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Fighters and Real Money

Two further films by Ron Peck, to follow our successful releases of his Nighthawks and Strip Jack Naked.

Fighters follows the struggles of a group of young East End boxers as they take their first steps up the professional ladder under the wing of legendary trainer Jimmy Tibbs.


Real Money

Real Money is a hard-edged gangster drama set in and around the East End boxing community – and acted entirely by local boxers, ex-boxers, trainers and their families, and mainly scripted by the boxers themselves.

Special Features:

- Extended featurette The Night of the Fight
- Behind-the-scenes and rehearsal footage from REAL MONEY;
- Rehearsal footage from the unfilmed proposed third film in the trilogy, Gangster
- Stills gallery
- Booklet essays by director Ron Peck and boxing writer Harry Mullen

hammock wrote:2-disc set of Ron Peck's Fighters and Real Money (out in October)

I'll consider a purchase. If solly out of my love for this company.

MovieMail lists an October 27 release date, retail price of 15.99.

This will be a 2-disc set with host of extras including:

- ‘The Night of the Fight’ : extended and unedited backstage footage of Mark Kaylor’s comeback fight as featured in FIGHTERS.

- interviews with the boxers and stars of the films: Jimmy Tibbs, Mark Tibbs and Jimmy Flint (tbc)

- rehearsal footage from REAL MONEY

- rehearsal footage from the un-filmed third film in the ‘trilogy’ , GANGSTER

- new filmed interviews/introduction by director Ron Peck

- booklet essays by director Ron Peck and TBC

It also includes coverart:

The cover art's too close to Night and the City.

Nah. It's a good cover though

FIGHTERS trailer now live at: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=7NBesPQRano

domino harvey wrote:Nah. It's a good cover though

I'm guessing that this is a rather more straightforward cover than Second Run's usual arty efforts because for once they must have a pretty substantial secondary market - in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if rather more boxing fans bought this than film buffs.

(For comparison, the BFI's British Transport Films compilations barely register on most film buffs' radar, but there's a very good reason they've released nine two-disc volumes!)

BFI Screenonline on Fighters and Real Money.

Amusingly, Gary and I picked almost exactly the same frame for Real Money, though I nudged it back and forth to get the jabbing finger.

I've now seen the complete package, and it's one of Second Run's most impressive efforts (aside from the typo in one of the menus - whoops!). I thought Real Money was a noticeably weaker film than Fighters, but I can cut it a huge amount of slack for the clearly minuscule budget and the inexperience of the cast, and it certainly has plenty of novelty value in that it's performed by genuine East End boxers and managers as opposed to the usual RADA-trained mockney types that infest Guy Ritchie films. And Jimmy Tibbs, a real-life ex-boxer turned professional trainer who's effectively playing himself, has enough screen presence to suggest he might have missed a plausible alternative vocation.

As for the transfers, Gary is spot on - these are low-budget shot-on-video productions (I believe Real Money was shot on low-band Hi-8), so it's highly unlikely they're ever going to look better than they do here.

Ron Peck interviewed in this week's London Time Out:
http://www.secondrundvd.com/release_more_frm_2.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

DVD TIMES Review

Rare chance to see both these films on the big screen: Wednesday February 18th at Riverside Studios, London.
Fighters at 6:30pm; Real Money at 8:30 pm
Director Ron Peck will also be in attendance for a Q&A hosted by author and critic Ian Christie.

Our FIGHTERS screening at Riverside Studios this week (on Wednesday 18th at 6.30) is Time Out's rep cinema Critics' Choice:


We hope to see some of you there!

I enjoyed both films, although subtitles would have been useful on occasion. The extras complement the films wonderfully, so even if this isn't my favorite SR release, the overall package may indeed be their best.

I was expecting Real Money to be something of an add-on, but it was quite good. The boxers-cum-actors are better than I expected, with Jimmys Tibbs and Flint the most impressive. The plot and improvised dialogue are pretty solid--Jimmy Tibbs' character especially, with his habit of repeating himself (he's a trainer, whaddya gonna do?), is very well realized. The rather modest technology and budget at Peck's disposal keeps the film very intimate, and although at time I found myself wanting more medium and wide-angle shots just so I could get oriented to the spaces of the film, it made the film really direct, esp. the close-ups on Tibbs' intense expression (I may be developing a man-crush, but oh well).

Hopefully Second Run won't mind me posting here as they promoted the film in their latest newsletter. Anyhow, a review of Ron Peck's latest feature, Cross-Channel, at The Digital Fix.

We are deeply saddened to learn of the passing yesterday of our friend and colleague, the filmmaker Ron Peck.
An independent filmmaker in the truest sense of the word, Ron was one of the most vital British talents to emerge in the 1970s.
His groundbreaking film NIGHTHAWKS (1978), an unsensational and truthful depiction of a gay man in 1970s London, was the first genuine British LGBTQ+ film.
Ron's friend Matt Lucas wrote about discovering NIGHTHAWKS in The Guardian.

His subsequent works often combined documentary and improvisational elements, using non-professionals alongside actors to produce some of the most distinctive British films of the 80s and 90s.
His ideas and techniques were ahead of the curve, and he continued to work on a wide variety of unrealised projects until very recently. He will be very much missed.

Does anyone know if orders are being fulfilled through Peck's web store? I don't have my DVD of Cross-Channel anymore and wish to purchase this beautiful little film again.

About to revisit Fighters and Real Money, marvellous films both.

BTW, love not only Peck's films, which explore masculine subcultures in some depth, but also his writing on Paul Morrissey (in Eyeball Magazine - the techniques he identifies in this piece, you can see applied in particular in Nighthawks) & Kubrick (his piece on Killer's Kiss for Arrow Academy's booklet is the best thing I've read on a Kubrick film).

For me, Peck was the most fascinating of all British directors. I hope the BFI or Second Run can release or re-release some of his work, to celebrate his career.