Wonder and Kent discuss the episodic documentary series, ConBody vs Everybody, a series that follows Coss Marte as he creates a fitness enterprise, ConBody, based on workouts he developed while incarcerated. Emerging themes include exile and reintegration, friends as family, and the power of witness and acknowledgment in healing. Astrologically this relates to the 1st, 11th, and 12th houses, with emphasis on the 11th.
Distribution: More info
Director: Debra Granik
Run Time: 120 minutes
Artist Statement:
Music Credit: spacedust by airtone
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:13.476] Kent Bye: Hello, my name is Kent Bye. Wonder Bright: And I'm Wonder Bright. Kent Bye: And welcome to the Story All The Way Down podcast, where we're breaking down the archetypal dynamics of stories. This season, we're focusing on 36 documentaries from Sundance 2024. Today's episode, we're going to be diving into an episodic series called ConBody vs. Everybody, which is a part of the episodic section at Sundance 2024. And it was directed by Debra Granik. And this is episode number three of seven of our section on the Power of the Collective, Movements and Friendships. So, Wonder, would you be willing to read the synopsis? Wonder Bright: (laughing) What would you say if I said no? Kent Bye: (laughing) I would say, well, that's it. The podcast's done. It's over.
[00:00:58.433] Wonder Bright: ConBody vs. Everybody: Taking place over eight years, Coss Marte builds ConBody, a gym inspired by workouts he developed while in prison. Committed to employing trainers who were formerly incarcerated, Coss creates a community fighting to break the cycle of recidivism while navigating society's many obstacles to reentry. Having premiered multiple feature-length films at the festival, including Down to the Bone, Leave No Trace, and the Academy Award-nominated Winter's Bone, director Debra Granik returns with ConBody vs. Everybody, a documentary series that shines a light on the uphill battle of reestablishing oneself in an often unforgiving society, where barriers endure for those who have been incarcerated. Devoted to the craft of storytelling, Granik spent more than eight years documenting the journey of Marte, his family, and the other former inmates that he employs. The result is a fascinating story of uncompromising perseverance, sure to inspire all of us to overcome life's many obstacles. And that synopsis was brought to us by Sundance programmer Adam Montgomery.
[00:02:08.567] Kent Bye: Yeah, so they were showing two out of the six episodes, and Debra said, before we started watching, that they actually decided to jump in the middle of the story. So they're kind of skipping some of the introductory context to each of the characters and jumping into the heart, but it ends up being a lot of these formerly incarcerated people that are trying to start this business called ConBody, which is all about this specific exercise routine that you don't need any extra weights or anything. These are the types of exercises that people would do while they were incarcerated. So there's a lot, I think, in this film, that is painting the context of life after prison. So very much like a 12th House experience of imprisonment, and then all of the taboos and barriers that formerly incarcerated people face when they come out of prison. And the ConBody exercise business is really a refuge for a lot of those formerly incarcerated people. So it was a really interesting story just because it was tracking so many different people over such a long period of time. And we put it into the community section just because so much of the vibe of the story was how they're really showing up for each other as not only colleagues and co-workers, but also as friends.
[00:03:22.077] Wonder Bright: Yeah, this is a work that could easily be put in a number of places. It's clearly speaking about a 12th House experience of exile and isolation, but it's actually focused on the reintegration aspect. What does it take when you've been exiled to reintegrate into society and into the culture? And the primary strategy that Coss Marte and all of his employees are taking is to reintegrate through their group association. So there's a couple of things that are really striking about that. The first being that they're naming that they were formerly incarcerated. They're naming that they've been exiled. And they're pointing out a benefit that they were able to cause for themselves while incarcerated and here, you could argue that this is a 1st House film because it's about fitness, it's about a movement to help people become self-reliant because they can't rely on weights and they can't rely on gym equipment. They only need to rely on their own self, their own body, and meeting the resistance of their body and their own weight. So they're identifying themselves as people who are uniquely qualified to speak to that because this is how they kept fit in prison. But they're empowering other people to create their own self-reliance around their body. So in that way, it's a 1st House film. But none of this is possible in the absence of cultivating and creating community amongst themselves, and in the broader culture to create a realm of acceptance for the work that they're doing and a way of being able to value it. So it's a really fascinating film because it's the result of someone, Coss Marte, who is looking at his circumstances head on, directly, in an unflinching fashion and truly identifying a feature, not a bug, about his incarceration in a way that qualifies him to speak competently and to be valued for what he's created for himself and for other people. And I did just want to make the distinction that although he is speaking to a lot of people, and people do want to be a part of what he's doing, this isn't quite yet a movement. It is a man with a business with formerly incarcerated employees who are making inroads and making a statement about what's possible for sure. But as a part of the two episodes that we were able to watch, It's made clear that Coss Marte is receiving letters from people in prisons all across the country who want to be employed, are willing to move to New York if they can in order to work for him. And he just can't provide that work for everybody. In fact, in the two episodes we saw - we haven't been able yet to watch the rest of the episodes, I really look forward to this getting distributed so that we are able to watch it - but from what we watched, they face the normal difficulties that any person running a business faces. They lose their gym at one point because the landlord raises the rates and they can't afford it and so then they're just thinking on their feet and trying to figure out a new spot. They're facing all the difficulties that any small business faces, and then in addition to that they also have to face the way that culture perceives of them, and how that also infiltrates their own self-perceptions, and how that alters their family relationships, their personal relationships. And the reason that I wanted to place this in this section, which is about the Power of the Collective, and Movements and Friendships, is because that's the strategy that they're using to overcome their many obstacles. It really is something where they are creating an experience where they are able to witness one another, and to hold one another strong, and hold one another to account, and to their best intentions and their highest goals in life. And it's through that power of seeing and being seen by one another that these friends and this community is able to do any of the things that they're doing.
