Beneath Josh Safdie and Ronald Bronstein’s Marty Supreme pulses the legend of Marty Reisman.
It’s 1942. Midtown Manhattan, New York. The streets are punctuated with burnt coffee, hot pretzels, and ambition that has been reheated too many times. Look around. What do you see? Neon signs buzzing above pizza parlours, newspaper vendors shouting out headlines, taxis screaming past, swallowing the hustle and bustle of pedestrians. Everyone is going somewhere. Everyone wants something. Do you see it? This is the City of Dreams. Somewhere below street level, in a basement with peeling paint and flickering fluorescent lights, where the floor sticks to your shoes and cigar smoke curls around every corner, there is a ping pong table.
Enter Marty Reisman – a street-smart, scrappy hustler raised on the Lower East Side of Manhattan by a waitress and a taxi driver with a serious gambling addiction. He grew up in a home plagued by financial instability and surrounded by risk. “It was feast or famine at our house, usually famine.” It was a childhood that tightened his chest, anxiety shadowing his youth… until he took up a pastime that not only anchored his restless mind but gave him something to believe in – table tennis. And so, a thin, panicky nine-year-old ping pong prodigy was born.
Risk. The adrenaline of a good wager. The same rush that kept a stronghold on his father followed Reisman throughout his life and into the streets. “No one,” he remarked, “has ever been less suited for regular employment than I was.” In a lifestyle where money came and went, he relied on raw talent to make a quick buck. While table tennis was establishing itself as a competitive sport across Europe and Asia, in the United States, it was little more than a casual hobby. Reisman spent his evenings in a dimly lit “Lawrence’s Broadway Table Tennis Club”, the windows filmed over with years of city grit, the noise of Broadway Manhattan dulled by the sharp pang of plastic balls on wooden bats. It was here that Reisman honed his craft, swindling unsuspecting amateurs by downplaying his abilities, always betting on himself. With gambling baked into his paternal genes, Reisman intentionally lost the first game or two, raising the bets. Despite the credulous confidence booming on the other side of the table, Reisman always walked away with a thick wad of cash. His skill was his surety. And his escape. “If it hadn’t been for a ping pong table, I never would have discovered my magic carpet.” His talent offered him an exclusive path to upper class New York society and a way to see the world.
Reisman electrified the game for spectators. His was a performance of eccentric tricks and unbelievable precision, skyrocketing him into table tennis stardom. The audience came to watch him, paying for a spectacle of dazzling tricks like slicing a cigarette in half with a powerful slam, or playing songs by bouncing the ball off frying pans. The crowd, entranced, suspended in disbelief.
Reisman became known for his charisma and glamour, dressed elegantly in tailored trousers pressed sharply on his slim stature, earning him the nickname “The Needle”. Beyond his showmanship, Reisman was a ruthless competitor. He described himself as possessing the strongest attacking game in the world, marked by his unmatched forehand drive. Blink, and you’ll miss it. His combination of talent and charm carried him to the international stage, representing the United States and winning over 20 major titles throughout his career. He became a legendary figure in the sport – equal parts athlete, entertainer, and socialite.
Marty Mauser, played by Timothée Chalamet, is a charismatic misfit dreaming beyond the confines of his circumstances and gambling on himself. When questioned about the film’s unconventional marketing campaign, Chalamet responded, ”This is in the spirit of Marty. It’s a movie about the pursuit of a dream.”
