Marty Supreme

The story of one young man's obsessive quest to become a ping-pong champion.

I’ll admit it right from the start… I do not expect to like this movie.

I mean… come on here… it’s a dramatic movie about ping-pong. Worse, it’s a dramatic movie about the “bad boy” of ping-pong. Say that again. The “bad boy” of ping-pong. Fucking ping-pong. What the fuck, man? So I am very dubious of any claims that this is actually a good movie. I don’t know how that could be possible. The trailer feels like a Lonely Island short on Saturday Night Live making fun of overly-dramatic Oscar-bait sports movies.

Plus, let’s be honest… Timothee Chalamet is the very definition of a pipsqueak. Like he was created in a lab or something. And that undeniable natural quality that he just exudes from every pore is amplified to the nth degree in this film because of the awful mustache he wears.

I’m still going to give the movie a fair shake, of course I am, but c’mon, man… It’s a dramatic movie about the “bad boy” of ping-pong.

The “bad boy” of ping-pong!

Normally, I’d make a joke of comparing that idea to some other situation where it’d be ludicrous to discover that certain members of that group are considered to be a part of the “bad boy” faction, just to illustrate how silly the whole idea is here, but I was honestly struggling to come up with anything that would be sillier than the idea that there’s a “bad boy” of ping-pong.

I guess I’ll just defer to Gary Larson…

Table tennis is a fast-paced racket sport, derived from tennis, but played atop a stationary table instead of on a court. It can be played individually, or in teams of two, as the players take turns volleying a light, hollow ball back and forth over a net that has been stretched across the table's center, using small rackets. Points are scored whenever an opponent fails to return a volley.

First gaining popularity in Victorian England as an upper-class after-dinner parlour game, the game is believed to have originated with British military officers stationed in India, and for the same basic reasons as the concept of Gremlins did. Boredom. The story goes that the officers, while idle in the barracks, stood a row of books upright across a table, and began volleying a golf ball back and forth to pass the time, using books as paddles.

Originally called Table Tennis, or sometimes Parlour Tennis, over the years, the sport has also been called Whiff-Whaff, Gossima, Flim-Flam, Clip-Clap—usually a variation of some kind of onomatopoeic word reflecting the sound of the bouncing ball—all leading to Ping-Pong, which was actually a trademark owned by Parker Brothers. Governed by the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF), it has been an Olympic sport since 1988.

The United States has never won a single medal in Olympic Ping-Pong.

The film Marty Supreme is apparently very loosely based on real life American table tennis player, author, and ping pong bad boy Marty Reisman. A flamboyant figure known for wearing bright clothing and a signature Panama hat, basically the Dennis Rodman of Ping-Pong, Reisman started playing table tennis after a nervous breakdown at the age of nine, because he found the sport soothing. Known as “the Needle” due to his slender build, he was an inveterate hustler and a showman, who toured as a ping-pong novelty act with the Harlem Globetrotters, and was active in NYC’s table tennis community for years. He won multiple championships, and was a long-time advocate of the traditional hardbat style of table tennis.

He died in 2012 at the age of 82.

In his memoir, The Money Player, Reisman wrote that if you wanted to be a top table tennis player, you had to be a gambler or a smuggler by nature. This is such a nonsensical thing to say, I have no idea what he even means by this, and I don't know how to even begin to frame a response to it.

It’s fucking ping-pong, man.

In 1952 New York City, Marty Mauser is an untrustworthy little weasel shithead, a perennial loser, a fast-talking cheap conman, and an all-around selfish asshole.

Working as a shoe salesman at his uncle Murray's shoe shop, Marty competes in ping-pong professionally. He dreams of winning the British Open, and using that to become the face of ping-pong in America. As part of that dream, he pitches the idea of making orange table tennis balls bearing his name to his friend Dion and Dion's businessman father as a potential business venture. He is also having an affair with his married childhood friend Rachel Mizler, who he regularly fucks in the store’s stockroom over lunch.

With the British Open looming, Marty demands the $700 his uncle owes him, so that he can purchase a plane ticket to London. His uncle refuses, citing concern over the care of Marty's mother, and also with wanting Marty to settle down into a life as a shoe salesman, and give up his ridiculous ping-pong dreams. Undaunted, and refusing to give up on his dream, Marty robs the store at gunpoint after-hours, forcing a coworker to give him the money.

