THE ARC'S TAKE

This episode asks whether Marty Supreme is Spielberg's version of Uncut Gems — sumptuous instead of feral, but just as committed to a hero who never actually becomes one — and finds a genuinely tragic American Dream story hiding inside all that Safdie chaos.

EPISODE SUMMARY

We tackle (backhand?) Marty Supreme, the Safdie brothers' Timothée Chalamet-led ping-pong biopic, and argue about whether its narcissistic, self-destructive protagonist actually earns his Best Original Screenplay nomination. It's a chaotic, funny, occasionally uncomfortable conversation covering Jewish identity, the American Dream gone wrong, and why one host had to stop watching halfway through and sleep on it. If you like Uncut Gems, awards-season debates, or just want to hear three friends disagree about whether a guy deserves redemption for holding a crying baby, this one's for you.

WHERE TO WATCH

Streaming availability as of 2026-07-05.

Confirmed current streaming/rental/purchase options for Marty Supreme:

• HBO Max (streaming with subscription)
• Amazon Prime Video (rent or buy)
• Apple TV (rent or buy)
• Fandango at Home (rent or buy)
• YouTube TV (streaming)

The film's currently streaming on HBO Max Amazon Channel and YouTube TV, and can be bought or rented digitally on Apple TV Store, Fandango At Home, and Amazon Video.

For the podcast episode itself, worth noting: Marty Supreme currently sits at #40 on the JustWatch Daily Streaming Charts, having jumped 35 spots in a single day — a nice little coda for a movie whose entire thesis, per the hosts, is a guy clawing his way up a leaderboard against his own better judgment.

New To The Show?

New episodes of The Arc arrive roughly once a week, but they are ephemeral beings that sometimes take longer — you're encouraged to start from the beginning because you do not have to have seen the film we're talking about to enjoy the episode — heck, sometimes some of us haven't even watched the film we're talking about.

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A Long Summary

Marty Supreme is the Safdie brothers' — well, Josh Safdie's, this time flying without his brother — chaotic, two-and-a-half-hour period piece about a table tennis hustler played by Timothée Chalamet, a man who wants one thing (to compete, to win, to matter) and destroys nearly everything in his path chasing it. It's loosely based on a real person, shot in the claustrophobic, tight-close-up style of a 1970s car chase even though the sets are enormous and the budget was clearly unlimited, and it earned a Best Original Screenplay nomination — a category, we'd argue, this exact kind of movie was invented for. If you've seen Uncut Gems, you already know the feeling: the propulsive dread, the awful protagonist you find yourself rooting for anyway. If you haven't, one of us hadn't either, and it shows.

What we actually spent the episode on is the gap between admiring a screenplay and enjoying the experience of sitting through it. Cole came in on the filmmaking itself — what a movie chooses to point its camera at, why every nameless "bartender number two" deserves a name, and how a line like "I'm Hitler's worst nightmare" is worth building a whole script around. Robby, who loved Uncut Gems, kept circling the thing the movie withholds: no hero's journey, no growth, a man propelled through the universe rather than steering it, holding a crying baby at the end without a shred of evidence he's changed. And Jaclynn — who paused the film halfway through, went to bed, and gave herself a twelve-hour palate cleanser before finishing it — declared it "the most safty of all safties," a claim she cheerfully admits she has no standing to make, having never finished a single Safdie film. Somewhere in there we also worked out that the climactic match, held in India in real life, was relocated to Japan and stocked with a David Mamet cameo purely, obviously, to torment Jaclynn personally. The Safdies have done so much for her.

So it's an argument about whether a movie can be exceptionally well-made and still leave you glad the popcorn's gone. We land in three different places on that and don't pretend to reconcile them, and along the way we get into the film's Jewishness — two of us are Jewish, both non-practicing — the discomfort of rooting for a repulsive man, the dog that starts smelly in a hotel and ends up driving the entire plot, and the eternal question of what a little kid would say if you asked them for four words to build this scene around. (Dog. Blood. Bathtub. Ping pong.)

