The first sign that someone is serious about ping pong: they call it table tennis.
Second clue: they bring their own paddle.
Timothée Chalamet has given a third clue about filming around the world. To prepare for your role in the delightfully insane “Marty SupremeThe two-time Oscar nominee has been traveling with a desk for years, working out and apparently enjoying the sport at the center of the current holiday season hit.
Director Josh Safdie brought in husband-and-wife table tennis teaching tandem Diego Schaaf and Wei Wang—a former U.S. Olympian—to improve Chalamet's game and also serve as technical consultants on set.
But Chalamet was already acting well enough to emulate the world champion on screen. He took classes and did homework — setting the table in the living room of his New York apartment and playing throughout the pandemic.
“Everything I worked for was this secret,” Chalamet told the Hollywood Reporter. “When I made the film, I had a table in London.Wonka.' On 'Dune: Part Two,' I had a table in Budapest [and] Jordan. I had a table in Abu Dhabi. I had a table at the Cannes Film Festival for “French control room.»
It seems incredible that Chalamet immersed himself in table tennis while learning to sing and play guitar for his role as Bob Dylan in “Complete unknown”
“If anyone thinks this is nonsense, as the kids say – if anyone thinks this is fiction – it's all documented and it will be published,” he said. “They were two screwed up projects that I had to work on for years. It's true. I worked on both of these things at the same time.”
Wherever Chalamet found time, Schaaf was impressed with the results.
“He was particularly interested in making sure that the quality of this film was the same as the rest of the film,” Schaaf. told the Hollywood Reporter.
Not using a double for the table tennis scenes was a point of pride for Chalamet. The only concession to modern filmmaking was that some of the longer scenes during the games were staged without the ball, which was added later using computer graphics (CGI).
“We realized that in order for it to be filmed, we had to write a script,” Schaaf told the Washington Post. “And because it was scripted, we had to practice with a real ball first. He had to understand the physical location of the spot: Where does he need to go? When does he need to go there? When do you do it later?” [visual effects] and put the ball there, it is very important that the player hits the right spot.”
Schaaf said there were about 60 points in the script.
“We needed a lot of rehearsals and I was amazed,” he said. “Timothy has gotten better at it than most pro players, because pro players catch the ball. When you put the ball away, they're all like, 'What moment?'
“Of course, they have a good sense of timing and they learned it quickly. But Timothy was on top.”
Chalamet's on-screen rival, Marty Mauser, is Koto Endo, played by a real-life Japanese table tennis champion. Koto Kawaguchi. Their dynamic approximated the real-life rivalry between US champions of the 1950s. Marty Raisman and Japan Hiroji Sato.
IN her review of Marty SupremeTimes film critic Amy Nicholson noted that well-hit ping-pong balls travel at speeds of up to 70 miles per hour.
“This crazy race is set in 1952 New York City, chasing a money-hungry table tennis cheat (his preference is 'professional athlete') who argues like he plays, throwing aside protests and annoying his opponents to the point of exhaustion,” she wrote.
Nicholson expects Raisman to be pleased with the film, “which takes viewers back in time seven decades to a time when American table tennis players were confident that brighter days lay ahead.
“As an athlete, Chalamet seems to lost muscles for this role. However, as funny as it is to see such a skinny guy act like Hercules, he jumps and punches with confidence.”
Nothing gives an actor (or athlete) confidence like practice, repetition and rehearsal. Chalamet's oars are proof of this.