In London, after complaining incessantly about the players' barracks, Marty gets the ITTF to put him up at the Ritz Hotel, where he splurges on room service on the ITTF’s dime, seduces fellow hotel guest, the former movie star, Kay Stone, and also meets with her wealthy husband, pen magnate Milton Rockwell, so he can pitch him on the future of ping-pong in America. Unfortunately, Marty loses in the finals to Koto Endo, a deaf Japanese player who uses a new-fangled kind of racket, one with a foam padding, instead of a hard wood racket like Marty favors, and because Marty is a little shit, he throws a very public tantrum.

Months later, Rockwell approaches Marty, and offers him an exhibition match against Endo in Tokyo, around the time of the World Championships, but Marty is a huge ass about it, especially once he learns that he would be expected to throw the match in order to appease the Japanese audiences and to help Rockwell open a new market for his pens. Stung by Marty’s words, and a huge piece of shit himself, Rockwell calls the deal off and mocks Marty as nothing but a vaudeville performer, as his current job is touring as a novelty act with the Harlem Globetrotters.

While he is on tour with the Globetrotters, Marty chips a piece off the Great Pyramid of Giza, because again… he’s an asshole. When he finally returns to New York City, he gives it to his mother as gift, telling her that it’s a piece of the Great Pyramid, saying “We built that,” because he’s also an entitled asshole. Soon after, Marty is arrested for robbing Murray’s store, but he escapes custody. He hides out at Rachel’s work, where he learns she is pregnant. She claims that the baby is his. Marty has to run again when Rachel’s husband, Ira, discovers them together, and starts shouting for the police. While staying in a crappy hotel, Marty discovers he has been banned from the World Championship by the ITTF because of his $1,500 room service bill in London. A moment later, Marty's bathtub falls through the crappy hotel’s floor, which injures mobster Ezra Mishkin, who pays Marty to take his dog Moses to a veterinarian.

Because he needs to pay his ITTF fine and purchase a plan ticket to the World Championship in Japan, instead of taking Moses to the vet, Marty uses the money to hustle some ping-pong rubes at a rural New Jersey bowling alley, with the help of Wally, a fellow ping-ponger and NYC taxi driver. Once the bowlers realize they were hustled, they track Wally and Marty to a gas station and attack them, but the pair escape, damaging the taxi in the process, and setting the station on fire. Moses runs away during the scuffle.

Meanwhile, Rockwell has returned to New York, as he has financed a play meant to relaunch Kay's career. Marty shows up, and after he has sex with Kay, he steals her necklace, as he still needs cash. But when he tries to pawn it, he learns that it’s just costume jewelry. Rachel finds Marty later. She now has a black eye and claims that Ira has beaten her. Marty and Rachel cajole Dion into letting them stay with him at his parents, where Dion shows him the novelty balls that Marty failed to follow up on. Marty and Rachel steal Dion's car and attempt to find Moses, in order to extort money from Mishkin, but flee after being shot at by the antisemitic farmer who has taken Moses in, driving Dion’s car through the farmer’s front porch in the process. Dion is angry that they stole his car, got it shot up and crashed it into a house, and he first throws them out, then throws the novelty ping-pong balls out the window. It’s at this point that Marty learns that Rachel’s black eye is actually fake, that she lied to him, so he leaves her. Rachel goes home, tells Ira that the baby is not his, and he throws her out of the house.

Opening night of Kay's play, Marty shows up and apologizes for stealing her jewelry, but she doesn’t care, as she’s more concerned with the play. Kay tells him to meet her that night in Central Park, where she gives him a valuable necklace to pay his fine and for his travel to Japan. They are discovered by a cop while having sex in the grass, and the cop takes the necklace as bride to not arrest them. Marty convinces Kay to give him another necklace, but before she can get one, she finds out that the play is getting a poor review and breaks down, no longer interested in Marty or the necklace she promised. Left with no other option, desperate to make it to Japan, Marty begs Rockwell to revive the Tokyo exhibition offer, and Rockwell agrees, but only on the condition that Marty allow him to paddle Marty’s bare little bottom with a Japanese racket, right there in the middle of the party he’s throwing for his Kay’s play. And I get it, it’s a cuckold’s revenge, sure, but also… it’s just a little too creepy sex-weird. Like, maybe Daddy Dom there needs to find a healthy release for his own sexual repressions.

