Before Timothée Chalamet starred in “Marty Supreme“ — opening nationwide on Christmas Day — there was Marty „The Needle” Reisman, the Ping-Pong hustler who inspired the namesake character.
Long before Timothée Chalamet starred in “Marty Supreme” — the hotly anticipated movie that hits theaters nationwide on Christmas Day — there was Marty “The Needle” Reisman, the wild-eyed, high-strung Ping-Pong hustler who inspired the namesake character.
For that, we can thank “The Money Player,” a 1974 memoir written by Reisman, which set director Josh Safdie and co-writer/co-producer Ronald Bronstein to get deep inside the world of high-stakes table tennis and the man who electrified it.
“One day, Josh’s wife handed him the book,” Bronstein, who also worked with Safdie on 2019’s “Uncut Gems,” told The Post. “Josh already loved playing table tennis and then he got very turned on by the subculture of it.”
Safdie’s wife was lucky to get her hands on it. There is just one copy available on Amazon, signed, and it goes for $1,999.
While Reisman did not dodge bullets, or endure the abject humiliation that came from literally being paddled, as Marty “Supreme” Mauser does in the movie, the two men share a go-for-broke demeanor and a natural love of hustling.
Speaking with the New Yorker in 1960, Reisman described himself as a taxi driver’s son, born in 1930, raised on gritty East Broadway in Lower Manhattan and possessing an early obsession with science. He claimed to have spent so much time looking through telescopes and microscopes that his eyes went buggy.