[00:08:06.348] Kent Bye: Yeah, there was a quote that Coss Marte had said, that he had no idea that he was going to hire people who were coming out of prison. It was just him in the beginning. And he says that it wasn't as simple as just giving someone a job, but he actually has a deeper emotional tie to what he's doing. And he's becoming attached to the trainers and is really concerned about their outcomes. And he tells them, “whatever assistance you need, hit me up, come see me. You don't have to put yourself at risk. Before you make that decision, let me be your 911. You've got my number. We're here as a community. We're here as a family”. And so I think that quote sums up for me, a lot of what this film was about was them really showing up not only as colleagues and coworkers, but as friends and almost, like, chosen family, because they've gone through this shared experience of being incarcerated. And there's a lot of taboos that are associated with that. There's one section where they have a partnership with Saks Fifth Avenue, which is a really high-end fancy store in Manhattan, and they have these formerly incarcerated people who are calling themselves the ConBody. That's the name of their business, and they're interfacing with these really rich high society people.
[00:09:17.082] Wonder Bright: Primarily white, primarily female as well. And of course, most of the people that Coss has employed are black and brown and they have one woman on the team.
[00:09:28.708] Kent Bye: Yeah. And there’s, like, a culture clash there and they're able to make a go of it and have some success. But I think ultimately that partnership ended because I think there was not as much of a resonance between the target demographic of Saks Fifth Avenue and
[00:09:42.515] Wonder Bright: Well, I mean, also, Saks Fifth Avenue is a retail store. They're moving product. They're picking up on trends and they're delivering people what's new and fresh. So it was unlikely to ever have been like a longstanding partnership, in my opinion, just by dint of that.
[00:10:01.047] Kent Bye: Yeah, I think one of the center of gravities of this film, for me at least, is like a 2nd House experience of what it takes to run a business. Because the more successful they are of running this business, the more people that Coss can hire coming out of prison. And there's this great dilemma as he's getting inundated and flooded with all of these letters of people who have this 11th House experience of their hopes and aspirations, of, like, their dreams of what might be possible. Jupiter having its joy in the 11th, the House of good spirit. And there's this great dilemma where Coss is doing everything that he can, and he has been able to hire some people, but he's not big enough and successful enough as a business to be able to hire everybody who wants to come work for him. So despite the fact that he is giving this glimmer of hope for so many people, there's only a small percentage of people who are actually going to be able to come out and work with him because It's not as much of a movement, like you said, that is able to really sustain that as a thriving business. So you see a lot of the film is, you know, how did they grow the business? They're out on the streets and they're trying to promote it. So all the normal things that you would need to do to advertise and promote your business, it ends up being this experience of not only giving a place of refuge and employment, you know, both a 6th House and 10th House experience for some people, it’s, like, their destiny and their career. And some people, it's a job that they're using to get back onto their feet. But overall, it's really trying to improve those rates of recidivism by having a place for people that they can not only have a place of work, but to be a part of this community of the support network that Coss is really providing. And you really see how much he is invested in the success of each of the people that he hires to become trainers.