Anyway, before Marty can leave for Japan, he and Rachel are kidnapped by Mishkin, after Rachel attempted to con him with a different dog. Mishkin forces them to take him to the farmhouse where Moses is, and a shootout ensues, leaving the farmer, Mishkin, and his men all dead, and Rachel wounded. Marty discovers that Mishkin’s money is mostly just worthless newspaper clippings, so yet another scam collapsed. Marty drops Rachel off at the hospital, as she is bleeding and going into premature labor. Then he leaves for Tokyo.

Because he’s a selfish asshole.

In Japan, Marty learns he is too late to enter the World Championship, even if he pays his fine, which is bad. Then he does as he and Rockwell agreed, and loses the exhibition match to Endo, which is worse. But when Rockwell reveals that he plans to further humiliate him by making Marty kiss a pig onstage, that’s all he can stand and he can’t stand no more. Marty announces to the crowd that the match was just a sham, and demands a real rematch.

Endo agrees, and Marty narrowly wins.

Abandoned in Japan due to Rockwell’s sour grapes, Marty flies back courtesy of the red, white, and blue still occupying Japan. Returning to the hospital in NYC, he confesses his love to the now recovering Rachel, and breaks down in tears upon seeing his newborn son.

The End

The thing is… Timothee Chalamet really is a charismatic motherfucker on screen. Pipsqueak or not, he really does have the goods when it comes to acting. And while this role is definitely lil’ Timmy just "acting" his skinny little ass off, very much in the classic John Lovitz sense, it's still an undeniably great performance. He's pure bravado here, nothing but unassailable confidence and a constant running mouth, a man who lives his life like he's always running downhill, always on the verge of tripping and falling ass over teakettle, because he’s so focused on his singleminded quest to make it to Japan, not just to show them all, but so he can prove something to himself, that he isn’t completely worthless, that in this one thing at least, he is actually good. And it’s true. He is good. And he hates having to throw a game, and only agrees to do it because he’s desperate to make it to the World Championship, so he has that much honor at least. He does have a code. But in everything else… Marty is the ugly American. He is a dipshit, a con artist, a criminal opportunist, and an all-around fuck up. Above all else, he is an incredibly selfish asshole, and everywhere he goes, he’s a piece of shit. It’s a phenomenal performance, the kind of role that the careers of greats like Pacino, or Hoffman, or Nicholson’s made their careers off of back in the 70s. Great stuff.

So yeah, the movie belongs to him.

But when he’s together with Odessa A’zion (from I Love L.A. and Until Dawn), who plays Rachel, he’s even better. They are really great. Their chemistry is fantastic and their rhythms are so natural. It’s clear that these characters have been partners in crime for a long time. They’re great to watch, because literally everything this pair does, especially when they’re together, is a fucking disaster. They just touch something, and it explodes. It’s insane. They’re absolute fuckups. It’s really fun, but it‘s also extremely stressful.

But other than those two performances, I don’t know if the film really worked for me. The insemination sequence, all set to “Forever Young” by Alphaville, where a torrent of sperm swim to the egg, and then the fertilized egg becomes a ping pong ball is inspired, sure. Absolutely. But when it was all said and done, I didn’t like the incongruity of 80s soundtrack in the film. And that‘s a microcosm of my issue with the film overall… This is a movie that is set in the 50s, made in a style reminiscent of New Hollywood in the 70s, and set to an 80s soundtrack. It’s really just an awful lot of awkward puzzle pieces that add up to an incomplete picture. The intent is to create a sense a timelessness with these stylistic decisions, I think, but I just didn’t vibe with it. The film itself is all around fine. I’m not saying it was bad. It’s fine.

But it didn't work for me.

