The TED talk that put writer Pico Iyer in “Marty Supreme”

0:00This message comes from Intuit TurboTax. With TurboTax expert full service, match with a dedicated expert who will do your taxes for you from start to finish, getting you every dollar you deserve. It's that easy. Visit TurboTax.com to match with an expert today. Hey, it's Manoush Zomorodi, host of NPR's TED Radio Hour. I love going to the movies. And a few weeks back, I went to see Marty Supreme. That's the film starring Timothee Chalamet as a table tennis champion that's set in the 1950s. But I'm telling you, this game, it fills stadiums overseas. So I'm watching this movie, right? And I do a big double take when I saw who was starring as the head of the global table tennis association in the movie.

0:52You're Ron Seppi, right? Sorry, could you hold for a moment? You don't mind? It's a TED speaker who has been on our show numerous times. So good to see you again, Manoush. Hey, Pico. Writer Pico Ayer. I am finding this whole exchange really offensive. You're offended? I am offended. Not an actor. Pico writes about travel and so much more. He's been on the show talking about the day he lost everything, his house, every possession in a fire. and how that experience led him to become the soulful explorer that he is. But yes, Pico is also really big into table tennis. He even gave a TED Talk about it.

1:32Which brings us back to the movie and the story of how Pico Ayer was cast in Marty Supreme. Tell me the story of how this came to be. Well, Manoush, I was as surprised as you were because I've never acted in my life. I know nothing about that world, but it came about through a TED Talk. The director of Marty Supreme, Josh Safdie, saw me give a talk from six years ago about ping pong as a guide to life. And since the film had to do with ping pong, and since I seemed so different from the vision that Marty was embodying at the center of the film, he realized that I might be well suited to playing a stuffy official.

2:13And I tried hard to get out of it, But I think he was very determined that I should play that part. And so it turned out to be a great adventure for me. Wait, wait. Why did you try to get out of it? You weren't like, Hollywood, here I come. You're not a flashy guy, so maybe not. Well, I knew how hard work it would be. And I just have no experience. I was keenly aware. I've never even acted in a high school play or one 30-second video or anything. On the other hand, I think because the director had seen me on the TED stage, He knew that maybe I could speak to cameras a little and wouldn't be daunted by crowds.

2:47So that was an advantage. And also my schedule was very complicated, but they actually rearranged the whole schedule to accommodate me. So then I knew I couldn't say no. Wow. So, I mean, the thing about your TED Talk, let's talk about that, why you know about ping pong, table tennis, whatever you want to call it. It's very near and dear to your heart. It's been a very big part of this chapter in your life. Can you tell us about that? Yes, I've been playing ping pong since I was a little boy. But the last 24 years here in suburban Japan, three times a week, I play with my mostly elderly neighbors.

3:23And the great surprise when I began playing was we only play doubles. We change partners every five minutes. So if you happen to win at one moment, you're likely to lose six minutes later. We keep track of the scores, of course, so that it'll be exciting, but nobody keeps track of who's winning the games. And we pay best of two. So quite often there's no winner or loser. And what I gradually learned was that the whole point of this exercise is to ensure that there are no losers and everybody feels like a winner. And so every night I was playing last night, when I come home and my wife says, how was it?

3:59I say, fantastic. I have no idea whether I've won or lost. I just know I've had a good time, and everybody else in the club would come up with the same answer. So it's exactly the opposite of the furious winner-takes-all individualism that Marty represents in the film. In Japan, I'm encouraged to believe that really the point of a game is to make as many people as possible around you feel that they are winners. So you're not careening up and down as an individual might, but you're part of a regular, steady chorus. The most skillful players in our club deploy their skills to turn a 9-1 lead for their team into a 9-9 game in which everybody is intensely involved.

4:48And my friend who hits these high, looping lobs that smaller players flail at and miss, Well, he wins a lot of points, but I think he's thought of as a loser. In Japan, a game of ping pong is really like an act of love. You're learning how to play with somebody rather than against her. Yeah, so when you first read the script, because the movie, you know, for those who haven't seen it, is very much about this young man who is desperate to win, to be the champion. It really is the antithesis of what you describe in the talk. Exactly. And I think in many ways, the film is almost a questioning of the American dream.

