More than a decade ago, filmmaker Debra Granik met Coss Marte in a diner on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, where he described an idea that many investors and employers initially dismissed as unrealistic: a fitness business staffed almost entirely by people returning from prison.

Marte, a former drug dealer who had spent years incarcerated before the age of 27, had developed a personal prison-cell workout routine while serving time and emerged with a plan to turn that discipline into a business model. His proposal was simple but unconventional for New York’s boutique fitness market build a gym where formerly incarcerated people would not only find work, but also become trainers, mentors and examples of successful re-entry into society.

That idea became Conbody, a fitness company that now stands as both a business and a social intervention in one of New York City’s most rapidly changing neighborhoods.

It is also the subject of Conbody vs Everybody, Granik’s five-hour documentary series released on the Criterion Channel in the United States, tracing more than a decade of struggle, expansion and institutional resistance around Marte’s effort to create employment pathways away from the prison system.

Granik, known for films such as Winter’s Bone and Leave No Trace, originally intended to make a drama about life after incarceration. Instead, she found in Marte a long-form documentary subject whose personal story reflected broader structural questions about criminal justice, housing, labor access and urban inequality.

“He was defying all the odds,” Granik said, reflecting on their first meeting. Marte’s ambition was not only to avoid returning to prison, but to build an enterprise that could help others avoid the same cycle. “He was using all his energy to not get re-ensnared in the criminal justice system,” she said.

Marte grew up on the Lower East Side as the son of Dominican immigrants. His mother worked in a clothing factory and his father operated a neighborhood bodega. After returning from prison, he found that the area had changed dramatically. Boutique fitness studios were multiplying, rents were rising and wealthier residents were moving into what had long been a working-class immigrant neighborhood.

He recognized both a challenge and an opportunity. He believed affluent customers would pay for intense bodyweight workouts modeled on prison training routines, particularly if the business was framed around second chances and social impact. Conbody marketed its classes with slogans such as “do the time,” combining hard physical training with the personal narratives of its instructors.

Marte proved adept at navigating two worlds at once. He sold customers on the fitness experience while persuading investors to support a business model many viewed as too risky because of its workforce. Some openly questioned whether formerly incarcerated employees could be trusted in a customer-facing environment.

The skepticism reflected a broader contradiction in the startup culture of the mid-2010s, Granik said: the public celebration of entrepreneurship as universally accessible often collapsed when social stigma and financial gatekeeping entered the picture. Investors praised innovation in theory, but many hesitated when the founders or staff had criminal records.

The barriers extended beyond funding. One early Conbody location was forced to move because it shared a building with a preschool, raising objections over the presence of former prisoners nearby. Some employees also faced parole restrictions that made ordinary employment nearly impossible. In certain cases, associating with other formerly incarcerated people could itself violate parole terms, creating what Granik described as institutional mechanisms that made re-entry harder rather than easier.

One of the documentary’s early episodes follows Marte and trainer Sultan Malik trying to help a coworker jailed at Rikers Island over parole violations tied to commuting from Long Island to teach fitness classes in Manhattan. The case highlighted how employment itself could become a legal risk for people trying to rebuild their lives.As the business stabilized financially, the role of Conbody expanded.

It became not only a workplace but also an informal support system for employees navigating housing insecurity, grief and rejection from mainstream employers.The documentary follows Tommy, who after spending 27 years incarcerated struggles to secure stable housing and temporarily sleeps at the gym.

Another trainer, Jamal, faces the loss of his son to gun violence. Syretta, one of the few female instructors and someone rebuilding life after nearly 23 years in prison, works toward ending years of parole supervision while establishing herself professionally in fitness.

Many employees secured interviews with mainstream gyms only to be turned away once criminal background checks were completed. The pattern reinforced a reality Marte frequently confronted: society often speaks of rehabilitation while maintaining barriers that make reintegration financially and socially fragile.

The physical transformation of the Lower East Side runs parallel to the human stories in the documentary. Luxury apartment towers replaced older tenement buildings, and commercial rents surged. Real estate marketing promoted the area as a place “at the intersection of grit and glamour,” while longtime residents and small businesses faced displacement.Conbody itself was forced to relocate after its lease was not renewed.

In one sequence, Marte and his team walk through vacant storefronts where monthly rents ranged from $20,000 to $30,000, figures that placed long-term survival in constant doubt.The documentary also captures one of the decade’s stranger symbols of urban branding: Conbody running a prison-themed fitness pop-up inside Saks Fifth Avenue, complete with chain-link fence imagery and staged “mug shots” for clients.

The luxury retailer reportedly viewed the concept as a way to increase foot traffic and encourage shopping through experiential fitness.For Granik, these moments illustrated gentrification not as an abstract policy term, but as a daily accumulation of notices, rent increases and quiet removals. She said the neighborhood’s transformation became inseparable from the story of re-entry because economic displacement and criminal stigma often reinforced each other.

Politics also entered the family story. Marte’s younger brother, Christopher Marte, became active in organizing against displacement and privatization, later winning election to the New York City Council in 2022 after years of grassroots activism and involvement in Black Lives Matter protests.

