Marty Supreme (Josh Safdie, 2025)

[domino harvey]

I guess this is just who he is. Can’t wait for three more months of this Conveniently all copies of the video of the interview quoted above have already been deleted from the Internet, so presumably even his PR team recognizes he needs to fucking cool it

[knives]

Truly a Gen Z Sean Penn.

[cantinflas]

It's been uploaded again, you can watch it here while it lasts.

When I watched it the other day I just thought he was being hyperbolic and having fun with the interviewer, but people seem to be saying he's doing it in character. I'm not so sure, maybe some of it, but maybe he doesn't even know himself anymore? He's going a bit Shia isn't he.

[The Narrator Returns]

Truly a Gen Z Sean Penn.

They’re doing alright if the crimes of their Sean Penn top out at “bragging about themselves like a pro athlete”.

[Zot!]

It's been uploaded again, you can watch it here while it lasts.

When I watched it the other day I just thought he was being hyperbolic and having fun with the interviewer, but people seem to be saying he's doing it in character. I'm not so sure, maybe some of it, but maybe he doesn't even know himself anymore? He's going a bit Shia isn't he.

Let's hope he draws the line at being self-aggrandizing. I think anybody who lets themselves pulled into the orbit of the Kardashians probably has some issues they most likely need to work through. I won't post his orange outfit, there is enough of that out there, but I might have given him a tip of the hat had they done orange & teal.

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

I’m amused by his whole thing. At least it’s better than the types of safe, anemic press actors do. Chalamet knows how to attract attention!

[Never Cursed]

This may well be just an extended bit on the level of him pitching dumb ideas for the movie's promotion earlier. The character he plays is an extremely self-aggrandizing and immature asshole and that quote reads like something he (the character) would say about himself. It may well work as a strategy to dislodge the monolithic dominance of One Battle After Another, and I wouldn't read much into it beyond that

[domino harvey]

But how is it materially different than his SAG award speech?

[Never Cursed]

It's very similar with the added caveat that he was also playing a self-aggrandizing, immature asshole in that movie. The biggest difference is that A Complete Unknown is a total piece of shit with no reason to exist, let alone win awards, so I'll gladly take him being annoying in the service of a good movie over the alternative

[knives]

Maybe he’s just a jerk then? (Also A Complete Unknown is great)

[Never Cursed]

I think it's a "final lines of The Social Network" situation

[therewillbeblus]

I only sampled it, but I like how Ehrlich reads this film as being in part shaped around Chalamet's real-life persona. I doubt he's doing a bit, I think it's the other way around

[TheTreeSong]

Needless to say, if a woman had said this they would be getting raked over the coals and not be given the benefit of the doubt.

[Matt]

I didn’t think it was so bad. People his age say “this is some top-level shit” about a good batch of fries. It’s no more annoying than actors talking about their “craft” or their “process.”

Lady Gaga did get roasted for similar talk when she was promoting the Gucci movie, but she had only starred in one movie and a Ryan Murphy show before that.

[therewillbeblus]

I loved this, maybe more than any Safdie movie yet. It didn’t seem like it was about anything deep until the very end, where it reveals itself as

Spoiler

a surprisingly relatable movie about growing up - all the stuff you need to get out of your system before maturity, etc. It even starts with a conception (an innocent, immature act rooted in impermanence; to an appropriately on-the-nose cover of "Forever Young") and ends with a birth; bringing on responsibilities and permanence.

I also was thinking about the scene where the holocaust survivor tells the story about using the honey to feed his camp mates, and wondering how it fit into the story aside from just being a seemingly-random interesting moment.. It’s a notable example of someone thinking of others besides themselves, collectivistic empathy combatting individualistic narcissism. Marty can only hear it as a 'cool story' in that instant but by the end he’s a step closer to being that person, with potential to begin emerging from his narcissistic cocoon.

[Noiretirc]

Safdie was on CBC radio a few days ago, discussing this film. It was a fascinating, insightful listen.

But I'm really struggling with this one. I hate O'Leary with every bone in my body. For me this is Trump-Kennedy times 10. But maybe his casting was a stroke of evil-genius?

I mean, I own Mein Kampf.

[The Narrator Returns]

There’s a late revelation about his character, one I was delighted to learn Safdie intended to be taken literally, that answers any concerns about his casting. It’s even better than David Mamet showing up as the director of a terrible play.

[Matt]

I loved every shot and every cut in this, much more than Uncut Gems. The on-the-nose '80s needle drops, which could have been laughably disastrous in lesser hands, were perfect. The use of New Order's "The Perfect Kiss" actually made my eyes well up.

I was reminded a lot of Raging Bull, both thematically and stylistically, and it made me glad that good filmmakers like the Safdies and Sean Baker are still making thrilling, tense, New York City movies.

[DeprongMori]

Speaking of “80s needle drops”, by dividing his soundtrack specifically into “50s tracks” and “80s tracks” was Safdie making a linkage between his protagonist and the later “Greed Is Good” striving decade? Or did he have something else on his mind?

