Production Designer Jack Fisk Could Never Have Enough Ping Pong Tables in ‘Marty Supreme’

When Jack Fisk began working as a production designer in the 1970s, he collaborated with several great filmmakers at the beginning of their careers, from Jonathan Kaplan (“The Slams”) and Terrence Malick (“Badlands,” “Days of Heaven“) to Brian DePalma (“Phantom of the Paradise,” “Carrie”). “We didn’t have much experience, but we had a lot of excitement and energy,” Fisk told IndieWire, noting that finding directors who inspire him is still a key factor in choosing which jobs to take — it’s why he worked on Martin Scorsese‘s “Killers of the Flower Moon” two years ago.

It’s also why Fisk was eager to work with director Josh Safdie on his latest film, “Marty Supreme.”

“As you get older and the directors you work with are getting older, there aren’t as many projects, so you’re hoping to tap into the younger talent,” Fisk said. In Safdie, Fisk found a new collaborator who reminded him of the directors he started with 50 years ago. “His whole being is into making films, and I love that passion and enthusiasm, because that’s what I’m like when I’m working. When a film comes up, everything else disappears, and it’s tunnel vision.”

Fisk would need that sense of passion and focus for “Marty Supreme,” a movie that required him to meticulously recreate the New York City of 75 years ago — everything from Lower East Side tenements and shops to a Fifth Avenue mansion, bowling alley, table tennis parlor, gas station, rural farmhouse, Broadway theatre, and more. And that’s not even mentioning the international locations like London hotels, Wembley Arena, and a Japanese ping pong match.

The fact that Fisk knew virtually nothing about the sport around which “Marty Supreme” revolved required the kind of deep research dive that he has always loved. One of his most impressive sets is Lawrence’s table tennis club, which began with a real building Fisk used as a reference point. “I learned that the city tax people had taken pictures of every building in New York, and with Josh’s help, I found that building, but it had been torn down,” Fisk said. He enlisted the aid of Safdie’s wife and executive producer, Sara Rossein, who led a research team that found original blueprints of the building that helped Fisk recreate the building level by level.

“Then Sara found some pictures from a photo shoot a magazine did there, and I really got an idea of the place,” Fisk said. “Later, she found a 16mm film of two people playing ping pong at Lawrence’s, and I was able to see the colors.” Once Fisk had created his designs for the club, he had to find a building to put it in, no small task since Safdie’s ambitions for the set — and for the film as a whole — kept expanding. “If I would say 10 tables, Josh would say 15. If I would say 15, he would say 20. He always wanted things bigger than what we had done.”

Safdie’s voracious appetite for broadening the film’s scope and cramming it with as many details as possible created challenges for Fisk, but also major pleasures. “There was such a great variety of locations, and as a designer, you get excited every time you present a new set to a director,” Fisk said. “I was getting excited every day.” One thing that particularly excited him was turning back the clock for exteriors on New York’s Lower East Side, where the tight shooting schedule often required the art department to transform locations as quickly as possible.

“We had so much to cover up there,” Fisk said. “The Lower East Side doesn’t look anything like it did because all the storefronts have been modernized — not just what’s in the windows, but the glass.” Fisk relied on a team of scenic artists who created period signs and awnings and modular tenement fronts that could be placed in front of contemporary buildings in record time, a necessity since often they had to be in and out of locations in the same day. “We’d set them up on the sidewalk and start hanging the signs, and pretty soon it looked like a fifties neighborhood.”

Timothee Chalamet and director Josh Safdie on setCourtesy Everett Collection

One way that Fisk maximized his resources on the film’s pace was by trying to find as many locations and build as many sets as possible in close proximity in order to save time on company moves. When the production had to travel upstate to shoot in a bowling alley, for example, Fisk also built the set for the gas station scene there in order to avoid wasting any time. As the shoot progressed, that time became more and more precious.

“We were supposed to have three days in the bowling alley, and it got cut down to one, because as you get further along in the film, the money gets thinner and you have producers saying, ‘Josh, can you cut it down?'” Fisk said. Even with only one day, however, Fisk and his team were able to take away everything that had accumulated in the bowling alley over the last 50 years and restore it to its vintage look. “It hadn’t really changed that much since 1954, and everything worked, so that was fun. We could have actually bowled while we were there, but we never did.”

Fisk’s department built and installed an exterior for the bowling alley that was never seen on camera, because the production was moving so quickly, Safdie didn’t have time to shoot it. For Fisk, however, nothing is truly wasted because he feels that even the designs that don’t make it onscreen seep into the DNA of the movie and inform the performances. “I think actors can get lost in the moment easier,” Fisk said of productions where everything is built in as much detail as possible. “I’m married to an actor [Sissy Spacek], so I think about that a lot. I like, when creating a world, to treat it like a documentary. It’s fun to suddenly transport myself and the actors back in time.”

Although Fisk always knows some of his designs won’t make it into the finished film, he never knows which sets or details will be cut, so he remains ever vigilant. “You can’t ever let up,” he said. “If you ease up, you’re going to be embarrassed or regret it for the rest of your career. ‘If only I hadn’t gone for that coffee, or hadn’t taken a break.’ When I started in the ’70s, there was no such thing as breaks, and Josh promotes that same kind of energy. That’s what I loved about this film.”