Coss Marte, initially more focused on private entrepreneurship than public protest, gradually expanded his own advocacy beyond business. By the end of the documentary, he is visiting prisons across the country, leading fitness classes and speaking directly with incarcerated people about life after release.

He argues that meaningful justice begins not at sentencing reform but at re-entry through immediate work, housing and income rather than symbolic second chances.“I feel like what we’re doing is real justice,” Marte said. “It’s a different justice when you get out and you have a check in week one, instead of $40 and a bus ticket.”In New York, about 188,000 people are released from prison each year, a figure cited throughout the documentary.

Conbody and Marte’s cannabis business, Conbud, employ only dozens of them, but he sees each job as a direct challenge to a system built around permanent exclusion.The team now works with youth in juvenile facilities, trains people inside Rikers Island and continues hiring formerly incarcerated workers. Marte says the goal is not simply employment, but changing how people view those leaving prison.“If they’re seeing somebody come out of the system,” he said, “look at them different and change perceptions.”

On a recent morning inside Jimmy’s Corner, a narrow dive bar tucked into the commercial intensity of Times Square, 73-year-old David Gladman leaned over a series of photo-covered tables, searching through decades of memories laminated beneath worn surfaces.

Using the light from his phone, he scanned images from the 1970s and 1980s before stopping at one that captured a younger version of himself sitting beside his then-wife, cigarette in hand.The photograph, he said, was just one fragment of a routine that defined much of his adult life.

Gladman, a former executive chef, recalled frequenting the bar daily between 1988 and 2012, often spending hours there after work. He described it as a place where he could decompress from the pressures of his profession before returning home.

Jimmy’s Corner, established in 1971 by former boxer Jimmy Glenn, has long operated as an anomaly within its surroundings. While Times Square has undergone decades of commercial transformation, evolving into a global hub of tourism and entertainment, the bar has retained elements of an earlier era.

Its interior is marked by aging photographs of boxers, sticker-covered restroom walls, and a narrow bar lined with worn stools. The space offers little in terms of modern amenities but has maintained a reputation for authenticity among its patrons.

That continuity is now under threat. The building housing Jimmy’s Corner is owned by the Durst Organization, which has informed current operator Adam Glenn, the founder’s son, that the bar will be evicted as the property is prepared for sale.

Glenn, who assumed control of the establishment in 2015, has contested the move through legal action, filing a lawsuit in an attempt to delay or prevent the eviction.The dispute has drawn attention from both patrons and local officials, prompting a public demonstration aimed at preserving the bar.

On Friday, supporters gathered outside the premises, framing the potential closure as emblematic of broader tensions between longstanding local institutions and large-scale commercial redevelopment.

Participants described the effort as a final attempt to retain a venue that, for many, represents continuity in a rapidly changing urban environment.Inside the bar, however, the mood remained outwardly upbeat. Low-cost drinks and familiar surroundings sustained a sense of normalcy even as uncertainty loomed.

Regulars continued to gather, sharing stories and reflecting on their experiences within the space. For individuals like Gladman, the bar’s significance extends beyond its physical structure.He described a longstanding relationship with Jimmy Glenn, characterizing the founder as a mentor figure who provided personal advice over the years.

Those interactions, he said, contributed to the bar’s role as more than a place of business. It functioned as a social anchor, offering stability through different phases of his life.Gladman acknowledged that the photograph he had rediscovered captured a period that has since passed.

His first marriage ended, and his former wife relocated to California. He later remarried and has been with his second wife for more than three decades. Despite these changes, his connection to Jimmy’s Corner has endured, rooted in the accumulation of shared experiences and personal history.

The potential closure has therefore been received not simply as the loss of a commercial venue but as the erosion of a communal space. Patrons interviewed at the bar emphasized its role in fostering relationships and preserving a sense of identity within a district otherwise defined by transience and commercial turnover.

The broader context reflects ongoing patterns in New York City’s real estate market, where rising property values and redevelopment pressures have contributed to the disappearance of smaller, independently operated establishments.

In high-demand areas such as Times Square, such dynamics are particularly pronounced, often favoring large-scale tenants capable of meeting increasing rental demands.Efforts to prevent the closure of Jimmy’s Corner face significant challenges.

Legal proceedings initiated by Adam Glenn remain uncertain, and the property’s sale could further complicate negotiations. Observers note that similar disputes have historically favored property owners, particularly in cases involving redevelopment of prime commercial locations.

Nevertheless, the public response underscores the cultural significance attributed to the bar. Supporters argue that establishments like Jimmy’s Corner provide continuity in an environment otherwise characterized by rapid change.

The rally, attended by patrons and local representatives, sought to highlight this dimension, though no immediate resolution has been reached.As the situation develops, regulars continue to visit the bar, aware that its future remains unresolved. For Gladman, the significance of the space is defined less by its physical attributes than by the memories it contains.

He said he does not return to revisit specific moments, such as the photograph he located, but because the environment itself evokes a sense of belonging.“I don’t want this place to go,” he said, standing near the bar where he has spent decades. “It holds a lot of memories for me. For everyone.”