Welcome to Fight Club
Bloody. Intense. Vicious. Get ready for the hottest single-serving cinema event of the festival. In celebration of David Fincher's Oscar-nominated, landmark film we've teamed up with Stage Fight Scotland to create a wonderfully immersive cinema screening of Fight Club. Get yourself a drink from one of our pop-up bars – punch, anyone? - watch as professional graffiti artists paint a themed mural in front of your eyes, and make sure you don’t miss the live fight performances – Tyler will be lurking all night.
We managed to convince the performers from Stage Fight Scotland to break the first and second rules of Fight Club for an exclusive glimpse behind the scenes of their exhilarating and visceral show.
In the role of anarchist and founder of Fight Club, Tyler Durden, is Alastair William Duncan. With over two years experience in stage fighting, we sat down to speak to him about portraying this iconic character.
“Brad Pitt is one of my heroes. Some of his films have just been amazing, like Seven Years in Tibet really tells a beautiful story, but [with Fight Club] I feel like there is still something very relevant about it that still connects with people on quite a primal level. Especially with so much consumerism and things like that. It’s just such a deep and interesting role. He’s just an anti-villain… he’s trying to do good by doing bad.”
Alastair is part of a stellar cast alongside Sylas Szabolcs (who plays Edward Norton’s insomniac suffering Narrator), Callan Gallacher (as Meatloaf’s busty Bob), Offir Limacher (Irvine The Barman), Robert Myles (Lou) and Danny Valentine (Angelface).
Developing The Scenes
For the past month, the cast have been working with Stage Fight Scotland’s combat specialist, Janet Lawson (Vikings, Anna and the Apocalypse), and have been showing real commitment to their roles - the bleach bottles have been out, the DVD on repeat, and there’s been a whole lot of soap making…
Meet the cast and take a peak behind the curtain of their exhilarating live Fight Club performance!
Bloody Marvellous
Choreographing these fight sequences is just the beginning! Janet has been at work in the lab, cooking up various types of special effect blood that gives the performances that extra element of realism.
Offir: “It was exciting already because it’s Fight Club… but then as soon as the special effects come in to play…”
Danny: “It just brings it to life.”
Offir: “We were shocked the first time we splattered that blood. It felt real… It’s like a real fight, just without the pain.”
Callan: “I have quite a sensitive stomach when it comes to blood, etc. At first I was like ‘nah, I can’t deal with this… but then when you come up close to it, you realise it’s just peanut butter and syrup. It adds so much substance to the fight.”
Reclaim Your Humanity
Step into the ring with GFF19 on Friday 1 March at Parkhouse Business Park for a truly immersive and memorable Fight Club experience. Dress up highly encouraged.
The things you own end up owning you - Take home a piece of the action with a limited edition GFF19 Fight Club t-shirt, made possible by the fabulous screen-printers, Print Clan.
For more information and tickets to this event, click here.
Photography by Eoin Carey.