So, the Safdie Brothers’ split has been about as epic as the Coen Brothers’ was, though with fewer Shakespeare adaptations and midlife crisis horndog pictures involved, and, importantly, few head-to-head matchups between the two directors in the same season. So, consider this the Godzilla v. Kong of your hypebeast A24-merch wearing cousin’s psychosphere: on one side, you have Benny Safdie with The Smashing Machine and (literal) Hollywood muscle. On the other? You have Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme, in which Timothee Chalamet… plays ping-pong. And you better fucking bet there’s some classic Safdie casting — “Mr. Wonderful” himself, Kevin O’Leary, is in the ensemble, along with Abel Ferrara and Fran Drescher — to go along with everything.
This, weirdly enough, feels like a more classic Safdies feature than what Benny and The Rock have cooked up (and now we cannot stop singing that to the tune of “Benny and the Jets”), but what do we know? Well, aside from the fact that we’re over-the-moon hyped for this one, especially if the full feature lives up to the promise of this teaser that A24 dropped earlier on Wednesday. After all, they’re the real winners in this situation, given that they’re distributing both films.
Peep it:
Here’s a synopsis for Marty Supreme via Deadline:
“An original work set in the world of 1950s ping pong culture, the film tells the story of Marty Mauser (Chalamet), a young man with a dream no one respects, who goes to hell and back in pursuit of greatness. While never confirmed, sources have long indicated that the project draws loose inspiration from the story of pro ping pong player Marty Reisman.”
And here’s the funniest poster of the goddamned year:
Marty Supreme hits theaters on Christmas Day. Go ahead and place your bets on the RT scores for this and Smashing Machine before the lines move. Now. Hurry.