First clue that someone takes pingpong seriously: they call it table tennis.
Second clue: they bring their own paddle.
Timothée Chalamet gave a third clue on film sets around the world. To prepare for his role in the delightfully frenetic “Marty Supreme,” the two-time Oscar nominee traveled for years with a table in tow, training and presumably enjoying the sport at the center of the success of the current holiday season.
Director Josh Safdie recruited the table tennis teaching tandem of Diego Schaaf and Wei Wang, a former US Olympian, to elevate Chalamet's game and serve as technical advisors on set.
But Chalamet already played well enough to emulate a world champion on screen. He had taken lessons and done his homework: He had set up a table in the living room of his New York apartment and played during the pandemic.
“Everything I was working on was this secret,” Chalamet told the Hollywood Reporter. “I had a table in London while I was making ‘Wonka.’ On ‘Dune: Part Two,’ I had a table in Budapest.” [and] Jordan. I had a table in Abu Dhabi. I had a table at the Cannes Film Festival for 'The French Dispatch.'”
It seems implausible that Chalamet immersed himself in table tennis and at the same time learned to sing and play guitar for the role of Bob Dylan in “A Complete Unknown.”
“If anyone thinks this is a cap, as the kids say, if anyone thinks this is made up, this is all documented and will be published,” he said. “These were the two ruined projects that I had years to work on. This is the truth. I was working on both things at the same time.”
Wherever Chalamet found time, Schaaf was impressed by the result.
“He was singularly dedicated to making this the same quality as the rest of the movie,” Schaaf told the Hollywood Reporter.
Avoiding a double for the table tennis scenes was a source of pride for Chalamet. The only concession to modern cinema was that several of the longer sequences during the games were choreographed without a ball, which was added later using computer generated imagery (CGI).
“We realized we had to have a script to be able to film it,” Schaaf told the Washington Post. “And since it was written, we had to practice it first with a real ball. I had to understand the physical layout of the point: where does it have to go? When does it have to go there? When are you going to do it later?” [visual effects] and putting the ball there, it is essential that the player goes to the right place.”
Schaaf said about 60 points were written.
“We needed a lot of rehearsals and I was surprised,” he said. “Timothée ended up having a better feeling than most pro players because pro players follow the lead of the ball. When you take the ball away from them, everyone was like, 'What's the moment?'
“Of course, they have a good sense of time and they learned it quickly. But Timothée was there to control it.”
Chalamet's character Marty Mauser's on-screen rival is Koto Endo, played by real-life Japanese table tennis champion Koto Kawaguchi. Their dynamic approximated the real-life rivalry between 1950s American champion Marty Reisman and Japan's Hiroji Satoh.
In her review of “Marty Supreme,” Times film critic Amy Nicholson noted that well-hit pingpong balls travel up to 70 mph.
“Set in 1952 New York, this deranged caper pursues a greedy table tennis hustler (he prefers 'professional athlete') who argues as if he were playing, fending off protests and annoying his opponents to no end,” he wrote.
Nicholson says Reisman would love the film, “which takes audiences back in time seven decades, when American table tennis players were sure bright days were ahead.
“As an athlete, Chalamet seems to have lost muscle for the role. However, as fun as it is to see such a skinny guy behave like Hercules, he jumps and attacks with conviction.”
Nothing gives an actor (or an athlete) more confidence than practice, repetitions and rehearsals. Chalamet's padel performance is proof of this.