[00:11:42.614] Wonder Bright: Yeah. And as you were speaking, I was thinking about this one particular sequence where Coss Marte goes into a prison to be a part of a workshop where incarcerated men meet successful CEOs to learn how they might begin thinking about their own business, and to pitch their business ideas. And Coss Marte goes in there as a CEO himself. And the woman who's facilitating the workshop has two groups of men stand in a line facing one another. So you see Coss Marte in his suit standing next to the other suited CEOs, standing face-to-face with these incarcerated men who, you know, have all these dreams but have been really squashed in the culture, you know? So it's quite a thing to see these two groups of men facing one another, like seeing one another eye-to-eye like that. And we know that Coss, he’s, like, alone in understanding both sides of that divide. And one of the things that's really powerful in that sequence is the way that the facilitator has the men step forward and or step back in response to questions about their families of origin and their experiences, you know. So, for instance, how many people here are children of divorce? If you're children of divorce, step forward. If you're not, step back. And so you just begin to see all of these metrics for success whereby all the incarcerated people were starting from way far back.
[00:13:24.361] Kent Bye: One of the other things that they had said is, how many people have had one of your family members die of gang violence? And you start to see disparities between the lived experiences and the larger cultural context by which these two different groups of people have faced in their lives. On one side, the incarcerated people, on the other side, these CEOs who are running their businesses. And so it's an opportunity to really tap into the cultural differences of the lived experiences of these two different groups of people.
[00:13:53.467] Wonder Bright: Yeah. And the fact that the incarcerated people typically started way, way, way behind the starting line, whereas the CEOs were born into families where they basically started the starting line. And so the difference between the outcomes in their lives are predictable and measurable. And it's just really made clear in that sequence. And, you know, for that reason, this is a film that also talks about family, 4th House, and belonging in the same way that the film that we talked about earlier that also premiered at Sundance, Daughters, does. So that there's this strong clarity around the filmmaker, around Debra Granik, and also around Coss Marte, that the people that he's working with are working from a deficit in terms of their foundational support structures. And that is played out through the course of ConBody versus Everybody, because one of the reasons that these 11th House friendships and community ends up being like a new family system is because we watch the ConBody employees go through real difficult times with their families. One of the men loses his son. And we watched that happen. He loses his son to gang violence, you know, and he's watching his son go through the thing that he was hoping he would be able to halt, you know, in his generation. And yet he's not able to prevent it in his son's life.
[00:15:25.546] Kent Bye: Yeah, and so we see a whole scene where his co-workers and friends show up to the funeral of his son and really are there as a chosen family in a lot of ways. Not only the friends, but as people who are close enough to show up for each other in that way.
[00:15:41.539] Wonder Bright: Yeah. And this is something that, you know, I think is a really important way that friendships can show up. You know, in the way that astrological signatures often mirror one another, you can see that the 11th House mirrors the 3rd House. So your 11th House friendships can actually become your new peer group that gets founded by, like, your experience of siblings when you're a child. But through this new experience of chosen siblings, you can actually create new patterns and new reactions to the world when you have a community structure that helps you do that in a way that is empowering. So you see this a lot in queer communities, for instance, when people are ousted from their family of origin because their family won't accept them for being gay, they can then create new family structures with their chosen family in usually larger cities. Because then you're surrounded by people who understand what you've been through and they're able to understand it in a really unique way. And that's what we see here in ConBody vs. Everybody. That there's this capacity that these friends have to lift one another up because they uniquely can understand that they are not unredeemable, that they are not unforgivable, that they never were, and that they too deserve a chance. And in believing in one another, they also are believing in themselves. And it's a really powerful thing to witness. It's extraordinary.
[00:17:22.659] Kent Bye: Yeah, so many scenes that, you know, for me the primary signification of the 11th House because these friends are showing up in all these different contexts throughout their lives. Like there's a scene where one of the trainers is getting their home set up for the first time and they're hanging up pictures and they have just another trainer that's coming over and just helping to hang up those photos. There's mundane things like that where there's a lot of scenes that are just people showing up for each other and hanging out with each other. So yeah, I don't know for you if you have another primary signification that you're thinking about when you're watching this film.