CREATIVES

• Josh Safdie — Director; Screenwriter — also: Uncut Gems (2019), Good Time (2017), The Pleasure of Being Robbed (2008)
• Ronald Bronstein — Screenwriter; Producer; Editor — also: Uncut Gems (2019), Good Time (2017), Daddy Longlegs (2009)
• Eli Bush — Producer — also: Uncut Gems (2019), Licorice Pizza (2021), The Souvenir (2019)
• Anthony Katagas — Producer — also: 12 Years a Slave (2013), Uncut Gems (2019), Ad Astra (2019)
• Timothée Chalamet — Producer — also: Marty Supreme (2025)
• Darius Khondji — Cinematographer — also: Uncut Gems (2019), Se7en (1995), Midnight in Paris (2011)
• Daniel Lopatin — Composer — also: Uncut Gems (2019), Good Time (2017), The Curse (2023)

CAST

• Timothée Chalamet — Marty Mauser — also: A Complete Unknown (2024), Dune (2021), Call Me by Your Name (2017)
• Gwyneth Paltrow — Kay Stone — also: Avengers: Endgame (2019), Shakespeare in Love (1998), Iron Man (2008)
• Odessa A'zion — Rachel Mizler — also: I Love L.A. (2025)
• Kevin O'Leary — Milton Rockwell — also: Shark Tank (2009)
• Tyler Okonma (Tyler, The Creator) — Wally — also: The Mindy Project (2015), Big Mouth (2017)
• Abel Ferrara — Ezra Mishkin — also: Bad Lieutenant (1992), King of New York (1990)
• Fran Drescher — Rebecca Mauser — also: The Nanny (1993), Saturday Night Fever (1977), This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
• David Mamet — Glenn Nordmann — also: Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), Beau Is Afraid (2023)
• Géza Röhrig — Béla Kletzki — also: Son of Saul (2015)
• Isaac Mizrahi — Merle — also: Sex and the City (1998), Gossip Girl (2007)
• Sandra Bernhard — Judy
• Emory Cohen — Ira Mizler
• Koto Kawaguchi — Koto Endo
• Penn Jillette — Hoff
• Pico Iyer — Ram Sethi
• John Catsimatidis — Christopher Galanis

AWARDS

The film earned nine Oscar nominations for the 2026 awards, including best picture, and best actor for Timothee Chalamet. Josh Safdie is nominated for best director. Miyako Bellizzi of Marty Supreme earned the nomination for best costume design. Ronald Bronstein and Josh Safdie scored another nomination for best film editing. Additional nominations included Best Original Screenplay, Best Casting, Best Cinematography (Darius Khondji), and Best Production Design (Jack Fisk and Adam Willis). Despite this haul, the film was completely shut out, not winning a single one of its nine nominations at the 2026 Oscars.

• Best Picture — NOMINATION
• Best Director (Josh Safdie) — NOMINATION
• Best Actor (Timothée Chalamet) — NOMINATION
• Best Original Screenplay — NOMINATION
• Best Film Editing — NOMINATION
• Best Cinematography — NOMINATION
• Best Production Design — NOMINATION
• Best Costume Design — NOMINATION
• Best Casting — NOMINATION

Golden Globe Awards

Timothée Chalamet won the first Golden Globe of his career for playing a hustling ping-pong phenom in the frenetic comedy "Marty Supreme." The film also received nominations for Best Motion Picture — Musical or Comedy and Best Screenplay.

• Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy — NOMINATION
• Best Actor, Musical or Comedy (Timothée Chalamet) — WIN
• Best Screenplay — NOMINATION

BAFTA (British Academy Film Awards)

Josh Safdie's ping-pong caper Marty Supreme earned 11 BAFTA nods. These included Best Film, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Leading Actor, and Best Supporting Actress for Odessa A'zion.

• Best Film — NOMINATION
• Best Director (Josh Safdie) — NOMINATION
• Best Original Screenplay — NOMINATION
• Best Leading Actor (Timothée Chalamet) — NOMINATION
• Best Supporting Actress (Odessa A'zion) — NOMINATION
• (plus several additional technical/craft nominations, totaling 11)

Critics' Choice Awards

The film received eight nominations at the 31st Critics' Choice Awards. These included Best Picture, Best Director, Best Casting/Ensemble, Best Original Screenplay, Best Editing, and Best Art Direction, with Timothée Chalamet recognized with the Best Actor award.

