One of the most electric viewing experiences of the year was seeing Josh Safdie unveil his long-awaited return to directing, Marty Supreme, as the secret screening of the 63rd New York Film Festival. Featuring Timothée Chalamet’s title character going through the wringer to attempt to achieve his ping-pong dreams, even while it hits many of the same grooves that the director has found success with in the past, Safdie serves up quite an uncompromising showcase for Chalamet. Ahead of a Christmas release, A24 has now dropped a new trailer.
With a cast including Timothée Chalamet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Tyler Okonma, Odessa A’zion, Penn Jillette, Kevin O’Leary, Abel Ferrara, Fran Drescher, Sandra Bernhard, Spenser Granese, and Philippe Petit, the film follows ping pong legend Marty Reisman, a hustler who’d regularly win off bets. His astonishing career spanned 22 major titles between 1946 and 2002, five bronze medals at the World Table Tennis Championships, and the distinction of being “the oldest player to win an open national competition in a racket sport.”
“Emotionally, it was different — you spend so much time directing with one person — but it felt natural in some ways,” Josh Safdie told THR about directing the film. “Luckily, I was overwhelmed in a great way with the incredible world-building of this project. There’s this epic undertaking, spanning over 150 characters and speaking parts and tons of locations and having to shoot incredibly long hours. I really didn’t have much time to reflect about anything but which five or 10 extras I wanted to be in the corner of the frame — and how to convince them to be real people.”
See the new trailer and poster below, along with video from the NYFF world premiere.