Honestly, I wasn’t all that hot on Uncut Gems either, and Marty Supreme has the same feel, that same kind of character always running down hill, just on the verge of tripping too, so maybe I’m just not into what the Safdie Brothers, Joshua Henry and Benjamin, do, right? Marty Supreme is a solo effort. The brothers apparently split for unknown reasons, maybe one of them was holding his finger really close to the other one and going “I’m touching you. I’m not touching you.” I don’t know, but whatever it was, it’s just Josh directing, and co-writing the film with his friend Ronald Bronstein, but like I said, it still has the same Safdie Brothers energy, that same manic-noir intensity. Again, it’s good, but… I’m just not that into it. It’s just too reminiscent of being cornered by a cokehead at a party.

Maybe that’s just me. Your mileage may vary.

And speaking of energy, much like Hamnet, theres also an undeniable music biopic energy here too. As I said earlier, this film is very loosely based on the life of Marty Reisman, so various pieces of that life show up here like little Easter Eggs for anyone who knows the story. It’s not quite the same, because you’re not really supposed to recognize the references here, after all, who the fuck cares about the life and times of Marty Reisman, but it has the same music biopic problem, where a person’s life, the subject of the film, doesn’t begin and end in convenient feature film narrative-friendly packages, so the story meanders… a lot, and it also doesn’t have an ending.

But I think the core issue is that there’s no turn for Marty.

There’s no critical examination or commentary on who he is and what that says about him. There’s no regret. Theres no consequence. There’s no realization about his life on Marty’s part. By the end of the film, there’s no real reward either, just another momentary semblance of victory in an extended series of tragedies, and even then, that’s gone in a flash, the story moves on. And while you might want to make the argument that it’s implied in the ending, the fact remains, there’s no actual promise of change from him at all. Marty starts out the film as a broke-ass shithead and a loser, and he ends the film as a broke-ass shithead and a loser, and it all goes unpunished and unexamined, and then the film just ends. And this is not me saying that he needs to win either, or that he needs to lose, or that I‘m the kind of weirdo who needs a character to “root” for in order to enjoy a story, this is me saying that the film as a whole was missing the part where it has something to say about its main character, and without that, the film is incomplete.

And all that having been said, I wasn’t expecting that the Shark Tank guy would have such a major role. He‘s obviously an appropriate fit for the bad guy, and he does an admirable job playing a part that is basically just who he is in real life, but I really don’t like that fucking guy, and his general presence definitely impacted my enjoyment of the film. And when you couple this with the fact that Chalamet is this skinny little dork and we’re supposed to believe that, despite telling her that he is a professional ping-pong player, he is somehow capable of seducing a wealthy movie star, even one whose light has somewhat faded? With that mustache?

These are both little things, obviously, but taken together they become part of the film’s greater problem, which is that I just had a hard time taking the whole thing seriously. There’s just too much outsized ego on display for such an otherwise unconsidered “sport.”

And maybe that’s my whole beef.

Maybe the idea of bad boy ping-pong hustlers is just too fucking weird to get behind. Maybe imbuing drama onto the sport of ping-pong is just too hard to take seriously. That's not really the point of the film, of course, it's not trying to lend undeserved importance to the sport of "Table Tennis" but still, it’s weird to see all these people just totally into ping-pong, like gathered around the tables in public and being super into watching the game. Did Ping-Pong Halls exist like Pool Halls do? And maybe they did, maybe everything that is shown here, this community and the excitement, maybe it really was all true at some point, I don't know. I guess it could’ve been. The 50s were a weird time, man. Buncha’ hula-hooping freaks going to sock hops and shit. Although, to be fair, this could maybe all be just me and my residual animosity because I once knocked out by a 1950s era pogo stick.

Ultimately, Marty Supreme is a wild and unpredictable and immersive film, but maybe one that is a little too manic and unfocused. And with no real arc or ending, it ends up feeling like it’s actually a small film, a small film with the tagline “Dream Big.” And while it’s definitely still a good film, it’s hampered by the feeling of being small, because its performances are all so big, so the smallness then can only feel like it fails to live up to the size of those performances, even if that's not necessarily true. Or maybe it is true, to an extent. Bottom line, it didn’t work for me.

But what do I know? The god damn thing got nominated for a ton of Oscars, so…