Marty Supreme’s first trailer dropped this week as the Internet rushed in to see Timothée Chalamet hustle his way to glory. But Josh Safdie’s newest movie actually has a secret inspiration that makes all of this infinitely more interesting.
In Marty Supreme, Timothée Chalamet plays Marty Mauser. The table tennis player dreams of hitting it big and getting his face on a literal Wheaties box. But, there’s a real life ping-pong-er that inspired Safdie to make this gorgeous-looking film.
During a chat with The Hollywood Reporter, Safdie mentioned a gift he received long before Marty Supreme became a reality. One throwback table tennis player would get those creative juices flowing and it would be all systems go from there. Marty Reisman’s “The Money Player: The Confessions of America’s Greatest Table Tennis Champion” was the book that the director needed at that time. And, after seeing the trailer, we’e glad that’s how it went down.
“It had this kind of funky-looking guy on the cover,” Safdie told the outlet. “I showed it to Timmy because he and I were talking at the very beginning of all of this. I said to him, ‘I want to do a movie in this world. Check out what this player looks like.’ He’s like, ‘Holy s***, that looks like me.’”
Marty Reisman inspired Marty Supreme
Similar to the upcoming film, Marty Reisman was a table tennis champion and notorious hustler in the sport’s community. He became a United States Singles Champion in 1958 and 1960. (He would also become Hardbat champion in 1997. That variant of table tennis uses a different paddle and focuses on more old-school technique.) So, he was something of a local legend among the New Yorkers who loved the game in the 1950s.
Reisman had a flashy streak to him. A lot of his matches saw audiences thrilled by a slightly flamboyant style that emphasized quick movement along with The knack for riling up opponents. Chalamet’s character in Marty Supreme deftly draws on this same well. This is a rail-thin man, with a specific set of skills, on a unique quest for sports immortality. AKA, the perfect way to lure someone into a biopic style movie. Unlike the host of movie film projects we’ve gotten about musicians and actors, the sports waters are a little bit less plumbed lately. The less we say about Christy the better!
Safdie sees his own experience reflected back at him in this story. He said That the experience of watching different Jewish ping pong players compete in his grandparents house introduced him to the larger world. Just like any niche sport, it takes a certain personality to lay it all on the line for ping pong.
“It opened my eyes to this fascinating subculture of misfits who all congregated in New York and played for money all the time,” he explained. “You have this thing that’s so meaningful to you and means nothing to other people.”
Out of one man willing to risk everything for a dream came a big-screen story of this exact struggle.
(Photo Credit: Amazon, A24)
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