the camera' and I know that I was doing it with no safety net.  Now in the film there's a really nice scene where I'm in my apartment and the apartment blows up and I go out the window and I jump up to the balcony above mine, you know that's a nice scene, it was a very dangerous one, but that scene you know I did have support, there were some cables, so to me that doesn't have the same degree of merit as other scenes where I like jump from one roof to another with nothing underneath.

GW A: We've come across a few articles where you credit your family, especially your father, with giving you the inspiration to create Parkour, can you elaborate on that a little bit?
DB: Well, you know, since my father did not bring me up I was involved in the normal sports that kids are involved in, basketball, soccer, gymnastics, you know I had heard that my father had done that so I was trying to find my own path, and when I found it in Parkour I realized it was everything I was looking for, I found my personal sense of balance, my equilibrium, that's what came from it.  I had grown up as a very introverted child, someone who didn't speak a lot, someone who had studied his lessons but was afraid to speak up in class, and now through Parkour I have to speak to people and show myself.  It's sort of therapeutic.  You know, I was brought up not by my father but by my grandfather and my grandfather depicted my father as sort of like a hero, he said 'your father was a fireman who saved lives' and naturally you know when you're a kid you want to resemble your father and so when I met him when I found him I had a lot of questions to ask.

GW A: We were also wondering if you ever get into trouble for doing Parkour in public spaces.
DB: Well yes, quite often.  Because people get to know us and they know we're not there to sow chaos, that we respect people, and that we don't break anything, things are fine, but the problem is we travel a lot and people don't know us everywhere and so we always have problems at the beginning.

GW D: So as long as you're not blowing up sides of walls it's ok?
DB: Yeah, from that perspective yeah it's ok.

GW A: You move like a real life Spider-Man, when you were growing up were there any comic books that you were into?
DB: Well yes I did definitely follow the Spider-Man comics and as a matter of fact Sam Raimi... When Sony Pictures was going to film Spider-Man 3 Sam Raimi and Sony Pictures contacted me and had me try on the Spider-man costume, and I did, and the idea was that I was gonna do the stunts for that production so I tried on the costume but because of other commitments I couldn't accept the assignment.

GW D: Oh wow, that's really cool, we had never heard that, that's really cool.  Let me ask, you've been working as the Parkour coordinator for the upcoming Prince of Persia movie, is there anything you can tell us about that?
DB: Well as a matter of fact yes you know the thing was I was shooting District 13: Ultimatum and so I couldn't move I wasn't available but because he [Jerry Bruckheimer] had asked me various times if I could help out with the choreography and I was told 'when Jerry Bruckheimer wants something Jerry Bruckheimer gets it' and so every time I had a break in the shooting I would go to Pinewood Studios in England for two weeks or three weeks and I would work with an assistant choreographer and he would get the actors doubles and they shot a whole bunch of scenes and we also trained little Daston because when he's when the character is small there's a kid who plays that role and we had to train the kid and that was a lot of work but we got along great with Jake and the director and I would say it was a very good experience, it really was.

GW D: That's great, that's great.  Just to follow that up, when developing the Parkour scenes for Prince of Persia did you play any of the videogames? (Geek World note: we think the question got a little lost in translation so the answer doesn't actually have to do with whether or not he played the videogames)
DB: Exactly, I was asked to contribute [on Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time] to the decor to choreographing the scene and the visual elements I was asked for my opinion regarding the choice of the decor and I remember that there was one scene that was taking place at a castle, I think this was Benjamin Gates scene, and the fact is that the script writer the screenwriter had already written the scene but I didn't know that and I visualized the scene and I imagined how the choreography would be, I put myself in the character's shoes and I explained to them how I thought the scene would go and they said 'this is impeccable, let's go and let's shoot and then the screenwriters came and they said we already wrote this scene and now because of what you did now we have to rewrite it.  I wasn't just there to do the movements, I was also there to provide them information on the decor, where the obstacles should be, the staging of each scene, more than just the choreography, the choice of the movements, and I would meet with everybody and I usually had a lot of ideas and then they would choose what they considered the best and they would work over that and the next day we would actually shoot, I'd meet with the storyboarders, with the entire team, with the director, with the assistant, because they had to see I had to explain the scene as I envisioned it from start to finish to see if they liked it, fortunately they usually liked my first suggestion.  I would discuss all that then with the head of the cores and I would say at this place this should happen, it was really quite a lot of work.

GW D: That's great.  So, there's a fantastic scene  in District 13: Ultimatum where it's a rooftop chase, how long does it take you guys to shoot a scene like that?
DB: The chase scene on the roof?

GW D: Yeah.
DB: It took about a week.

GW D: Wow.
GW A: And how many times did you have to do the big jump?
DB: As few as possible.  Maximum of three times.  In the best of circumstances on the first shoot it worked.

GW D: I can imagine.  I can see that.  And one other question we wanted to know is have you ever thought about going to Japan and participating in Ninja Warrior?
DB: Yes, as a matter of fact I saw that with some friends and we think it's pretty amusing, it's pretty cool actually.  I might take a spin down there to have a good time.

GW A: We would love to see that.
GW D: We would love to see that, we think you'd probably be very very good at that.
DB: That's right, it might be fun.

GW A: Is there anything else that you would like to tell people about District 13: Ultimatum or just about Parkour or anything else you are currently working on?
DB: Well I think there's a chance that there might be a sequel to District 13 in the United States.

GW A: Nice!
GW D: Oh, really?  Oh that could be amazing, is there anything you can tell us about that?  That's big, we had no idea.
DB: Well I can't tell you much more I can just say that the project is underway and it will arrive soon.

GW D: That is great.  That definitely makes us very happy and I'm sure many other people in our geek world.
DB: I think this would be a co-production between the United States and France and there would be an American star who would play the role of the policeman.

GW A: Oh neat.
GW D: Oh wow.  I just have to ask, do you guys already have some ideas of certain cities or monuments that we might see some Parkour action on?
DB: I can't go that far because we still haven't done the scouting of locations yet but in any case you know your cities better than I do and the scenes will be shot in the cities that are most appropriate for the spirit of District 13 wherever they may be.

GW D: Oh, that's great.
DB: What do you think of Boston?

GW D: Boston's a cool place.
GW A: I think San Francisco has some really great landmarks that Parkour could look really cool on.
DB: Ok, I will pass that information on.

GW D: Could I just ask one more question?
DB: Go right ahead.

GW D: Is there any place in the world that has a certain monument or landscape that you've always wanted to do a cool Parkour scene on?
DB: There's a whole bunch of beautiful places where I would love to film.  There a places in Morocco, in Greece, in Venice, there's a whole variety of possibilities.

GW D: Well hopefully we'll get to see a bunch of those cause we... it's pretty amazing seeing you do those things and we're up for as many District 13 movies as we can get.
GW A: Thank you so much for taking the time to record this interview with us.
DB: Thank you so much, thank you for taking the time to do this interview and let me just say that if the film actually gets done by the time it gets done I promise by that time to speak American English, that would be motivation for me.

GW D: Well as long as you keep jumping across buildings that's uh...
GW A: That's translation enough.
DB: OK. Thank you.

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