Josh Safdie didn’t just want to make a movie about table tennis—he wanted viewers to feel what it’s like to play.
The director of “Marty Supreme” recently opened up about the technical nightmare that kept him awake at night: how to capture a sport where players have less than one-third of a second between shots.
Growing up with ADHD, Safdie found solace in the intense focus table tennis demanded, and decades later, that childhood connection would drive him to solve one of cinema’s trickiest athletic challenges.
Speaking on the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast, Safdie revealed how personal history, Hollywood magic, and months of preparation came together to bring ping-pong’s lightning-fast action to life.
The Childhood Connection That Sparked Everything
Safdie’s relationship with table tennis runs deep. Playing frequently as a child with his father, he discovered how the sport demanded something his ADD brain craved.
I had ADD, so I played it a lot as a kid, and it takes an intense focus, and the frustration when you lose that focus is heightened, and the precision that it takes. So I was trying to match that.
That personal connection evolved into cinematic obsession when Safdie learned about post-WWII New York City’s table tennis scene. Through research with his wife, producer Sara Rossein, and stories from his uncle George—who frequented the legendary Lawrence’s Table Tennis Club—Safdie uncovered an eccentric world of misfits and champions.
Production designer Jack Fisk lovingly recreated Lawrence’s club for the film, where real-life legend Marty Reisman once dominated. Reisman inspired Timothée Chalamet’s character, Marty Mauser, bringing authenticity to every paddle swing.
Why Ping-Pong Was Perfect for Post-War Ambition
Safdie discovered table tennis attracted brilliant minds who struggled in traditional settings. High-IQ individuals who performed poorly in school gravitated toward the sport’s rapid-fire mental chess match.
That ping-pong wasn’t taken seriously made it ideal for exploring unbridled American individualism. Marty believing this “disreputable sport” was his calling meant facing a lonelier road lined with doubters—perfect dramatic territory.
It’s fast, and it’s a dialogue between two people in close proximity to one another.
But dramatic potential didn’t solve the central question: Was table tennis actually cinematic?
The Seven-Frame Problem
Safdie, both ardent cinephile and sports fan, studied how great directors filmed boxing. Table tennis presented a unique challenge.
At professional levels, there’s an average of seven film frames between shots. Less than one-third of a second.
That was a real fear. It’s a challenging sport. There’s really only one way to show it, if you’ve watched it professionally: It’s three-quarters from the back to understand the chess-like quality of it.
As production approached, this unanswered question terrified Safdie most. So he turned to childhood inspiration.
The “Forrest Gump” Connection
Safdie remembered loving the ping-pong sequences in “Forrest Gump” as a kid. He searched for the film’s table tennis choreographer, and every path led to Diego Schaaf.
Schaaf and his wife Wei Wang—a Chinese-born American player who represented the U.S. at the 1996 Olympics—became Hollywood’s go-to table tennis experts. Their credits included everything from “Friends” to “Balls of Fury.”
I met with Diego. I was like, ‘Well, Timmy’s kind of a basement player. He’s been training now for a couple of years, he’s gotten better, but I don’t know.’ [Schaaf said], ‘Don’t worry, we can do this.’
What impressed Safdie beyond Schaaf’s technical expertise was his encyclopedic knowledge of table tennis history. That became invaluable for their first collaborative step.
Frankenstein Points: Building Reality From 50 Years of Matches
Schaaf possessed an incredible library of historic games. Together with Safdie, they choreographed each match point by point—borrowing from real games across five decades.
One cinematic point might combine elements from six different actual matches spanning 50 years. Safdie created visual scripts so Chalamet and opponent Koto Kawaguchi could study and learn to play these Frankensteined points in real life.
Kawaguchi—winner of the Japanese National Deaf Table Tennis Championships—brought authentic athleticism to his role as Marty’s rival, Koto Endo.
Learning foot-and-paddle choreography with precision rivaling Bob Fosse dancers was essential. Yet despite Chalamet’s intensive training with Wang and improving skills, reality set in.
When 10-Time Gold Medalists Can’t Deliver
CGI would be necessary. Schaaf delivered sobering news to Safdie about filming choreographed points with real balls.
10-time gold medalists won’t be able to do what you want them to do.
Real points contain incredible improvised nuance. Balls bounce unpredictably. Even trained actors might lose points they’re supposed to win, disrupting carefully planned sequences.
Timmy obviously wanted to play the points for himself, ‘I need to be able to play all the points with the real ball.’ So every time we would entertain [that], we would do it, and it was great because we would use shots where he’s using the real ball, but then to get the proper coverage that I needed to have the precision that would come with placing the ball.
“Placing the ball” meant visual effects work—actors pretending to play without any ball present.
The Unexpected Difficulty of Hitting Nothing
Surprisingly, pretending proved harder than playing real points. Getting paddle position, spin, and velocity perfect without actually hitting anything was extraordinarily demanding.
Timing had to be flawless: exactly seven frames between hits for CGI ball insertion. Schaaf warned they could only do one point at a time.
That presented another problem.
Three Points or Nothing
Safdie needed actors playing at least three consecutive points. Why? So performers could feel match rhythms, hundreds of extras could get into games naturally, and narrative ebbs and flows would feel authentic.
I was really afraid of being able to not only cover it in the ways that I wanted to, but I’d have the amount of takes that I’d want for performance, and I’d be able to have a longevity of takes, so I could capture the nuances of the in-between parts, like when a boxer is sitting against the ropes. So I was really afraid of it.
Safdie’s solution? Massive over-preparation—and asking Chalamet to do the same.
The “Uncut Gems” Team Returns
Safdie reunited with “Uncut Gems” visual effects supervisor Eran Dinur, but at a scale unprecedented in his 17-year filmmaking career. Pre-planning every desired shot became vital.
Cinematographer Darius Khondji—also returning from “Uncut Gems”—approached matches documentary-style with multiple cameras. They broke free from professional broadcast’s standard three-quarter angle by positioning cameras behind players, capturing balls seemingly flying toward the lens.
This innovative coverage brought viewers into matches rather than just observing them.
Dignifying The Sport
For Safdie, exhaustive preparation served one purpose: dignifying table tennis and capturing what playing actually feels like.
Pulling it off became both tremendous relief and his proudest filmmaking accomplishment. From childhood games with his father to Hollywood’s most technically complex athletic sequences, Safdie transformed personal obsession into cinematic innovation.
“Marty Supreme” proves that with enough dedication, even sports moving faster than audiences can perceive can become powerfully emotional cinema.
The film is now playing nationwide.