MoviesMoviesTimothée Chalamet’s gripping new movie is earning rave reviews and plenty of Oscar buzz. But how’s the pong?A24/Getty Images/Ringer illustrationBy Miles SurreyDec. 26, 12:57 pm UTC • 8 min
In the beginning of Marty Supreme, our protagonist, Marty Mauser (Timothée Chalamet), is a shoe salesman working at his uncle’s shop. A woman (Odessa A’zion) enters the store and says she left her old shoes after she bought a new pair, and asks Marty to help search for them in the back. Away from everyone’s view, the two of them start hooking up before the opening credits, during which we witness, in surprisingly microscopic detail, a swarm of sperm racing to fertilize an egg. Then, the egg morphs into [checks notes] a ping-pong ball.
Two thoughts: After codirecting Uncut Gems, where the opening credits feature Adam Sandler’s character going through a colonoscopy, we now know that Josh Safdie is the true sicko (complimentary) of the family (complimentary). Also, this is arguably the only time in the history of pop culture that we’d associate ping-pong—sometimes derided as closer to chess than a physically demanding sport—as an activity for people who fuck. Challengers, eat your heart out.
Marty Supreme is appointment viewing over the holidays for so many reasons. It’s the latest in a long line of Chalamet bangers, cementing him as the defining movie star of his generation. It arrives in the year of the Safdie Split, which, given the lukewarm reception to Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine, proves that Josh is the brother with the juice. It’s got overwhelmingly positive reviews, and could be a major player throughout awards season. But for me, it’s the chance to see a sport that I once fell in love with finally get the cinematic treatment it deserves.
Allow me to explain. It’s become an amusing bit of lore in The Ringer’s Slack channels over the years that I used to compete in ping-pong tournaments. Very specifically, this was during middle school, when my family moved us to Panama. Just saying the words “Panamanian ping-pong circuit” sounds like a bit, but I assure you it’s not. For two glorious years, I competed at weekend tournaments across Panama City malls—many at Multiplaza; shout-out to their food court for holding me down—and got hooked. My finest athletic achievement is probably beating a ranked kid rocking an all-Butterfly outfit from a local ping-pong academy I earned a couple trophies, none of which correctly spelled my name; “Milyes Sureyl” has a poetic ring to it, though.
Upon moving to Hong Kong, my ping-pong mania subsided—turns out, the Panamanian ping-pong circuit doesn’t hold a candle to high school tryouts in another hemisphere. Now, I prefer spending my days playing (non-table) tennis, and whatever magic flowed through my ping-pong paddle back then has been lost to time. (This proved particularly embarrassing whenever I’ve played Ringer colleagues in ping-pong; my apologies to Brian Phillips for getting his hopes up that he’d see something transcendant.) But watching Marty Supreme conjured up those old memories, and with it, the opportunity to assess the film for its most important qualities: Just how accurately did it capture the sport—and yes, it is a sport—of ping-pong? Let’s break it down.
More on ‘Marty Supreme’
More on ‘Marty Supreme’
The Real Marty Supreme
While Marty Supreme hasn’t explicitly marketed itself as a biopic, the film is loosely based on the life of professional ping-pong player Marty Reisman. Reisman, who died in 2012, competed at the World Table Tennis Championships five times from 1948 to 1952. He took home bronze in each of them and won two United States Opens and a British Open. He also became the sport’s oldest champion at 67 by winning the United States National Hardbat Championship in 1997.
However, for all his accomplishments, Reisman was better known for the irresistible—and, at times, contentious—flair he brought to the sport. As we see from Chalamet’s Mauser during one sequence at a bowling alley, the real-life Reisman was also a hustler. He intentionally lost games at Lawrence’s Broadway Table Tennis Club before convincing his marks to double their money. Reisman once tried to place a $500 bet on himself with someone he thought was a bookie, but the man was, in fact, the head of the United States Table Tennis Association.
Other times, Reisman would give opponents an 18-point handicap in a set to 21, or sit in a folding chair, or play with a Coke can instead of a paddle. “I took on people in the gladiatorial spirit,” Reisman told The New York Times in 2012. “Never backed down from a bet.” He briefly appeared on an episode of The Late Show With David Letterman in 2008 and, naturally, was asked to perform a trick where he would use a ping-pong ball to split a cigarette in half. Still, none of this flamboyance would be possible if Reisman weren’t also preternaturally gifted at ping-pong. The journalist Sir Harold Evans—himself a former competitive player—once said that Reisman had the “greatest drop shot ever seen on the face of the earth.”
Unfortunately, ping-pong has only recently begun to make waves in the United States. While it’s the sixth-most popular sport in the world—ahead of even basketball—it wasn’t until 2023 that ping-pong had its own professional league in the U.S., Major League Table Tennis. (The good news: In just two years, Major League Table Tennis has already seen a 1,200 percent growth in viewership.) In that respect, Reisman was ahead of his time: a showman whose exploits didn’t get the fanfare it deserved.
