How much of Marty Supreme really happened?

Josh Safdie’s film, which was released on Boxing Day and more widely on New Year’s Day in the UK, tells the story of Marty Mauser, a ping pong hustler with dreams of becoming a world champion.

It is not a biopic, but the idea for the story and some of the plotlines were inspired by Marty Reisman, whose infectious self-confidence helped popularise a sport, which was a marginal hobby in the US in the 1950s.

But what in Marty Supreme is real and how much was Hollywood artistic licence?

Who was Marty Reisman?

Martin ‘Marty’ Reisman was indeed an American table-tennis player, who was born in New York in 1930 and died in the same city in 2012.

At the time of his death, he was survived by his second wife Yoshiko Reisman and Debbie Reisman, his daughter from his first marriage to Geri Falk.

Like Marty Mauser, he was a US champion, a title he won in 1958 and 1960, but as much as his ability he was known for his flamboyance and showmanship.

Much of his life was documented in his 1974 memoir The Money Player.

“Table tennis players have to survive by their own wits,” he wrote in his autobiography. “Top players were either gamblers or smugglers.”

He was world championship bronze medalist in 1949 for singles and won other bronze medals in the doubles or team competitions.

Alongside playing, he ran table tennis clubs in New York - one of which was a regular haunt for actor Matthew Broderick. In a 2008 episode of David Letterman’s talk show, Reisman appeared alongside Broderick and performed a trick shot where he could split a cigarette by powerfully aiming his famous forehand at it.

How much of Marty Supreme is true?

Quite a lot!

Reisman, like Mauser, was a proponent of the hardbat style of table tennis and was skeptical of sponge bats. In Marty Supreme, Chalamet’s character loses a final to Koto Endo, a fictional Japanese player who uses the new kind of paddle, and claims an unfair advantage. The transition from one kind of bat to another was a major theme of table tennis in the 1950s.

Reisman continued with the hardbat as it became a separate game of table tennis, and he became US champion in this sport in 1997, when he was 67-years-old and therefore the oldest person to ever win a national open tournament in a racket sport - a record that still stands.

Like Mauser, Reisman was a hustler and would often bet on himself, once, aged 15, being thrown out of a competition when he gave $500 to a man he thought was a bookie and turned out to be an official.

Another truth is that he often needed odd jobs to pay his way. At one point he did work in a shoe shop, like we see in the film, and also toured the world in support of the Harlem Globetrotters. A warm-up act where he plays Mary Had a Little Lamb using pans and table tennis balls is a trick that he often performed.

According to Esquire, the main narrative of Mauser saving up to hold a rematch with a Japanese rival is true.

Reisman had lost the 1952 world championship to Hiroji Satoh, who had used a foam bat, and then fundraised for a flight to Japan for a rematch.

They did eventually play before 5,000 fans at a cinema in Osaka and it was Reisman who triumphed.

Many other parts of the film, including Marty Mauser’s affair with Gwyneth Paltrow’s actress, a whole subplot around a lost dog, and a surprise pregnancy of a childhood friend seem to be fiction.