Add thelocalreport.in As A Trusted Source
Timothée Chalamet’s eyes squint when he looks outside manhattan Coastline. It’s a few hours before the premiere of his new movie, “Marty Supreme,” but right now, he’s sitting on a quiet bench at the end of the West Side pier.
The weather is brisk and there is snow on the ground, but it is also sunny and Chalamet, dressed warmly, is enjoying looking out over the city. For him, it is like looking back at himself.
“I’m in my late 20s now, and there should be every reason to say, ‘Okay, career’s good. Let me start shilling,'” says Chalamet, who turns 30 just after Christmas. “But it’s like I’ve quadrupled my life’s original quest. “I’ve been out of the pool and back on a high board.”
That high dive is “Marty Supreme”, Josh Safdie’s hyperkinetic 1950s set new york The story of an extraordinary struggler. Chalamet plays Marty Mauser Jewish A kid working at a shoe store who aspires to become the world’s best table tennis professional. The character is based on the real-life player, Marty Reisman, but the film is also a reflection of Chalamet and Safdie’s own ambitions.
“The gift of my life is this work,” Chalamet says as seagulls fly overhead. “You’ve got to respect it. Not in some Keynesian way – I don’t know if this is the right economist to quote. I don’t mean capitalist. I mean: If you’re not going up, you’re kind of going down. ‘He’s not busy being born, he’s busy dying,’ the great Dylan quote. Oh, is it on the money.”
Since his breakthrough performance in 2017’s “Call Me by Your Name,” Chalamet has been on a steadily rising trajectory, which peaked when he announced shortly after finishing shooting “Marty Supreme” that he was “in search of greatness” while accepting a Best Actor award from the Screen Actors Guild for his performance. bob dylan In “A Complete Unknown”.
But “Marty Supreme” is another new level for Chalamet. His Marty, far from a period-piece study, is a blur of forward motion. (To shoot the film’s fast-paced poster, Safdie stopped two blocks away so Chalamet could run at full speed.) To turn his dreams into reality, Marty uses every desperate scheme and every grandiose swagger. He’s the quintessential American hustler, and this is perhaps the defining performance of Chalamet’s young career. A year after coming so close, it could win him his first Academy Award.
“It’s not a long arc thing for me,” he says. “It’s like I’m chasing a feeling.”
Taking ‘Shaheed’ into the mainstream
“Marty Supreme,” which opens Thursday, is a big test. a 24 Approximately $70 million was spent on it, making it one of the biggest-budget films ever made by an indie studio. To build hype, Chalamet has unveiled some very Marty-esque stunts, including an 18-minute video of a pseudo-Zoom call about marketing the film. This revealed an actual orange blimp with “Dream Big” written on it, flying over Los Angeles.
When The Associated Press met Safdie in his Chelsea office, he had recently returned from promoting the film in London, Brazil and Los Angeles. To him, “Marty Supreme” could hardly be more personal. Pingpong paddles filled his office, as well as an old piece of veranda from Rodney Dangerfield’s New York comedy club. Before moviemaking became her passion, Safi once tried to become professional in table tennis herself.
“My father is the ultimate dreamer,” says Safi. “He still dreams today. When I was a kid, I used to ask him where I came from. And he used to say, ‘You came from the stars.’ “It created a strong feeling in me that I had a great future ahead of me.”
When Safdie and his brother, Benny, set out to make films, they had bustling New York in mind. For his second feature, “Daddy Longlegs”, he contacted film producer Ronald Bronstein, who was working as a projectionist at the time, and told him he had to star in the film. Bronstein wasn’t even an actor.
“I thought: This guy is made of helium and my legs have been stuck in lead for six years,” recalls Bronstein, who wrote “Marty Supreme.”
The tough life of independent filmmaking made Safi accustomed to giving everything he had to make his films. To convince a potential financier to pay for the basketball portions of 2019’s “Uncut Gems,” Safdie, a non-drinker, recalls drinking a half-dozen whiskeys during a meeting.
“You’re in a position where you’re at their beck and call,” he says. “You’ll do whatever needs to be done.”
When Safdie and his brother finished “Uncut Gems,” they felt purposeless after years of pouring everything into Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler’s character in the film). “You begin to ask yourself: What is the purpose of the dream?”
‘Timmy Supreme’
Safdie and Chalamet first met in 2017 at the premiere of “Good Time”, a few months before the release of “Call Me by Your Name”.
Says Safi, “I didn’t know anything about the guy. Some agent told me he was the next big superstar. And you hear that a lot from agents.” “But you got the sense that he saw it. And he had a vision for it. He had this energy. He was Timmy Supreme.”
Safdie sent Chalamet a video of 1948 table tennis players set to Peter Gabriel’s “I Have the Touch”. The suggestion was: this is a period film told with a contemporary topspin. Over the years, while working on other film sets, Chalamet built up his table tennis skills.
“Josh wanted me to look at a period of my life when all I had was audacity,” says Chalamet. Immediately, he saw himself in Marty. “I was single-handedly driven since I was 14.”
Safdie and Chalamet are now launching something that’s almost a curse into theaters this holiday season: a completely original, big-budget, R-rated film loaded with star power. Signs show the audience isn’t ready yet, they’re hungry for it. The limited debut of “Marty Supreme” in six theaters set a per-screen record. 92 sales took place.
Chalamet says, “I said this when I went to (former high school) LaGuardia last year: Don’t act for other actors. Act for a real audience.” “When we were shooting ‘Dune 3’ over the summer, Denis (Villeneuve) said that at some point he realized it was more about making real people happy. You look at the business structure of the film industry, how it’s been shrinking since the ’80s, it’s ridiculous to focus on anything other than real audiences.”
“I would love to see more original movies,” says Chalamet. “They’re the most exciting to watch. Every original movie I’ve seen this year, I like it before it even starts. It’s a whole new mentality of mine, just feeling like we’re all in this together.”
new york hustle
“Marty Supreme” is also a part of the proud lineage of New York films, and is self-consciously steeped in the American film tradition. It may feel like a millennial watershed, but its production design is by Jack Fisk, a stalwart of an earlier era. It features 74-year-old Bronx filmmaker Abel Ferrara. They are veterans of the harsher, more handmade period from the 1970s that have been particularly influential for Safi. Robert Altman’s 1902-set 1971 film “McCabe and Mrs. Miller”, he notes, has exactly the same time difference between when this occurs and when it was shot as “Marty Supreme”.
“The tradition, especially of New York filmmaking, films like ‘The French Connection,’ I try to incorporate that into myself,” says Safdie. “That’s why I’m casting Abel Ferrara. I’m trying to at least evoke those influences.”
That “Marty Supreme” is a deeply New York film, and perhaps a new classic film, is also a special point of pride for Chalamet, who grew up in Hell’s Kitchen. Leaning forward as the afternoon winter light illuminates the shore, Chalamet remembers that he used to play football on this pier as a child.
Chalamet says, “Just to be here, to be back where I’m from. What a dream.” “I also feel that my artistry has grown, not as a talking point or hyperbole, but as a humble fact of foundation.”
This is the kind of thing Marty might say. In fact, some of Chalamet’s recent announcements have struck some people as if he’s still in character. Asked whether he’s being honest or engaged in a little method marketing, Chalamet takes a long pause and smiles. “It’s both.”