• Best Picture — NOMINATION
• Best Director (Josh Safdie) — NOMINATION
• Best Actor (Timothée Chalamet) — WIN
• Best Supporting Actress (Odessa A'zion) — NOMINATION
• Best Original Screenplay — NOMINATION
• Best Editing — NOMINATION
• Best Art Direction — NOMINATION
• Best Casting/Ensemble — NOMINATION

Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards

• Best Cast in a Motion Picture — NOMINATION
• Best Male Actor in a Leading Role (Timothée Chalamet) — NOMINATION
• Best Female Actor in a Supporting Role (Odessa A'zion) — NOMINATION

Directors Guild of America (DGA)

• Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film (Josh Safdie) — NOMINATION

Producers Guild of America (PGA)

• Best Theatrical Motion Picture — NOMINATION

Writers Guild / Critics Groups

• New York Film Critics Circle: Best Screenplay — WIN
• Los Angeles Film Critics Association: Best Editing — WIN
• Los Angeles Film Critics Association: Best Lead Performance (Chalamet) — NOMINATION
• Boston Society of Film Critics: Best Ensemble — WIN
• National Board of Review: Top Ten Films of the Year (a non-competitive honor, noted for context)

Overall, Marty Supreme was one of the most nominated films of the 2025–2026 awards season, but its major competitive wins were concentrated in acting recognition for Timothée Chalamet (Golden Globe, Critics' Choice) and screenplay/editing wins from critics' circles — it went winless at the Oscars despite nine nominations.

SOURCE MATERIAL

Marty Supreme is loosely inspired by the real-life table tennis champion Marty Reisman, with Josh Safdie developing the film after being given Reisman's 1974 memoir, The Money Player: The Confessions of America's Greatest Table Tennis Champion and Hustler, as Safdie and Bronstein began developing the film in 2018 after Safdie was given a copy of Reisman's 1974 memoir, The Money Player: The Confessions of America's Greatest Table Tennis Champion and Hustler. However, Safdie found inspiration in the memoir's story and, using it as a springboard, invented his own characters and conflicts, with the filmmakers making clear that Marty Supreme is not a biopic or direct adaptation.

Book link: https://bookshop.org/beta-search?keywords=The%20Money%20Player%3A%20The%20Confessions%20of%20America%27s%20Greatest%20Table%20Tennis%20Champion%20and%20Hustler

FUN FACTS / PRODUCTION TRIVIA

"Marty Supreme" — Confirmed Production Trivia

Timothée Chalamet secretly trained in table tennis for six years before the film was even greenlit. He entered the world of professional table tennis and had to learn to convincingly portray a pro player, succeeding so well that he was able to film all the table tennis scenes himself, without the help of a stunt double. He kept it up covertly across totally unrelated productions — he secretly trained for years while working on projects like The French Dispatch, Wonka, and Dune: Part Two, even bringing a table into the desert during "Dune" filming and to an Airbnb near Saint-Tropez during Cannes for "The French Dispatch." [Source]

The film's makeup effects fooled a co-star in real life. Make-up artist Michael Fontaine applied pockmarks, freckles and nicks to Timothée Chalamet's face to give him a more weathered, street appearance — an effect so convincing that Gwyneth Paltrow thought it was real, privately suggesting he try micro-needling to fix his "acne scars." [Source]

Robert Pattinson has a hidden cameo added entirely in post-production. Robert Pattinson voices an off-screen British Open umpire, a cameo Josh Safdie got him to record during post-production. [Source]

A specific real match result was deliberately changed for the film — but not just the country. The film's climactic defeat is based on Marty Reisman's real 1952 loss, but he was defeated by a Japanese player at a world championship, though in real life, the tournament was in Mumbai, not London as the movie shows — and in the film Marty's subsequent quest is to get to Japan for a rematch, meaning the production relocated the "away" tournament location twice over from the true history. [Source]

The film's darkest "war story" scene is drawn from a real Holocaust survivor's account, but the filmmakers cut the most extreme detail. The honey-covered-body anecdote referenced by the Kletzki character is based on a real player named Alex Ehrlich, who was a Polish Jew who, prior to competing in London, had been a member of the French Resistance, and was imprisoned at Auschwitz, where on several occasions he was spared the gas chamber when a Nazi recognized him as a table tennis champion — a detail Safdie and Bronstein chose to leave out of the film entirely, keeping only the honey story itself.

SOUND DESIGN ATTRIBUTION

Sound design via Freesound.org and Envato.