“Marty Supreme,” Josh Safdie’s upcoming film, is inspired by a real-life Jewish legend, Marty Reisman, the Jewish American athlete who revolutionized table tennis.
Reisman was the winner of 22 table tennis titles, including five bronze medals at the World Table Tennis Championships, two U.S. Open titles and one British Open title. His Upper West Side table tennis gyms were frequented by the likes of Matthew Broderick, Dustin Hoffman, Kurt Vonnegut, David Mamet and Bobby Fischer. He is, to this day, considered to be one of the best table tennis players of all time.
Timothée Chalamet, who has already amassed a bunch of critical roles playing young Jewish men, from the fictional Elio in “Call Me by Your Name” to a slightly fictionalized version of Bob Dylan in “A Complete Unknown,” looks like he’s about to be the star of next year’s award season one again, thanks to this role.
He is charming, quirky, infuriating and somehow still emotionally evocative as the fictionalized Marty Mauser in the newly released trailer of the film, which shows Marty playing table tennis with incredible gusto (do I… like table tennis?), falling in love (or at least, in lust), counting dollar bills in yellow cabs, throwing tantrums, jumping over walls while evading the police and also possible gunfire? Oh, he also travels across the world to Africa and Japan in pursuit of being the best table tennis player in history.
Watching “Uncut Gems” is the closest I’ve felt to riding a roller coaster while at the cinema, and it looks like this movie — which was co-written by “Uncut Gems” co-writer Ronald Bronstein — will also make viewers’ heads spin.
But it’s not Marty who I want to talk about after seeing the trailer (though, again, this looks like it could be Chalamet’s best role yet) — it’s all the incredible Jewish tidbits of this trailer that I just can’t get over.
First and foremost, we finally get a little taste of Fran Drescher playing Marty’s Jewish mom in the trailer and well, it looks like she’s going to be stunning in this. “The Nanny” star and co-creator has always been, in my opinion, a bit of an underrated actress, and she brings so much feeling to the role of Mrs. Mauser already in those few seconds.
Safdie knows how to get incredibly powerful performances out of actors; he brings out sides of them we’ve never really seen before, like he did with Sandler’s Howard Ratner in “Uncut Gems.” I can’t wait to see Drescher in this film. (Hot tip: I also can’t wait to see her on screen with Sandra Bernhard, who plays her friend in the movie, for some extra Jewish entertainment royalty!)
Another thing the Safdies did so well in “Uncut Gems” — the movie was directed by both Benny and Josh Safdie — is they portrayed a certain flavor of Jewish Americana in a deep and believable way.
In “Uncut Gems,” it was contemporary Jewish Long Island and the Jewish workers of the Manhattan’s Diamond District, but in this film, we have full-on Jewish Lower East Side Nostalgia. For the movie, which shot in New York City back in the fall of 2024, entire shopfronts were recreated from what used to be the prime territory of Jewish-owned clothing merchants, like Waldman & Silverman Haberdashers. You can see some of the signage, and even some Yiddish lettering, on these storefronts in the trailer.
General view of “Marty Supreme” movie set on the Lower East Side on October 01, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by James Devaney/GC Images)
We see Marty walk through these streets and work at one of those stores as a shoe salesman, where he talks to a yet unnamed character played by Jewish actress Odessa A’zion (“Grand Army Plaza”). A’zion’s character appears to be Jewish as well, and she seems to be one of Marty’s love interests. Marty tells her about his obligation to his sport.
And of course, Marty is Jewish in this film, just like Reisman was. When he introduces himself to Gwyneth Paltrow’s Carol Dunne, a successful movie actress who falls into a whirlwind romance with Marty, he asks her to open the Daily Mail and look up an article about him.
“This is you?” she asks.
“Yeah, the chosen one,” he says, quoting from the article, a likely reference to Jews being “the chosen people.”
While it’s not clearly visibly in the trailer, the movie does feature scenes in which Marty runs through the streets of New York with a Star of David necklace on and it appears that the character wears this piece of Jewish jewelry under his button-up shirts at all times.
Yet perhaps most Jewish of all is the fact that “Marty Supreme” is coming to us on Dec. 25, Christmas Day — also known as the time when all Jews go get Chinese food and then go to the movies.
I never thought I’d be so excited about a movie about table tennis, but I truly can’t wait to spend my Jewish Christmas on a wild ride with Marty Mauser.
