When the editing on a film is invisible, that means it’s working. In stitching together Marty Supreme, editors and co-writers Ronald Bronstein and Josh Safdie not only found the beats of the movie, but they were able to structure it in a way narratively that didn’t exist on the page.
Directed by Safdie, Marty Supreme follows a table tennis champ whose personal life cracks when the wins stop coming so easily. It’s a story about pride, reinvention and pursuit; a character study wrapped up in a sports story and played with aplomb by lead Timothée Chalamet. Because the journey is about the rise, fall and climb of Marty, the edit had to elevate what was scripted into tangible emotions.
The hard work paid off: Sadie and Bronstein are nominated for the best editing Oscar for Marty Supreme, one of nine Oscar nominations the film received. They also share a nomination for Best Original Screenplay and, because both produced the film, Best Picture. And Safdie is nominated for Best Director.
Ronald Bronstein on Editing the Harlem Globetrotters Sequence in Marty Supreme
Bronstein points to one sequence in particular that worked on paper but didn’t hold up as scripted in the edit: the Harlem Globetrotters bit.
The montage was always meant to chart Marty’s downfall as he traveled city to city doing the one job he didn’t want to do. But conveying those emotions became hard to translate onscreen.
“How many cities does despair require? How much time would be needed to communicate professional rot? We kept trimming, trying to find the precise dosage,” says Bronstein.
They weren’t just cutting for time; they were adjusting the emotional temperature. And then they realized the real issue wasn’t length, it was placement. There was one scene in the middle that involved a confrontation in Paris between Marty and Milton Rockwell (Kevin O’Leary). Leaving it there felt strange. because it halted momentum.
“In the cut, it was fatal,” Bronstein adds. “The dialogue scene cleaved the montage in two, staunching its momentum and reducing all feeling to a series of narrative beats.”
Instead of trimming the scene, they moved it.
“The solution was radical but obvious in hindsight: move the Paris confrontation to the head of the sequence, before the music cue and montage begin.”
Suddenly, the exchange felt tense instead of explanatory. “The audience doesn’t yet know why Marty is in Paris or what’s become of him since London. An uneasy question mark hangs over the exchange. Then the reveal. He’s on the Globetrotters tour, a job he had previously mocked. The hubris collapses in a single instant,” Bronstein says.
It was nothing new, but it changed everything.
“The solution wasn’t about cutting for pace, it was about reassigning meaning through order,” Bronstein continues. “Moving that scene didn’t just improve the sequence, it unlocked it.”
Josh Safdie on Editing the Japan Sequence in Marty Supreme
That same attention to emotional rhythm showed up in the Japan exhibition match, which was built very differently. If the Globetrotters stretch was about humiliation, Japan was about tension and stretching it as far as it could go.
“The exhibition match in Japan was edited with a clockwork precision,” says Safdie. “It was designed to reach an apex of bottled energy in the spirit of (director Sergei) Eisenstein, only to give way to a great release upon his victory.”
It’s a deliberate cut that includes a single Steadicam shot meant to change the pace and up the ante.
“All of a sudden, the shots hold longer, and it eases the viewer into a state of instinctual reflection,” he adds. “Through pace and score, we’re now experiencing that victory but begin to question it when we cut between Marty and the despondent Japanese audience, between Marty and a shocked Milton, and of course lastly between Marty and himself.”
That’s when the film changes again, and news from home puts this man on a new trajectory. To convey that feeling, the editors wanted a full-circle moment.
“The purpose of a dream must evaporate and the arrival of another must take its place,” Safdie says. “The mallets return and the sonic purpose and drive from the beginning of the film returns. It charges him home. That feeling of HOME is so important.”
By the time Marty Supreme narrows to a quiet moment between Marty and his infant, the pace slows even more to bring it to a close.
“Cutting the moment when the infant stops crying and locks eyes with Marty creates a very powerful moment of connection,” Safdie says. “Infants are brand new, but they represent an infinite future.”
“It’s both happy and sad,” he adds. “It’s a funeral for one dream but the birth of another.”
Main image: Timothée Chalamet in Marty Supreme. A24
