As the Marty tornado spun around the globe, I witnessed one stop at Airbnb’s Marty Supreme Invitational—probably the most obvious activations, but still cool nonetheless. Instead of lording in the VIP balcony with his cast members and friends like his frequent collaborator Aidan Zamiri, Chalamet immediately came downstairs to get in the middle of the fray and emcee the remainder of the tournament, while the ping-pong goons remained at their perch. (“These guys are so seriously in character, it’s nuts!!” Luke Manley, the internet personality who plays Marty’s friend Dion, yelled to me as he and Koto Kawaguchi, who plays Marty’s nemesis, tried and failed to get the attention of one of the Pong-Men.)

“It feels like we’re doing something which is genuinely new and fresh—whenever we make anything, the intention is always about doing something that feels disruptive in some way,” Zamiri, who directs some of Chalamet’s content such as the initial Marty video, told me later. “It’s never about trying to get the most eyes on it, it’s about finding the most effective way to communicate an idea or a feeling, it’s about authorship. Because of this, I think the stuff we’ve made together defies the rules or expectations of how “promotion” normally goes. He’s a force of nature, and the reason any of this happens is because of Timothée’s driving force and limitless creativity.”

Eventually Koto followed Chalamet downstairs, where life imitated art as he found himself playing for Team Marty in the semifinal and final matches, as Timothée sipped on a cup of red wine and nodded along to Brat cuts, hyping it up. “Sorry, I’m a theater boy,” he joked after instructing the DJ to set the mood with “The Final Countdown.”

Safdie, ever committed to keeping it real, confessed to me that if he was from this culture, he might look at a movie like the one he just made with a raised eyebrow. But throughout the room the temperature of everyone I talked to from the ping-pong community was one of appreciation for Chalamet, Safdie and the movie for shining a respectful spotlight on the culture. David Silberman, who owns Ping Pod, told me Safdie and Chalamet would come into his space to practice and train in the lead-up to production, while Blu, a co-owner of Bounce who helped put on the event, described them as being super collaborative and deeply in tune with the sport and the people who play it. A more basic approach would’ve been to render the gym in the 1950s likeness of the movie, but appealing to the contemporary aesthetic and feel of the sport felt more authentic.