5:33I do believe that America is still a land of opportunity in the way that my native Britain and Japan are not. But the shadow side of that is pursuing your dream means perhaps trampling over the dreams of everybody else. And I think one of the fascinating things about this film is that it raises so many questions. I've been surprised that many of my friends have got in touch with me and said, Pico, we were so delighted to see you play a villain, this joyless figure standing in the way of a young man with a dream. And as many friends have got in touch with me and said, Pico, we're so thrilled that you are the hero of this film, the voice of decency and sanity in the face of this selfish, ruthless young guy.

6:15And so I think the film really presents America within a larger global context. And as you were suggesting, I grew up in England, as I say, I live in Japan, and neither of them have the same sense of the importance of ambition as America does, which is good and bad, perhaps. I mean, I love that idea that you can be playing the same game and having an absolutely completely different experience of it depending on your cultural reference points, on the values that have been instilled in you, on what you've been told your goal is or if you've been told there is no goal other than to be in the moment and experiencing the thing you are doing.

6:58It's a really, really important reminder. Do you think that the film captured that as much as you did in your TED Talk? I think it hints at it because, as you know, Marty's main adversary is a Japanese person who seems very unemotional, very stoical, doesn't register any emotion when he wins or when he loses. And he probably comes from that background in Japan whereby the only way to be a loser is to think too much about winning. and Marty scores wonderful victories here and there but what is the cost of that victory and what is he losing in terms of his soul? So I think that's an undercurrent in the film and it struck me when I was watching the film.

7:43It's set in 1952, as you know, and in some ways that was when the American Empire was at its peak. America had just helped win the war. They'd helped to revive Japan with the occupation. The Marshall Plan had helped to rebuild Europe. So America was running high. And yet 1952 is also the year when in Korea, the war was coming to a stalemate. America wasn't winning. McCarthyism was spreading across the country. And so maybe it was the moment when actually America was falling from its peak, even though it was sitting at the top of the world. And I don't know how much that was in the minds of the filmmakers as they were writing it, but it certainly gives this added dimension.

8:24And one thing I've been thinking about since I saw the film was how much it might apply to America today, because we're hearing a lot about losers today. We're meeting books with titles like Winner Takes All, and we're all painfully aware that America is more divided than ever before, perhaps because of this sense that some people are hell belt on winning, and it leaves most of the rest of us as losers. The binary that there is right now. The binary. And of course, Japan is the opposite. It's a very harmonious society because of the notion that you're part of a chorus. Your aim is not to stand out, not to be ahead of others, but to play your part within an orchestra to create this beautiful melody and harmony.

9:08So there's much to be said for both sides in both parts of the world, but it's an interesting dynamic. Well, the irony that also this movie is up to win a lot of Oscars, Oscar awards. But I'm more interested in asking you about the process of being in the film. What was that? I mean, what was it like? Like I know you as a writer and I know you as someone who when you perform, I suppose, on the TED stage, you're speaking from your ideas and your thoughts. How did it feel to transform yourself into someone who was essentially upholding the rule of law for the world of tabletop? It was like a journey to a foreign country.

9:54I knew in advance this would be going into a world I've never been to before. and what made it interesting in part was, as you say, I hope I was playing somebody very different from myself. If I'd been playing a version of Pico Aya, it wouldn't have been hard and it wouldn't have been interesting, but I'm playing this constantly angry, joyless, haughty soul and I thought, well, that'll be interesting to see what I can bring out of myself that resembles that. It was very, very hard work, much harder even than I'd imagined. Really? Oh, my goodness. It made me happy by comparison to go back to my desk where I just write for eight hours a day because many in this crew were putting in 23-hour days.

