The Incredible True Story of Marty Supreme and Table Tenn...

What’s Happening

Breaking it down: The new film from director Josh Safdie stars Timothée Chalamet as table tennis star Marty Mauser.

It’s, somehow, based on a true story. OSCAR SEASON HAS a late contender, and its one that might just pull off a couple major upsets. (yes, really)

While One Battle After Another and Sinners are predicted as favorites for Best Picture at 2026’s Academy Awards, the Timothée Chalamet -starring A24 movie Marty Supreme , written and directed ( Uncut Gems ), has been riding a wave of feverish hype on its way to a Christmas Day release.

The Details

And in true Safdie style, the film is almost impossible to categorize other than ’s electric: A mix of fact and fiction, covering a ping-pong star named Marty Mauser (Chalamet) in the 1950s, who when he’s not sleeping with his married childhood friend (Odessa A’zion) or flirting with Gwyneth Paltrow’s retired actress and socialite, hustles his way through small crimes for cash and paddles his way to potential table tennis greatness—and American glory. Marty’s ascendance is, as he provocatively boasts in one scene, “the ultimate product of Hitler’s defeat.

” And this is the ultimate sports-and-kinda-gangster movie you didn’t expect. There’s a fascinating little-d fact about the genesis of Marty Supreme : The story, while mostly fabricated, is loosely based on the real life of Marty Reisman.

Why This Matters

Not unlike Chalamet’s charming grifter, Reisman was a Jewish table tennis champion who grew up in New York City and began seeking stardom in the rising sport (yes, it counts ) of ping-pong in the 1940s. Thanks to his slim build and eccentric self-presentation, he became known as Marty “The Needle” Reisman. Marty Supreme ’s screenplay, cowritten his longtime collaborator Ronald Bronstein, even loosely adapts The Money Player , Reisman’s 1974 autobiography that’s almost hilariously hard to track down now .

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The Bottom Line

While Reisman’s ping-pong career has been largely forgotten over time, Marty Supreme is making sure that his wit, showmanship, and raw skill at the game will be front and center again in the awards-season conversation. (I’ve seen the movie—it’s a frenetic masterpiece.

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