Marty Supreme. Last year’s best movie to feature both the CEO of Gristedes and the singer of Gang Gang Dance. I won’t spoil the final version, but apparently the original ending was … different. Josh Safdie just revealed that in an earlier draft of the table tennis drama, Golden Globe winner Timothée Chalamet’s character becomes a vampire at a Tears For Fears concert.
Talking to fellow writer/director Sean Baker (Anora, The Florida Project) for The A24 Podcast, Safdie explained that Kevin “Mr. Wonderful” O’Leary, who plays businessman Milton Rockwell in the film, sparked the idea.
“He came up with that vampire line…,” Safdie revealed. “He just said, like, ‘I would look to him and I’d say, Marty, I was born in 1601. I’m a vampire.’ I look at Ronnie [co-writer Ronald Bronstein] and I’m like, ‘Oh, my God. What a line.'”
The Shark Tank heads among you know he has used this line on social media before, while dressed as a vampire.
That suggestion led to an idea.
“The movie originally, you saw his life go past from having the baby all the way up to ’87 at a Tears For Fears concert with his granddaughter,” Safdie continued, while noting he had already been thinking about using anachronistic ’80s needledrops (New Order, Public Image Ltd, two Tears For Fears songs) after listening to table tennis enthusiast Peter Gabriel’s “I Have The Touch.”
We’re getting to the vampire part.
“I can’t believe I’m saying this,” Safdie began.
“You would see him go through… He comes in, as you imagine, he’s an amazing salesman. He turns that shop into the most successful shop on Orchard Street. He changes it to Marty’s, Mauser Shoes. Marty’s, Mauser Shoes. Franchises. Franchises again. Leaves New York State. Becomes a very rich man. All the metrics of success are there. His family grows, he leaves the city, has this beautiful house, and it ends with him at a concert, there with his granddaughter. They’re great seats, up front, and he’s watching it and he’s thinking about ‘Everybody Wants To Rule The World’ and youth and what does it mean, and he has the success but he’s not doing the thing that he believed he was born on planet to do. He has all this great stuff around, he has these great things around him.
“And you’re on his eyes — we built the prosthetics for Timmy and everything — and Mr. Wonderful shows up behind him and takes a bite out of his neck. And that was the last thing in the movie. And he hasn’t aged.”
He added, “and I remember A24 and everyone were like, ‘this is a mistake, right?'”
Watch below.
Tears For Fears played only one show in 1987 (and it was in the UK) according to all available evidence, though I guess if it was a vampire movie we could suspend disbelief. I don’t hate the idea. Mitchell Wenig could’ve written a sick song about vampires.