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OSCAR SEASON HAS a late contender, and its one that might just pull off a couple major upsets. 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 by Josh Safdie (Uncut Gems), has been riding a wave of feverish hype on its way to a Christmas Day release.
And in true Safdie style, the film is almost impossible to categorize other than by saying it’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-shared fact about the genesis of Marty Supreme: The story, while mostly fabricated, is loosely based on the real life of Marty Reisman. 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 by Safdie with his longtime collaborator Ronald Bronstein, even loosely adapts The Money Player, Reisman’s 1974 autobiography that’s almost hilariously hard to track down now.
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.) To give Reisman his due, here’s a breakdown of the real-life Marty and how he shaped the film.
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Who is the real “Marty Supreme”?
A young Marty Reisman playing table tennis in 1948.
While his last name is changed in the fictional Marty Supreme, Chalamet’s Marty Mauser is based in large part on Marty Reisman, who aside from being a ping-pong phenom was very much a vibrant character in his own right, almost like he was plucked out of a Safdie film and not the other way around.
Reisman (pronounced REESE-man) was born in February 1930, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants Sarah “Sally” Nemorosky and Morris Reisman, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. He grew up on the Lower East Side—again, like Chalamet’s wily Marty Mauser—doing the kinds of things a good Jewish kid was supposed to do: eating boiled beef and potatoes during Shabbat with his family, including his older brother David. His dad worked as a cab driver and, apparently, had his own hustling streak. His gambling got so intense that Reisman once told Sports Illustrated, “I saw my dad lose six taxis during one session of poker.”
How did Marty Reisman’s career go?
Just like the man, it wasn’t boring. Reisman, who would go on to earn the title of “bad boy” of table tennis, carried on his dad’s gambling tradition, for better and worse, betting big on his own games. When he was 15 playing a tournament, he mistakenly gave $500 in cash to a USA Table Tennis official instead of a bookie, and ended up being removed by police. But table tennis did improve his mood; he discovered it at nine following a “nervous breakdown,” and it helped him get through the struggle. By 13, he had become New York City’s table tennis junior champion.
Mauser in Marty Supreme follows a somewhat similar trajectory. While his age is never defined, the young man works as a salesman at a local shoe shop, saving his wages for an international tournament in London, where he first goes up against his fiercest rival Endo (played by real-life Japanese ping-pong champion Koto Kawaguchi). Reisman also achieved global status, medalling in five world championships from 1948 to 1952.
Safdie lifts another fact from Reisman’s story for Mauser: From 1949 to 1951, “The Needle” and his partner Doug Cartland became the comedic warm-up act for the Harlem Globetrotters at Madison Square Garden, where they incorporated gags like hitting ping-pong balls with the bottoms of their sneakers. Reisman’s signature trick was splitting in half an upright cigarette at the end of the table using purely the force of the ball he hit. Chalamet, noted “Crank That” dancer, relishes the opportunity to indulge his ridiculous comedic side doing the Globetrotters bit alongside co-star (and rapper, putting in a notably charismatic movie performance here) Tyler the Creator.
Reisman became known, too, for questionable antics like allegedly coming back from an Asia tour with an armful of Rolexes hidden under his shirt sleeve, according to The Sun. Mauser gets into one scandal after another in Marty Supreme—including trying to fraudulently squeeze money out of others—but despite many misfires, he always manages to get back up and try again.
What ended up happening to Marty Reisman? Where is the real Marty Supreme now?
Reisman in 2007.
While we don’t get to see Mauser grow into his senior years in the movie (not really a spoiler), over the years Reisman became a legend of sorts for spending extravagantly and for his brightly colored outfits with Borsalino fedoras and Panama hats.
Reisman had a hard time adapting to regular life. His heart remained in ping-pong (the only other job he had was, fittingly, in shoes at a department store, and he was fired). In 1958, he managed to buy an indoor tennis club on Manhattan’s Upper West Side called Riverside Table Tennis Courts, which hosted celebrities like chess prodigy Bobby Fischer and actors Dustin Hoffman, Walter Matthau, Zero Mostel, as well as a young Matthew Broderick. Mauser eventually expanded the operation, opening two more locations.
Reisman had two marriages, his first to Geri Falk, with whom he shared a daughter named Debbie. He married his second wife, Yoshiko Koshino, in 1982.
His fighting spirit never died. In 1997, at the age of 67, he set the record as the oldest person to win an open national competition in a racquet sport.
Reisman passed away on his home turf of Manhattan in 2012 at the age of 82 from lung and heart complications. He’s buried at a Jewish cemetery on Staten Island.
Just before he died, Reisman went out in style with a delightful Men’s Journal profile, which you can read in full here. In the piece, he introduces himself to the reporter at a Chinese restaurant, wearing aviator sunglasses and a Panama hat inside, saying, “I’m going to step around the corner to get one of those big bottles of beer. You want one?” Now that’s champion behavior.
And Chalamet? Well, we’ll have to wait to see where his own path to conquer greatness takes him. For now, we can almost be sure we’ll see him beaming at the 2026 Oscars.
Paul Schrodt is a freelance writer and editor covering pop culture and the entertainment industry. He has contributed to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, GQ, Men’s Health, The Hollywood Reporter, Los Angeles magazine, and others.