[Matt]

From an interview with Daniel Lopatin:

Informing the music was a huge Spotify playlist, culled by Safdie over years. “I think it was called ‘Score Supreme,’” Lopatin recalls. “So many pieces of music, a vast world of sound that he was working from, and I never really pressed him on it because I didn’t think he knew yet.” The tracks included everything from New Order, Tears for Fears and Peter Gabriel’s robotic-sounding “I Have the Touch” to Fats Domino and New Age material like Constance Demby.

“I think that’s what makes it so fun because we’re really open to this idea of time being a little bit malleable, a little bit gelatinous,” Lopatin says. “And I don’t think we really knew until we were about halfway through that process that — oh my God, the score is alive and it’s ticking and it’s doing things.”

So it’s probably one of those cases where a writer has a particular track or song in mind when writing a scene and then eventually they get lucky and are able to license it.

The interview goes on to talk about Lopatin working very closely with Safdie on the music in toto, just hanging out together for days, trying this and that. And the score does seem to have that woven quality of bringing diegetic 50s songs and 80s non-diegetic songs, mixing synthesizers with traditional instruments in the underscoring, ending up with a beautiful tapestry of music for the film to rest upon.

[Matt]

I hope we get a proper UHD for this one. It will probably be an A24 store exclusive unless Safdie made some special arrangement with Criterion for physical media.

[therewillbeblus]

It'll definitely get a solid UHD release, given the work put into its promotional campaign and as their biggest budgeted release (and likely highest grossing film so far, when all's said and done)

According to this article from Deadline, they will be giving out limited edition posters and Marty Supreme ping pong balls out to people who buy tickets for the 70mm engagement.

I was pretty bummed there was no swag at Boston's 70mm showings. Would've loved an orange ping pong ball or two

[mfunk9786]

Really an abysmal step down from Uncut Gems here. My primary issue comes from the film being about a guy who is constantly lying and stealing and mistreating people, but the film seeing that as simply being what a hustler does - grindset culture run amok.

I enjoy films about heroes and antiheroes in equal measure, but Marty is neither of these - he’s just a scumbag who doesn’t even know how to act in his own self-interest, let alone anyone else’s.

Spoiler

His crocodile tears in the final moments are just as insincere as anything else we see him say or do, and no needle drop is going to change that. He had no regard for the well being of his baby’s mother until the moment he realized he’d squeezed all the juice possible out of an unimportant international engagement, after begging to be allowed to stay in Japan even longer.

I think it’s just a fault in Josh Safdie’s way of seeing the world and these characters, perhaps softened by his brother/co-director, perhaps not… but certainly something *accounted for* in these guys’ previous works.

A bizarre mismatch of tones, a cruel and stupid young man propped up as a charming, impish devolution of a stereotypical Rocky figure. One of the first and only films in multiplexes today that feels like the directorial debut of a violent drug dealer or a guy who robs old folks’ homes.

[FrauBlucher]

mfunk, that’s a red flag for me. Those are the reasons I had such a strong distaste for Uncut Gems. His characters are filled with so many flaws and nothing even slightly redeeming or an inkling of any civility. I left the theater needing a proverbial shower

[therewillbeblus]

Really an abysmal step down from Uncut Gems here. My primary issue comes from the film being about a guy who is constantly lying and stealing and mistreating people, but the film seeing that as simply being what a hustler does - grindset culture run amok.

I don't think the film champions or particularly validates Marty's earlier behavior at all, nor do I think this film's approach to its antihero is any different really than Safdie's previous works. What makes you think so - specifically differentiating this from Uncut Gems? If Howard Ratner can have addiction help explain - not excuse - part of his behavior into a more sympathetic space, surely the inherent narcissistic folly of youth can for Marty Mauser? This is also a manchild who has been shaped by his world, someone who has watched everyone in his life 'compromise' and wind up in undesirable situations because of those compromises. Surely his close friend from childhood, A'zion, but also a new figure, Paltrow - perfect mirror images of one another on that front, showing how compromises can suck the life out of life, for women in particular. And yet, the movie is ultimately about how compromise is necessary in some form to become an adult. Marty gradually begins making compromises as the narrative progresses, and finally surrenders in a way that I felt was beautiful and earned (not just the very end, but how he moves from refusing to settle for anything short of being The Greatest to settling for personal self-respect in the final game). I don't think the film likes Marty until the end, and even there it's only giving him the benefit of the doubt in allotting him the 'second chance' ("there are no second chances" as O'Leary states - maybe in one sense, but there are in another where Marty hasn't been looking) that Ratner wasn't afforded, to perhaps become better after the final frame.

I, too, felt repulsed by Marty as a character - more than any other Safdie creation yet - throughout most of the movie, yet in trying hard enough, there's still something deeper to see in yourself in the most surface-level despicable characters. That broad (not specific) inherent narcissism one needs to work through as they emerge into adulthood is crafted here in a very repelling but captivating manner, and the dance it forces on the audience might be the most audacious task Safdie has attempted yet. The movie is at least as hypercritical of its lead (just as horrifyingly and comically so) as Uncut Gems was, which makes me genuinely not understand how anyone could interpret this as unconditionally affirming the Dreamer. This is partially why Chalamet's campaign has been so puzzling to me, like he doesn't 'get' his character - unless he really is doing a bit, which I'm becoming more and more convinced of