Paddle-Gate
A major moment in the beginning of Marty Supreme is the 1952 British Open, a tournament the cocksure Mauser expects to win. Sure enough, Mauser coasts to the final, but he’s promptly defeated by Koto Endo (as played by real-life pro Koto Kawaguchi), a prodigious Japanese player. Mauser doesn’t take the defeat well and responds by hurling a trash can across the room. But Mauser’s biggest gripe is that Endo didn’t beat him on merit: His opponent’s paddle was a cheat code.
Here’s where we get into the weeds of ping-pong. Mauser—and in real life, Reisman—rocked what’s known as a hardbat paddle, which was covered with a thin layer of pimpled rubber over wood. In the film, Endo has a unique paddle in which one side features a smooth, thicker, spongier rubber that makes it easier to generate topspin. Initially, Mauser struggles to even return Endo’s serve, a consequence of dealing with this new paddle—and the way the ball moved—in real time. Complicating matters even further, Endo’s power and placement behind well-differentiated serves put Mauser on his back foot throughout the match, all with the flick of a wrist This mirrors Reisman’s own beef with Hiroji Satoh, a Japanese player who beat him with a sponge rubber paddle at the World Championships in 1952.
Nowadays, paddles with sponge rubber on both sides are the norm, though there are many different variations depending on feel, hardness, and level of topspin. Still, the old-school hardbat paddles that Reisman once championed can still be found on the market; in fact, those were the ones I used back in Panama. I loved how it suited my game, which relied more on flattening out my forehand against heavy topspin As Reisman once said of the hardbat: “This racket is the purest reflection of a player’s ability.” Hard agree.
Ping-Pong Globetrotters
In the semifinals of the British Open, Mauser defeats longtime champion Bela Kletzki (Geza Rohrig). After the match, the two of them have dinner, where Kletzki tries convincing Mauser to team up with him and become a side act at Harlem Globetrotters games. (When it’s clear that Kletzki is going to lose the semis, they have a highlight-reel point filled with ridiculous trick shots, much to the delight of the crowd.) Mauser is against the idea, believing that he’s above becoming a circus attraction. But when Mauser gets some bad bounces—on and off the table—he ends up joining Kletzki and the Globetrotters.
In the film, we see Mauser and Kletzki perform tricks in various ways: reciting “Mary Had a Little Lamb” by bouncing ping-pong balls on frying pans, playing on their hands and knees on a tiny table, rallying with five balls at once, and even facing off against a walrus As it happens, Reisman really did perform with the Globetrotters alongside Douglas Cartland, a former pro who played doubles with Reisman at the 1952 World Table Tennis Championships. Sadly, I can’t find any video evidence of their performances—or whether Reisman did actually go up against a walrus—but based on what we see in Marty Supreme, these guys really knew how to put on a show.
Ping-Pong’s Unremarkable Cinematic History
Some sports are inherently more cinematic than others; boxing, for instance, has a rich history of genuinely excellent films like Raging Bull, Rocky, Ali, and Million Dollar Baby. Conversely, ping-pong has a less-than-impressive filmography. If you exclude the ping-pong scenes from Forrest Gump—which is only a small sliver of the runtime—then we’re left with a pretty thin crop of movies, including the coming-of-age indie Ping Pong Summer, the underdog comedy Ping Pong Playa, and the documentary Ping Pong, which follows a group of 80-plus seniors still playing competitively.
For better or worse, the ping-pong film with the biggest cultural footprint is probably Balls of Fury, in which child prodigy Randy Daytona (Dan Fogler) is recruited by the FBI to compete in a (literal) sudden death tournament organized by a Triad leader (somehow, Christopher Walken). It’s basically Table Tennis Bloodsport, with Fogler doing his best Jack Black impression and Walken chewing through scenery saying ping-paaaang in his iconic accent. Is Balls of Fury a good movie? Absolutely not. Do I have a well-used DVD of it at home? Absolutely yes.
All of which to say: the sport hasn’t gotten its due on the big-screen—but then came Marty Supreme. A contender for the best film of the year, it manages to bottle that familiar Uncut Gems anxiety into a globe-trotting saga about ping-pong. And while some people might laugh at ping-pong, of all things, getting the A24 prestige treatment, that kind of incredulity is baked into the script. Mauser is constantly belittled for chasing a dream nobody believes in—to most people, ping-pong is the domain of dorm rooms and rec centers, not selling out stadiums overseas.
Thankfully, Marty Supreme treats ping-pong with the kind of reverence usually reserved for flashier sports like boxing, football, and basketball. It’s a movie that understands the line between a “hobby” and a “calling” can be razor-thin, especially when everyone in Mauser’s life insists he’s playing a game that doesn’t matter. Trust me, I get it. Once upon a time, that Panamanian ping-pong circuit was the center of my universe; the malls were a proving ground where some middle-schooler with an antiquated paddle could take on peers decked out in sponsored gear. There was nothing more satisfying than daring to make that dream a reality. Marty Supreme gets that impulse. It dignifies it. Now, the rest of the world can believe it, too.
Miles Surrey
Miles writes about television, film, and whatever your dad is interested in. He is based in Brooklyn.