10:33We were filming at four in the morning, at times having started at lunchtime. And even as I was feeling sorry for myself, everybody else, especially the director and Timothee Chalamet, were working round the clock. And as soon as they stopped, Timothee Chalamet had a series of other engagements because his film was up for the Academy Award last year, A Complete Unknown, in which he was playing Bob Dylan. But I think part of what was interesting about this film was that almost all the scenes in which I was acting were completely improvised and unscripted. So I spent a lot of weeks in advance diligently learning my lines for every scene.

11:08And then when my first scene came up, it was late at night, I was suddenly whisked off to a little room, all kinds of cameras began to descend upon me. Suddenly, Timothee Chalamet walked into the room and we started shouting at one another. I'm good for table tennis, Mr. Seth. Appeal to the USTTA, maybe they can find something better. The USTTA is two guys and a desk. It doesn't exist. No, that's not my problem. It is your problem. I want to stay where you're staying. That's what I need. I am finding this whole exchange really offensive. You're offended? I am offended. I'm offended. You're making your star player huddle in a rat's ass.

11:40I'm so sorry for that interruption. He was delivering lines very different than the ones I'd been prepared for. So I had to deliver equally ad-libbed and spontaneous lines. And that was the case with every scene. And I think it was a way to give this feeling of gritty, unrehearsed, often messy real life. So it was very different. I'd imagined directors sitting placidly in a video village following things on monitors. And there was no blocking. There were no rehearsals. There were no marks on which I had to stand. There was a handheld camera circling me like a panther. And every moment was fresh.

12:19And I think one reason that the director chooses to work with non-actors like myself is to keep the professional actors like Mr. Chalamet alive too, because he knew that he was working with a first-timer, with an amateur, and so he couldn't take any shortcuts or make any assumptions. So the whole thing was radically different in that way from what I'd expected. And because maybe of my background on the TED stage, I had been asked to prepare quite a long speech to deliver to a big crowd. And as it turned out, we never had time even to shoot that scene. So I spent weeks learning my lines, but they were never used.

12:56And then later in Japan, suddenly they turned to me and said, we want you to go up to a mic and speak to this large crowd and make up some words right now. So there I had to improvise a speech in front of a big audience. And again, maybe my work would help me with that. And maybe that's why they knew that I wouldn't be completely daunted by that. But it was interesting that it was not as programmed at all as I had imagined. Yeah, fascinating. I, of course, love, as someone who writes, you know, almost poetry and prose about travel and how it changes the soul, that you felt that that's what it did to you.

13:37Does that mean you'll do it again, Pico? Can we expect to see you on the silver screen again? Did you get the bug? I don't think many other directors are so keen to work with non-actors. Josh Safdie is unusual in that regard. And I'm not sure how many other directors are keen to have an aged, hairless ping pong player and writer defacing their sets. But who knows what the future would bring. And what about the gang over at the senior center where you play ping pong in Japan? What did they think? So the film hasn't actually arrived in Japan yet. So you're still incognito. Yes, exactly so. I think it's going to be a big thing here because ping pong is still a central game.

14:21And most of the friends that I play with learned in school and played a lot when they were young, sometimes even before World War II, so 75 years ago. My friends are often in their 80s. So the film arrives exactly at the same time as the Academy Awards. and I think a lot of them are going to see it and they're going to be as surprised as you were when they see their haggard old friend suddenly appearing on the screen. I love it. You've got a big month ahead. Thank you so much for making time for us. Oh, it's always such a delight, Manoush. Thank you. That was author Pico Iyer. His most recent book is called A Flame, Learning from Silence.

15:00You can hear his many talks at TED.com. A special thanks as always to our Plus listeners for supporting the show. If you're not a member of NPR Plus yet and you want to support public radio, you can go to plus.npr.org. You will get ad-free listening and regular bonus episodes like this one. And of course, our eternal gratitude. This episode was produced by Matthew Cloutier and edited by James De La Housie. Our partner at NPR Plus is Chow 2. A new episode of TED Radio Hour will be out on Friday. I'm Manoush Zomoroni, and I will talk to you then.

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