Family of ping pong legend condemns Oscar-nominated Marty Supreme

Family of Real Marty Reisman Condemns Marty Supreme as ‘Humiliating’

The family of table tennis legend Marty Reisman has spoken out against the Oscar-nominated film Marty Supreme, accusing the filmmakers of exploiting his image while tarnishing his character. In an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail published January 22, Reisman’s daughter Debbie and grandsons Roger and Josh said they were never consulted during the making of the A24 production and have received no compensation from the film’s success.x

“They made him look like a lowlife criminal,” Debbie Reisman told the Daily Mail. Her son Josh concurred: “They portrayed him as a petty criminal”. The family described specific scenes as “humiliating,” including one in which Marty is physically beaten by a financier, which Josh said was “degrading and desperate, and does not represent what he stood for”.infobae

A Film ‘Loosely Inspired’

Marty Supreme, directed by Josh Safdie and starring Timothée Chalamet, tells the story of Marty Mauser, a 1950s table tennis hustler from Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The film is described as “loosely inspired” by Reisman’s life but does not explicitly claim to be a biography. The movie depicts fictional extramarital affairs, criminal activity, and volatile relationships that the family says never existed.rollingstone

“There was never an affair or pregnancy while married to another man. He married my grandmother before having his only daughter,” Roger Reisman told the publication. Debbie added that seeing the film was painful: “When she left the theater in tears, she felt sad and worried that people would believe that was her real father”.infobae

The family also claimed the filmmakers drew from Reisman’s 1974 autobiography The Money Player without providing credit or compensation, including a story about Holocaust survivor Alex Ehrlich and honeybees that appeared in both the book and film.rollingstone

Oscar Season Controversy

The criticism arrives just two days after Marty Supreme received nine Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Actor for Chalamet, and Best Director for Safdie. Chalamet, 30, has already won a Golden Globe and Critics Choice Award for the role, positioning him as a frontrunner for Best Actor at the March 15 ceremony.nypost

Whether the controversy will affect the film’s Oscar prospects remains uncertain. On Reddit, some users dismissed the concerns, noting that the film presents itself as fiction rather than a literal biopic. The film has been a commercial success, earning over $80 million domestically.mashable

A24 has not publicly responded to the family’s statements. Reisman, who won 22 major table tennis titles and was known as “the Bad Boy of Table Tennis,” died in December 2012 at age 82.wikipedia