If you thought the high-energy madness of “Marty Supreme” couldn’t get any crazier, you’d be wrong. According to writer/director Josh Safdie, one version of the film ended with Timothée Chalamet’s Marty Mauser turning into a vampire — for real.
Safdie, who directed “Marty Supreme” and wrote it alongside Ronald Bronstein, appeared on the A24 podcast to chat about his latest film with “Anora” filmmaker Sean Baker. There, Safdie revealed that conversations with Chalamet’s co-star Kevin O’Leary initially pointed them in the direction of a far stranger ending — one where O’Leary’s character turns an older Marty into a vampire at a Tears for Fears concert in the 1980s.
“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,” Safdie said. “That was the last image of the movie.”
“Oh my God,” Baker laughed. “Wow.”
“He hasn’t aged,” Safdie said of O’Leary’s character. “I remember A24 and everyone was like, ‘This is a mistake, right?’ You might think it is.”
You can watch the full conversation below.
Safdie ran Baker through the full ending he envisioned for his 1950s-set odyssey about professional ping pong player Marty Mauser. Originally, the film would jump ahead to the 1980s for its ending, with Marty having made the shoe store he works at in the beginning of the film into a massively successful franchise.
Now a rich man (but not a ping pong legend like he imagined), Marty would take his granddaughter to a Tears for Fears concert in 1987, reflecting on his life as they performed “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” He would then run into O’Leary’s Milton Rockwell for a final time.
“The 80s were a very interesting time, the beginning of postmodernism. They were revisiting the opulence and prosperity of the 50s. The culture was — ‘Back to the Future’ was literally the 80s going back to the 50s,” Safdie said. “I’m like, ‘Oh, this could all tie it all together.’”
“I can’t believe I’m saying this,” Safdie laughed as he continued explaining his vampire finale.
The vampire ending would be a massive zag from the true final moments of the film, which brings Marty’s madcap odyssey to an emotional catharsis. There are, however, still elements of this idea left in the final cut of the film.
Notably, “Marty Supreme” still ends with the Tears for Fears song “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” in its closing moment — it just takes place at a 1950s hospital rather than a 1980s concert. The film also includes a line where O’Leary’s character proclaims, “I was born in 1601. I’m a vampire” in the third act. Without the supernatural finale Safdie pitched, the line simply plays as a bit of exaggerated grandstanding from O’Leary rather than a literal admission of otherworldly powers.
Safdie noted that the “Shark Tank” star and business mogul actually suggested the vampire line in the first place, giving the idea to the screenwriters when they initially met with the actor.
“We were meeting with him and we were trying to figure out, ‘How would Kevin O’Leary react to this kid saying to him that money doesn’t matter to him, there are other things that are more important, this is fate in front of him?’” Safdie recalled. “(O’Leary) goes, ‘I would never do anything that could ever implicate me in any other way, so I would use the dark arts.’”