[00:17:55.594] Wonder Bright: Well, I just want to say because I am an Ask A Manager advice column addict. But if, you know, you know, there's an advice column called Ask a Manager and people write into the woman that runs it, her name's Alison Green, to ask advice about different work situations, you know, where they're having a problem. And one of her, like, hard and fast rules is: your co-workers are not family. And she really wants to see a separation between how you earn your money and your ability to be judged on your skill sets and to not have those familial ties that can occur in a working situation. So you pretty much can hear what she's going to say every time a letter writer writes in and says, I'm working for this small family business and dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. Like at this point, I've been reading her for years. I know where she's going to go with this because you can see the writing on the wall. And I really would love Alison Green to watch this show because I'm curious how she would talk about it. Because there is an argument that these coworkers who are also standing in for family are the only people that will allow these people to work in a way that validates their entire expression of identity and really is able to see them as whole people. And because I've been reading Alison Green for so long, I also have this question about how that will translate down the line for the business ConBody. and how well it will translate, you know, if, and hopefully it does achieve the kind of success where you have different branches of it in different cities. Because I think at the core of ConBody is Coss Marte. And this is an exceptional human being who really has a lot of clarity about who he is in a way that allows him to be both incredibly compassionate and extending himself to people, but also to be pretty clear headed about what the obstacles are that they face. And that makes him really unique amongst CEOs as a general rule, frankly.
[00:20:24.479] Kent Bye: Yeah. And so I guess when you think about ConBody vs Everybody as a remedial measure, then who would you prescribe it to?
[00:20:32.279] Wonder Bright: I just think it is, like, a beautiful remedial measure for people wanting to understand the 11th House and why friendships can be so important and how they can help an individual experience redemption and liberation from patterns from childhood that can be rooted in trauma.
[00:20:55.250] Kent Bye: Yeah, as you're saying that, it's really reminding me of one of the things that Demetra George says about the 11th House in her book, Ancient Astrology in Theory and Practice, a manual of traditional techniques, volume two. She says that “the 11th House is a sector that holds the space for friends and friendships based upon a sympathy of the soul. It also covers benefactors and patrons, those who support your goals and visions, advocate for your interests and work with you towards their realization”. And so, you know, when I think about what I want to bear witness to, I think it's Coss Marte who's really embodying that for his colleagues, where he's not just working with them, supporting them and mentoring them. He's really invested in helping to support their dreams and visions for reintegration. And he had this vision that is sort of an unorthodox idea, you know, to have both a workout and an exercise routine, and a place for these formerly incarcerated people to work and to reintegrate into society. And we've only watched two out of the six total episodes, so we don't get to see the full arc of where things are going. I know that obviously the pandemic is happening, and so that would inevitably have put a damper on any type of gathering of people meeting face-to-face. I'm really curious to see how the overall trajectory of this ends up, how they get through that period. you start to trace a number of the different people because they're following people for like eight years. And so you really see a full trajectory of people as they're coming in. And so, yeah, just really curious to see all those different storylines. But the stuff that we missed ahead of watching those two seasons, because I feel like there's some storylines that were kind of thrown in the middle and not getting a lot of context. Like there's one trainer who kind of has a relapse into drug use, and so he's a real close friend of Coss, that we get glimmers of, and maybe not the full story, that's shown in the context of the two episodes that were shown at Sundance, but I imagine with the full series, they'll probably develop that storyline a little bit more robustly so that we can... that's probably already been developed.
[00:22:59.141] Wonder Bright: We just didn't see the episodes in which we would have met him.
[00:23:02.643] Kent Bye: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So there's stuff like that where there's a lot of stuff that we're not seeing. That would be great to kind of see the full story and the full arc of the full six episodes. But yeah, I just want to bear witness to Coss Marte, who is really just a genuine soul who is really compassionately both looking out for mentoring and supporting so many people in his efforts of his business of ConBody.
[00:23:29.184] Wonder Bright: Yeah, I also want to bear witness to Coss Marte and his vision of a world where he can integrate and where his integration helps other people integrate and that in that process of integration, I believe that his vision is inclusive enough that there's a pathway for all of us to understand exile and reintegration and what it takes, and that it isn't something that can rely on just one small community. It's actually something that, as a larger collective, as a society, we need to be able to pay attention to. And I just want to bear witness to the strategies and insight that Coss Marte has developed, and is discovering and creating in ways that are really revelatory. And I really hope to learn more about him and his work in the future.
[00:24:35.572] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, that was ConBody vs Everybody. Hopefully it'll be picked up for distribution so we can watch the full arc of this six episode series that was shot over eight years. And, uh, yeah, that's all that we have for today. And I just want to thank you for listening to the Story All The Way Down podcast. And if you enjoy the podcast, then please do, spread the word, tell your friends, and consider signing up to the newsletter at storyallthewaydown.com. Thanks for listening.
[00:24:59.483] Wonder Bright: Thank you.
