Marty Supreme
Channeling his inner Shia LaBeouf
Following up on my thoughts about how one keeps focused when one does indeed become successful (see HERE), comes a movie that is probably going to be Best Picture and Best Actor, and make Marty Supreme’s Timothy Chalamet, and Director Josh Safie household names.
This movie has everything in it. They literally threw in the bathroom sink. Most importantly, it’s the death knell of the Superhero movie and Spielberg-like movies that don’t require much thinking.
Movies may become relevant again when they force you to think and be uncomfortable with things you can relate to. Comedians do this with a mic and movies used to do this. It’s subtle; you have mindless entertainment or agenda-focused films that want to force you into certain opinions and ways of life.
Having finally been asked by my wife to see a movie and asked what to watch, my assistant told me Marty Supreme was entertaining. “It’s like The Wolf of Wall Street” but Ping Pong (even though he doesn’t realize that I only saw the film once).
Having no other option, that’s what I mentioned, and my wife agreed.
When watching the film, I was immediately thrown out of my enjoyment of the film when Marty looked exactly like my chiropractor, and my back tensed (seriously, and he’s a good one if you are ever in the area, let me know).
And then, when I accepted this, I was immediately thrown off when I saw that Chalamet’s voice and mannerisms were strangely like Shia Lebouf.
And also the plot.
If I were a film critic and had to summarize the film in one sentence, it’s a movie dedicated to Shia LaBeouf and his breakout role.
From Google:
A seventh-grade misfit, played by pre-"Transformers" Shia LaBeouf, struggles to find his niche both in school and in his seemingly perfect family. He does his utmost to infuriate his overachieving older sister, Ren, and is frequently involved in disastrous escapades, from which his best pal Alan usually rescues him.
Shia LaBeouf was a prodigy, parlaying his TV success into the huge Transformers movies and appearances in Indiana Jones and Wall Street II, but mentally, he couldn’t handle it and had well-known meltdowns. He’s a great actor, and things may change, but I don’t believe people will go out of their way to go see a film he is headlining.
Dollars to donuts, the film was created most likely after a late-night hangout session at one of those great NY diners, where the creators were laughing, smoking, and thinking about the dumb decisions Shia made. Another Disney alumnus gone rogue. And what if we made a situational comedy movie on the real-life Shia trying to make a name for himself when New York was New York.
And yes, I have no way of confirming whether my theory is correct, but I do know that Johnny Depp based his Captain Sparrow on Keith Richards and Tom Cruise on Harvey Weinstein in Tropic Thunder. Many others to ponder.
The key theme of the movie and takeaway that you can’t forget when you sit through this film is what Chalamet says as if he were on Ted Talk :
“I want to tell you something, and it’s not intended to be mean. (beat) I have a purpose. You don’t. And if you think that’s some kind of blessing, it’s not. It puts me at a huge life disadvantage. It means I have an obligation to see a very specific thing through...and with that obligation comes sacrifice. (beat) My life is the product of the choices I’ve been forced to make to see this specific thing through. Yours is the result of, what?, just making it up as you go along? That’s how you are. It’s not how I am.”
That’s the thing: Marty talks a big game and can convince any business owner to back a new venture, but he has no follow-through because he has no experience or moral tether. He just goes with the flow, no matter what it takes to advance his quest.
The film follows a young ping-pong player in 1950s New York with no common sense. He has tons of energy and charisma and wants to be a champion in a sport no one heard of.
Everyone around him tends to have money and success:
Business tycoon of the pen industry
Manufacturer who produces Marty’s “Supreme” line of orange Ping Pong balls
Semi-Retired crime boss
Washed-out former movie actress
A successful uncle in the shoe business who needs help
World Ping Pong Association management
They all stop to listen to his pitch and see something in it. If you are not in business or out protesting in Minnesota, you may miss these nuances of the film, and what I want to share that you probably won’t get in another source.
Successful businessmen are too busy. They have no idea what really works and doesn’t, but they know passion and know confidence. Of course, they will say no at first because 99% of the time, it’s not worth their time to listen further.
But they will make the time to listen. In the US way of doing business, the more successful you are, the higher the chance you’re open for business. You’re never too busy to not explore new opportunities.
Everyone in the movie likes Marty’s youthful energy and confidence.
But it’s all an act. There’s nothing behind it.
He’s not building toward something. He’s just... moving.
Sound familiar?
The markets are full of Marty Supremes:
WeWork and Theranos
SPACs with “visionary leadership” and zero business model
Meme stocks driven by Reddit energy instead of fundamentals
“Innovative” businesses, like many crypto tokens, that can’t explain their unit economics
Now, think about the companies that did have a soul and a drive. Have they gone away in 2026?
Apple - Steve Jobs didn’t wake up making it up as he went along. Democratize computing. That was the purpose. Everything else was an obligation to see it through.
GE - Edison’s systematic innovation philosophy. Built to last because built with intention.
Silver - 5,000 years of monetary history. You don’t need a pitch deck when you have that kind of foundation.
NVIDIA - Jensen Huang with a 30-year vision of accelerated computing. Not quarterly pivots. Three-decade obligation.
SanDisk - Solving one specific storage problem. Not trying to be everything. Just seeing one thing through.
Purpose and vision first. The energy builds upon that.
I guess my assistant described it as “Wolf of Wall Street” as he is in the school of thought that businessmen and large corporations don’t always act appropriately and here we root for Marty. Though I think both films have different messages.
When I initially wrote this, I wanted to say that the film is yet another in a long line of films that deliberately portray business owners as evil and greedy, with the young discovering this evil and changing the world.
(The best movie of this kind? Monsters, Inc)
The elements are here, and it’s time for the youth to realize that there may be cracks in the system, but tearing it down is not the answer.
This fits the Director Josh Safdie style and humor. He made a wonderful film with Adam Sandler called Uncut Gems. There are some priceless scenes in that film.
Adam Sandler is a jeweler with a gambling addiction, destroying himself through purposeless action, while here, a ping pong player is destroying himself through purposeless ambition and wanting to fly around the world to face an opponent who doesn’t even speak English or have the same values.
What the director sees is American energy divorced from American meaning.
The film is worthy of BEST PICTURE as Marty represents us, a generation that spurned our elders, running around trying to do things that have no meaning. We wasted our time, money, and future inheritance chasing after mere trinkets.
And we don’t like people telling us we made bad choices.
Do I have proof of this in the film?
Of course, all great films tie it all together. In the movie, Marty spurns a girl who actually loves him, even though she’s married, and she has always waited for him.
But throughout the film, he can’t shake her loose completely and it turns out that she saves his life physically and spiritually at the end of the film.
He realizes the truth at the end, and I won’t ruin it. Let’s just say there is only one thing in the world that keeps it real, and it’s not body art.
Timothy Chalamet, the actor, lives this message
He is in love with a Kardashian and it seems real (though it is a Kardashian but this is Hollywood after all)
Goes for Art house movies like Call Me By Your Name
Chose Denis Villeneuve’s Dune over Marvel
Working with auteurs like Safdie instead of chasing blockbusters
He’s handling fame by having a framework for how he’ll use it.
I have a hard time watching films like this, but my wife enjoyed it. And that is the power of cinema.
Getting people into the seats, enjoying it, and wanting more.
If this is a prologue to the future, we will see folks going to films not just to be entertained but to consider things and life’s biggest questions.
And walk out inspired.
Find your purpose.
Everything else is just ping pong (back and forth).
Now, if you believe Safdie is right about cinema's future, there's an opportunity most investors are missing...
