Category Archives: absurdist

absurdist, indie films

Marty Supreme: Misadventures of a Table Tennis Hustler

 

Marty Supreme movie poster.
Movie poster for Marty Supreme showing actor Timothée Chalamet.

Marty Supreme is a fictionalized account of the table tennis player (and hustler), Marty Reisman. I had a greater than average interest in seeing this movie as I played competitive table tennis back in the day (albeit at a very modest level) and actually played at Reisman’s club in New York City now an then. However, the movie is only very loosely based on the actual Reisman.

In fact, it’s less of a sports film than a fast-paced, chaotic journey following the antics of an unhinged and amoral character. Apparently, director Josh Safdie has an interest in table tennis, which drew him to Reisman’s character.

Marty Mauser (brilliantly portrayed by Timothée Chalamet, who also had a notable role as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown a few years ago) is a table tennis and all-around hustler in 1950s New York. He works in his uncle’s shoe store but is anxious to leave that job so he can travel and play in tournaments. He takes money at gunpoint from a fellow employee (which he may or may not have been legitimately owed; Mauser walks a moral gray area throughout the film) so he can fly to England to compete.

Marty reaches the finals of the tournament only to be defeated by a Japanese opponent who is using a new type of paddle. This part of the film is based on reality; Reisman did lose to an unheralded Japanese player who was using a revolutionary type of rubber that would change the game forever (though in the movie, he uses plain wood, which is also very tricky to play against).

In between games, Marty manages to hustle (separately) the unlikely couple played by Gwyneth Paltrow and Kevin O’Leary. Paltrow plays an aging movie star who is charmed by the slick Marty. O’Leary, best known as a Shark Tank judge  essentially plays himself, a ruthless CEO who only cares about profits.

The title Marty Supreme comes from a line of table tennis balls Marty invents, which are yellow-gold in color rather than white for better visibility. Other than these fairly short explorations into the niche sport of table tennis (Marty makes a decidedly non-prophetic prediction in the movie that table tennis will one day be a massively popular spectator sport in the U.S.), the film mainly follows Marty’s absurdist  misadventures as he gets a married girlfriend pregnant, unwisely attempts to out-maneuver the O’Leary character, gets chased down by a gang of angry locals after he and a friend hustle them at a club, and gets shot at by
a property owner who finds a dog Marty was watching for someone. In another random sequence,  he manages to get into a bathtub that crashes through the floor.

Marty Fabulous has been compared to Uncut Gems, where Adam Sandler plays a similarly out-of-control character who gets into scarcely believable scenarios. The constant chaos also reminded me a bit of Pineapple Express. In all these films, the specifics of the plot are secondary to the frenetic energy of the characters and the bizarre situations they fall into.

Marty Fabulous is a darkly funny rollercoaster of a movie with a great cast that manages to make the most absurd scenarios almost believable. Chalamet manage to make Marty, if not quite sympathetic, at least someone it’s hard to root against. He moves so frantically from one disaster to the next, we scarcely have time to process how manipulative and self-destructive he often is. And he finally displays some genuine emotion at the very end.

I was a little disappointed that the history of table tennis and the life of the real Marty Reisman were not more prominent, but that won’t matter to 99.9% of viewers.

The Real Marty

The Money Player book cover
The Money Player book cover with Marty Reisman hitting a ping pong ball.
Page autographed by Marty Reisman
Table tennis player Marty Reisman autograph in book The Money Player.

 

For anyone curio

If you are curious about Marty Reisman (1930-2012), he wrote an autobiography called The Money Player. I still have an autographed copy, but it may be out of print. Maybe this movie will inspire a re-printing.

 

absurdist, independent film directors, indie comedies, mumblecore, Netflix

An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn: Absurdist Comedy

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An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn (2018), directed by indie British filmmaker Jim Hosking, is a bizarre, absurdist comedy currently streaming on Netflix. Like Hosking’s first feature film, The Greasy Strangler, An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn premiered at Sundance.

The Plot, Such As It Is

The protagonist, Lulu (Aubrey Plaza, who generally stars in more mainstream movies) does have a goal -seeing Beverly Laff Linn perform- but this is the type of film where the plot is practically irrelevant.

The story, such as it is, involves Lulu leaving her husband Shane (Emile Hirsch), a bumbling coffee shop owner who robbed Lulu’s brother (who inexplicably is an East Indian) along with his even more bumbling co-workers, all who have suits and hairstyles that seem to be from the 70s. Lulu takes up with an incompetent enforcer named Colin (Jemaine Clement), who quickly falls in love with her and basically obeys her every command.

Lulu is basically indifferent to Colin, and is only fixated on seeing the mysterious Beverly Luff Linn (Craig Robinson), who mostly grunts rather than speaks for most of the film. Linn, for his part, has a manager/hanger-on named Rodney (Matt Berry) who is just as fixated on him as Colin is with Lulu. Lulu, as it turns out, was involved with Linn many years ago and wants to reconnect.

All of these ridiculous characters converge at the hotel where Linn is allegedly going to perform in some non-specified way. I say allegedly because his performance is repeatedly postponed due to health reasons and/or Rodney’s neurotic interference.

Hosking vs. Lynch

Glenn Kenny of Rogerebert.com compares Hosking’s style (unfavorably) to that of David Lynch, as in Twin Peaks. It’s an understandable comparison as both directors populate their films with ridiculous characters with bizarre mannerisms and quirks. Kenny suggests it’s “the difference between genuinely idiosyncratic vision and an avid desire to be different.” Of course, talking about Lynch is setting the bar very high, as he’s one of the true masters of the bizarre.

Some Thoughts on Absurdism

While there are many screwball comedies, indie comedies, mumblecore comedies, and other sub-niches, there are relatively few truly absurdist comedies. A few I can think of that I’ve seen include Synecdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman), Schizopolis (Steven Soderbergh), and The Lobster (Yorgos Lanthimos). There’s a reason that few films truly fit this category. I suppose it overlaps with surrealism, but then you’d have to start including European directors such as Fellini and perhaps David Lynch.

We could debate definitions forever, but in general, surrealism tends to be more visually-oriented, intellectual/philosophical, and dreamlike. Absurdism is more random, lighthearted, and comical. Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise, one of the earliest modern indie films, isn’t surrealistic, but it has definite absurdist qualities.

This long digression is really to point out why absurdism is so hard to pull off. Lacking the visual depth of surrealism and the logical narrative of more conventional scripts, an absurdist tale has to engage the audience, keep them laughing and at least somewhat connected to the characters without the usual narrative devices, such as the protagonist reaching a goal.

Worth Seeing if You Have a Taste for the Offbeat

I think Hosking does succeed to some degree at creating a macabre parallel world where people dress and speak in a weirdly anachronistic manner. The film did make me laugh a fair amount. At the same time, although the film ran an average108 minutes length, it seemed very long and probably could have been edited down to 90 minutes or even a little less.

I haven’t seen Hosking’s previous film, The Greasy Strangler. Based on An Evening With Beverly Laff Linn, though, I’d be interested to see what he comes up with in the future. At the very least, his films are something different. And while some reviewers may accuse him of being weird for its own sake, Hosking does have an aesthetic and sense of humor of his own that invokes interest in his characters.