Ping-Pong hustler Marty The Needle inspired…
Long before Timothée Chalamet starred in “Marty Supreme” — the hotly anticipated film 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 will 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 desk tennis and the person who electrified it.
Marty “The Needle” Reisman, a aggressive table-tennis participant, was “a patron saint” of inspiration for the new film “Marty Supreme.” Neil Rasmus/BFA/Shutterstock
Timothée Chalamet performs a character inspired by Marty the Needle in “Marty Supreme.” Courtesy Everett Collection
“One day, Josh’s wife handed him the book,” Bronstein, who also labored 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 spouse was fortunate to get her palms on it. There is just one copy out there on Amazon, signed, and it goes for $1,999.
While Reisman didn’t dodge bullets, or endure the abject humiliation that got here from actually being paddled, as Marty “Supreme” Mauser does in the film, the 2 males 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 a lot time wanting through telescopes and microscopes that his eyes went buggy. Other sources declare that he had a nervous breakdown at the age of 9.
Marty “The Needle” Reisman preferred to brag that he “never backed down from a bet.” Corbis via Getty Images
Marty “The Needle” Reisman realized desk tennis as a child enjoying at parlors in New York City. Bettmann Archive
Whatever the case, he told the New Yorker: “My optometrist suggested it might help my vision if I took up table tennis. I got completely engrossed. Within three or four weeks, I could beat anyone around. It was already apparent to experts that I would be a great player.”
The consultants had been proper.
At age 13, in 1943, Reisman was the New York City Junior League champion. And he had already begun playing on the sport. His first money match was against a local pedophile who took money off younger gamers and then supplied them a double-or-nothing alternative. “The double was that the boy had to go to bed with him if he lost,” Reisman said, never revealing if he received or misplaced the guess.
Timothée Chalamet in “Marty Supreme,” which opens nationwide on Christmas Day. Courtesy Everett Collection
Reisman used a theatrical sense to hustle rubes for money. New York Post
From a younger age, he plied his hustling craft at a joint called Lawrence’s Ping Pong Parlor — a former Midtown speakeasy once owned by Jack “Legs” Diamond, with Prohibition-era bullet holes scarrin the partitions. Reisman beat weaker gamers, including, the tales go, the actor Montgomery Clift and the president of the Philippines.
The Needle later went on tour with the Harlem Globetrotters, offering half-time leisure by enjoying Ping-Pong with a frying pan instead of a paddle.
Away from the court, he used a theatrical sense to hustle rubes.
Reisman later went on tour with the Harlem Globetrotters, offering half-time leisure by enjoying Ping-Pong with a frying pan instead of a paddle. Corbis via Getty Images
Timothée Chalamet (left) with “Marty Supreme” director Josh Safdie on a retro set in New York City. Courtesy Everett Collection
He recalled once relieving an Omaha high curler of $20,000 after convincingly hitting a few photographs off the desk and over the man’s head. “The sucker,” he told the Times of London, “has to believe that what is happening is genuine and that means you have to have the skill to make the most audacious shot look like beginner’s luck.”
An iteration of Lawrence’s Ping Pong Parlor was re-created for “Marty Supreme,” as best as attainable. “We only found one or two photos of the actual Lawrence’s,” said Bronstein. “Ping-Pong was such an aberrant pastime that it was not documented.”
Explaining that he and Safdie took liberties when writing their main character, Bronstein added of Reisman: “This Lower East Side dreamer became a patron saint for the project.”
Reisman, who received an spectacular 22 major titles — including a pair of US Men’s Singles Championships — the Needle had an expertise that parallels a key scene in the film, in which Marty confronts a new sort of paddle during a key match in Bombay. It had foam padding constructed in, and Reisman called it “the greatest hustle in the history of table tennis.”
Marty “The Needle” Reisman posed with Susan Sarandon at her Manhattan table-tennis membership, SPiN. Patrick McMullan via Getty Images
Reisman handed away in 2012, at 82. Getty Images
He misplaced in Bombay but stored touring the world, enjoying matches and placing on exhibitions. Along the best way, he scored a aspect hustle: smuggling seven-pound gold bars for a Chinese grifter.
Media maven Tina Brown’s husband, the late journalist Harold Evans, was a table-tennis fanatic and frenemy of Reisman’s rivalry, and the 2 often met for matches at the couple’s home.
In her Substack, “Fresh Hell,” Brown describes Reisman as a “weird, chain-smoking stick-insect figure in a Panama hat and tinted aviator shades,” including that he didn’t play the sport unless it was for money.
“I took on people in the gladiatorial spirit,” Reisman told The Times in 2012, 9 months before he died from coronary heart and lung problems at age 82. “Never backed down from a bet.”
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