A hero and their team embark on a quest to win a prize or accomplish a mission. Sports movies, quests, and road trips are all the stuff of the Golden Fleece genre. The mission has a definable “road” and there should be a “prize” or “finish line” that the audience can track. But Golden Fleeces are always about something internal—a hero goes “on the road” in search of one thing and winds up discovering something else: themselves.

The 3 elements of a GOLDEN FLEECE story are:

1) A road spanning oceans, time—or across the street—so long as it demarcates growth. It often includes a “Road Apple” that stops the trip cold.
2) A team or a buddy the hero needs to be guided along the way. Usually, it’s those who represent the things the hero doesn’t have: skill, experience, or attitude.
3) A prize that’s sought and is something primal: going home, securing a treasure, or re-gaining a birthright.

Save the Cat! Beat Sheet Analysis for Marty Supreme

Opening Image

Marty Mauser (Timothée Chalamet), reluctant shoe salesman and con artist extraordinaire, switches up shoe sizes in order to upsell his clientele and he does it without a blink, without conscience, and with an abundance of fast-talking charm. The tone is set for a harrowing and often hilarious road to the prize that Marty seeks.

Theme Stated

There are salesmen galore in Marty’s world and even his rather simple-minded buddy Dion Galanis (Luke Manley) wants in on the action; he tries to persuade his businessman father to develop a bright orange ping pong ball for Marty, “an original ball for an original guy. It’s a Marty Supreme ball, not a Marty Normal ball.”

Everyone knows that Marty Mauser’s goal is to be Marty Supreme, the one and only, the best of the best.

But there is a far more primal desire in Marty Supreme than wanting to be a bitchin’ table tennis player, and a shard of glass that Marty shares with his community, American Jews only seven years out of WWII. Later in the film, a visually and viscerally disturbing story of a concentration camp victim will cement the theme about the post-Holocaust struggle for survival and Jewish pride.

For Marty, ping pong isn’t just a sport, it’s a reclamation of dignity in the face of a world that tried to exterminate his people.

Set-Up

In his 1952 NYC Lower East Side thesis world, Marty has a raft of things that need fixing. Skinny and pockmarked, he lives in a tenement, works at his Uncle Murray’s (Larry “Ratso” Sloman) shoe store, is sleeping with his married childhood friend, Rachel (Odessa A’zion), and is relentlessly plagued by his mother, Rebecca’s (Fran Drescher) fake illnesses.

But Marty has big dreams. He’s going to be the first American to win the British Open for Table Tennis, which will qualify him for the World Championship competition in Tokyo.

When Marty goes to pick up his paycheck to buy his ticket to London, Uncle Murray is a no-show. Marty yells “Sabotage!” and pulls a gun, insisting that his co-worker Lloyd (Ralph Colucci) open the safe and give him the $700 Murray owes him. When Lloyd refuses, Marty does his usual rapid-fire, damn-the-torpedoes dance, tempting Lloyd with getting Marty fired, arrested even, for robbing him. That sounds swell to Lloyd, since he’s one of the many who can’t stomach Marty, so he folds.

Marty grabs the cash and goes to London, where he disparages the players’ barracks and beats the pants off of every single competitor he faces.

Catalyst

Koto Endo (Koto Kawaguchi), a deaf table tennis champion from Japan, is not only a surprise contender, he is murdering his competition.

Debate

Marty tries to shake off the uneasiness that Endo has instilled in him by leaning into his con-artist skills relentlessly. He checks himself into the Ritz and expenses it to the International Table Tennis Association (ITTA), audaciously tells reporters that when he beats the current champion and Holocaust survivor Bela Kletzki (Géza Röhrig), he’ll be “finishing what Hitler started,” and seduces former movie star Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow) right under the nose of her very rich husband Milton Rockwell (Kevin O’Leary).

But all the bluffing and bamboozling in the world can’t stop the inevitable road apple that stops our Golden Fleece Hero cold; Marty loses to Endo in the finals of the British Open.

Break into Two

A Japanese newsreel gleefully informs us that Koto Endo is the winner! Now will the loser, Mauser, return to the World Championships to “reclaim his pride”?

B Story

Marty’s B Story relationship with Kay is the flipside of his love for Rachel, the mirror image that will determine the outcome of his internal road trip. Will Marty continue to pursue the false success of Kay’s self-proclaimed “vampire” husband or secure a treasure that makes him more human?

Fun and Games

In his post-loss antithesis world, Marty’s determined to hang onto what remains of his chutzpah but the first job offer does nothing to improve his mood: Milton Rockwell offers to pay him a load of cash to play an exhibition game with Endo, provided that Marty loses.

Marty claims that this would ruin his reputation, which he’s already barely clinging to, since his upside-down world consists of traveling through Europe in pink satin pajamas playing ping pong comedy shows with Kletzki (and occasionally a costumed sea lion) for the Harlem Globetrotters.

