Winnipeg martial artist gets Dune actors into fighting shape By: AV Kitching Posted: 6:02 PM CDT Wednesday, Mar. 13, 2024

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This article was published 13/03/2024 (591 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipeg’s Alvin Catacutan has just seen the fruits of his labour come to life on the big screen after the recent release of Dune: Part Two.

Now based in Los Angeles, the Filipino Martial Arts trainer worked with Oscar-nominated actors Austin Butler (Elvis), Josh Brolin (Milk) and Timotheé Chalamet (Call Me By Your Name) to prepare them for their roles in the second part of the epic science-fiction series from Quebec director Denis Villeneuve.

The martial arts instructor, who has his own school, Pamana Kali, has been practising for more than 30 years and has black belts in kali, silat, shotokan karate and jiu-jitsu.

Catacutan trained the actors in kali, a close-quarters combat system considered the indigenous fighting art of the Philippines; it took three months of intensive one-on-one training with the three leads for him to get them up to scratch.

The actors were trained individually and time constraints meant that Catacutan had to clear his schedule for three months, visiting each actor’s residence almost daily to train them for two hours at a time.

He put the trio through their paces, working with them on knife work and focusing on what the actors needed to be proficient.

He started off making sure they were aware of the fundamentals of kali before adapting the moves to suit what each actor would need for his specific scenes in the film.

“The task given to me by Roger Yuan, who is a Hollywood fight co-ordinator and who was also in both of the movies, was to make sure the actor’s movements looked like they had been trained in kali all their lives,” he says.

“Between Roger, the stunt team and I, we were able to provide them with the fundamentals of Filipino Martial Arts and then continue to train them in progress. I had to make sure that they were safe, but also look like they got hurt, so there was some acting as well as learning to fight.”

“The task given to me by Roger Yuan… was to make sure the actor’s movements looked like they had been trained in kali all their lives.”–Alvin Catacutan

Yuan contacted Catacutan in early 2022 and a few months later, in May, Catacutan started working with Butler, who plays the villainous Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen. In June he trained Chalamet, who portrays the film’s messianic protagonist, Paul Atreides, and in July he worked with Brolin, who plays Gurney Halleck, the war master of House Atreides.

“I was supposed to train Zendaya (who plays Chani), but our schedules didn’t match up,” he says. “The actors are very talented, and they really did their homework. They trained outside of meeting me and on top of that, they were also working out to have the stamina to sustain them during the shoot.

“I know for Austin Butler, he was already training in the morning before 8 a.m., working out for the role before he started working with me.”

While he is no stranger to the film industry — Catacutan has worked with stunt performers on a number of films — this was the first time he was involved in a movie of this scale. He considers it a luxury that he was able to spend that much time with the actors.

“I was hired on a retainer, so I arranged my schedule to fit theirs. This was a dream job for me, because I got to work with all the top talents,” he says.

Born in Manila, Catacutan grew up in Winnipeg’s North End, where he returns frequently to visit his parents. The University of Winnipeg graduate says it was an honour to train the actors in the martial arts of his heritage.

“It’s had such a huge resonance for me. It’s great for my culture, it’s great for martial artists to be shown that our bladework and the arts from our ancestors will live on in these films,” he says.

av.kitching@freepress.mb.ca