Marty’s return to New York is even more fraught. Not only is Uncle Murray threatening him with arrest for armed robbery if he doesn’t return to work at the shoe store, Unc takes Marty’s Japan trip money for the World Championship as repayment for the alleged theft. Oh, and oops! Rachel is pregnant with Marty’s child.

After escaping down the fire escape from the cops and Rachel’s irate husband Ira (Emory Cohen), Marty goes on a hustling spree to replace his travel cash and the $1500 fine incurred for charging his Ritz stay to the ITTA.

He enlists his old buddy Wally (Tyler Okonma) for a frantic and heart-pounding sequence of scenes that includes a bathtub falling through the floor onto a criminal, Ezra (Abel Ferrara); getting chased by a truckload of angry gentiles that Marty hustled; and setting a gas station on fire while Ezra’s beloved dog Moses escapes into the night, taking all of Marty’s hopes and dreams for a reward with him.

Midpoint

Still, things are looking up, right? In a false victory, Dion has somehow managed to get the orange ping pong balls made and Marty stares in awe at his name, Marty Supreme, on the boxes. A and B Stories cross as Marty’s spirit is revived and he immediately forgets about Rachel’s plight.

Bad Guys Close In

Marty’s bag of tricks is running low as he fails to get Rockwell to reconsider the exhibition match with Endo, the necklace he steals from Kay turns out to be costume jewelry, and Marty and Rachel nearly get killed trying to retrieve Moses from a crazed farmer, Hoff (Penn Gillette).

After Dion throws the Marty Supreme balls out the window and Rachel admits to lying about being beat up by Ira, all of Marty’s internal bad guys come raging to the surface.

Marty dumps Rachel officially, saying that he has a purpose in life and she has none, and for all of Marty’s less-than-charming personality traits, this is the first time we’ve seen him be intentionally cruel. When Kay takes pity on Marty and tries to give him a real necklace to sell, it starts to look like Marty will lean fully into his shadow self and let himself be bought.

After this transaction fails spectacularly, however, Marty goes back to the vampire to beg for monetary mercy. Rockwell, practically salivating over this display of weakness, humiliates Marty by forcing him to drop his pants and get his naked ass spanked with one of the special Rockwell table tennis paddles.

It’s genuinely painful to watch, but just in case you think this is Marty’s lowest point, the true All Is Lost moment will remind you of writer and director Josh Safdie’s gleefully sadistic imagination.

All Is Lost

Ezra kidnaps Rachel and forces Marty to go to Hoff’s farm to steal back Moses. In the ensuing chaos, the eight-months-pregnant Rachel is shot in the chest and nearly bleeds out.

Dark Night of the Soul

Marty rushes Rachel to the hospital but when it comes to the moment of decision—staying in New York to see if Rachel will live or going with Rockwell to Japan—the shame on Marty’s face telegraphs his choice.

Break into Three

Marty walks out of Rockwell’s private plane in Japan, willing himself to storm the castle.

Finale

Marty’s ready to execute the plan of throwing the exhibition game to Endo and then go on to beat him at the real event, the World Championship, but in a brutal high tower surprise, Ram Sethi (Pico Iyer), the head of the ITTA, tells Marty that he’s not registered for the World Championship—he will not be playing.

After everything Marty’s been through (not to mention our agita watching it), this news is a resounding WTF?! But wait, there’s more, because remember Josh Safdie’s sadistic imagination? Upon losing to Endo, Rockwell has arranged for Marty to kiss a pig, relishing his anti-Semitic gesture with a cruel grin. But little does Uncle Milty know, he’s awakened the sleeping giant.

Marty digs down deep and executes the new plan, loudly demanding a real game, and since the Japanese crowd’s honor has been insulted by Endo’s seemingly fake win, they also shout for a new match. And, oy gevalt, this game is tense, every move anguished and hard-won as Marty and Endo tie again and again, all the way to a score of 20-20.

Rockwell isn’t done, coming to the stage just before match point to dominate Marty one last time, telling him that he’s met hundreds of Marty Mausers in his life, reminding Marty that he’s a dime a dozen. Seeing Rockwell’s desperation, Marty just smiles; this is exactly what he needed to dig down deeper… and win the game.

No, it’s not the World Championship, a handful of American servicemen are the only ones cheering, and Marty Supreme is never going to be on a Wheaties Box. But Marty Mauser knows that he is the best in the world and that is enough.

Final Image

Marty hitches a decidedly less fancy plane ride back to America with the soldiers and hightails it to the hospital to tell Rachel that he loves her. Crying openly when seeing his son for the first time, we have a Final Image that shows true synthesis. The ultimate con artist has been conned himself, endearingly duped into growing a heart and becoming a man.

Check out the Beat Sheet Analyses for these other Oscar®-nominated films:

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Train Dreams

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Bugonia

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Weapons

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Frankenstein