Blog 001 on my website Brucebradbury.com
Who doesn’t love a vacation in the first few weeks of the new year?!
My goal for 2026 is simple: get out of the house and explore the world. First stop? New York City! The big apple đ just a short plane ride away from the rolling white winter mountains and valleys in Vermont. It seems like an entirely different universe than the rural setting of Burlington, VT of which I’ve grown accustomed. I’m wintering in New England this year. Burlington is a college town of barely 50,000 situated on Lake Champlain.
For a post on Burlington, maybe in the future.. but this blog is about my travels to NYC!
2 hour plane ride to NYC, here I come..
And you reader? You’ve stumbled on my first ever blog post! Good morning âïž (If it’s morning where you are). Good evening (if it’s evening where you are). Regardless of the the time, grab a cup of coffee and prepare. You are about to dive in to stories from my travels! To learn more about who I am, I’m sure I’ll make an introduction post soon. Let’s get into it!
I wanted to travel more this year. In 2026, I want to get out of the house more and experience different places. I’m not overly picky, and I would visit the city or the mountains. I don’t have a particular preference. In nature, you can take in the feats of geology. In the city, you can take in feats of humanity. I find it fascinating to visit new spots, chat with local people and spend some time wandering new streets. West 48th St, West 49th, 50th..
As I walk from the Regal Town Square at West 42nd and 8th ave, I’m thinking of the movie I just watched. In New York City, I just watched Marty Supreme. I have been a fan of the Safdie Brothers work since seeing Uncut Gems a few years ago. This movie, though, came onto my radar a few months ago when I started seeing marketing for Marty Supreme on instagram.
The big trendsetting marketing piece that I initially saw was the ‘leaked’ zoom marketing meeting. In the meeting, TimothĂ©e Chalamet shares a moment of creative genius: The whole Marty Supreme marketing campaign should hinge on the color Orange. Burnt orange, Intense orange. I looked it up, the Hex code for the color he presented is # FF4500, for anyone curious.
The faked zoom call quickly became a cultural moment, and many online were comparing Tim to a past Shia Labaouf, with his crazy ‘locked in’ attitude during the call. But what many call crazy, I would call passion. Dedication. Obsession and persistence approaching mastery. I have to agree that the performance was spectacular.
Timothée Chalamet delivered not only the lines, but the soul of a man dedicated to an idea of achieving greatness in his particular field. The movie, ultimately, is about pursuit of a dream and being the greatest. The movie was really well made for putting the viewer in the intensity of that pursuit. It also did a good job of fleshing out each characters motivations. We follow Marty throughout the film, But I was able to feel the complex motivations of Kay, Wally and Fran as well.
I love to go into movies blind, so I had not seen much about who was in Marty Supreme or what it was about. I didn’t realize the amount of notables in the cast, with David Mamet being the most surprising for me! [[Glengarry Glen Ross]] is a favorite old movie of mine, a script that at one point in High school, I studied and memorized some monologues out of. I didn’t know it at the time in High school, but “Always be closing” would become a more prominent part of my life, as I main-staged as a real estate agent from age 21-24. Now, I just sold a house in Portland last fall, and I have no more business on the books. In my personal life, I’ve decided to spend the winter in Vermont, and give New England a try. The closing will come more in the spring for me, as I try for a career pivot. I am not quite sure what yet, but like Marty, I feel emboldened to give 110%.
Another Mamet work that you may not have heard about is a one-act play called ‘Bobby Gould in Hell’ about a lawyer who finds himself in an interrogation room after his death: He must argue his case with an undertaker against being sent to hell. I know of this play because I got the extraordinary chance in high school to direct a one-act play.
In Senior year, our theater class divided 1/4th of the students out that wanted to direct, and the other 3/4th’s that wanted to act. I was able to direct and excited at the idea of putting on something sophisticated. I was hell-bent on the idea of finding a GREAT script to put on, not another one of those dumpy high school comedy one acts that they give to the theatre kids to have fun. This is what was running though my head, and my hands were running some of the scripts provided and also on the computer, combing though hundreds of options. In finally stumbled on Mamet!
My classmates did not enjoy this one act as much, though for the two actors I tapped to star in it, they felt challenged and felt the rewards of those challenges after the performance was said and done with. But throughout rehearsals, it was a difficult beast of twisting dialogue. Allow me to pick up the pieces in my memory, this was when I was 17 (As of writing, I’m now 25). The premise of the play is a lawyer arguing different cases in his life which deemed him unworthy of a good afterlife, and a lot of tricky language and turns are added to the conversation by our lead to try and confuse the undertaker that he is arguing his case against.
I digress, I don’t remember much about the play, only that we then performed those one-act plays to a circular audience, a novel idea that our theatre director, Rachel Harry, put together at the time to challenge us further. I filmed the performances for the school, and so I think I may be able to dig up an old recording. For the two friends and students who worked on the one-act that I chose, a serious piece of work, I commend you.
Another New York connection I am just now remembering.. This is in 2017, our theater teacher won the Tony Award for Education. I remember that year, our theater class went on a field trip to Portland because she was invited to the Oregon Arts Summit, where this famous playwright Tony Kushner was going to speak. The one thing I remembered is Tony gave a keynote, and then our teacher and class was invited to meet him. In his keynote, he briefly spoke about David Mamet and having worked with him briefly or something like that. It was a footnote to the talk that Tony gave, but the detail was interesting to me since I had just directed a one-act written by David Mamet at my high school. I got a change to ask Tony face to face, “What was it like to work with David Mamet?” With disdain in Tony Kushner’s voice, he said to me “David is an asshole”.
What a time to be alive! I stumbled into this award show hosted by some famous playwright I hadn’t heard of, only to get the chance to ask him a face to face question, and I brought up his mortal enemy! It was hilarious.
Still to this day, I haven’t had the chance to see or read any Tony Kushner anywhere. But Mamet? I’ve read a lot of Mamet, and studied how motivation can be expressed through character and dialogue. Could just be my bias but⊠Going back to the recent Josh Safdie work,
Marty seemed so very locked in to get everything he wanted, from his title as the worlds greatest table tennis player to Kevin O’leary’s wife (R.I.P Milton Rockwells’ marriage). This was a moment I found hilariously entertaining. In the movie, Marty tries to command a high level of professional respect: He is a world-class athlete. It does not matter if he is the only one that sees it right now, he is and will prove to everyone. And because he is world class, it is assumed he should already have the nicest stuff, like comfy accommodations and expensive dinners.
He acts as if he had already achieved greatness. At the beginning of my own career in business, I always encountered the phrase “Fake it until you make it.” This was not that, but something deeper. A confidence from Marty that inspired others to feel confident in the dream, too. For Marty, the confidence came from pure talent, and he was able to hold up his end of the bargain by providing that talent in matches. When Marty complained about his rubbish hotel accommodations while staying at the tournament to compete: He talked his way into a fancy hotel suite, and then later talked his way into meeting a famous Actress, Kay Stone (played by Gwyneth Paltrow). When Marty smooth talks his way onto a first class jet ride to JapanâŠ
One may initially think Marty is “faking it until he makes it”, but he does have raw talent and I believe he is instead following the next evolution of the concept: “Acting As If”. In order do great things, one must be great already. You are not going to get anywhere by asking permission, and you will not be backed up in your claim towards greatness unless you already possess the skills. For the initiated, the game is all about dedication to drive your craft forward. He’s not trying to appeal to the authority of the tournament host, some snobbish english gentleman. I respect Marty’s character in that he’s constantly pushing his dream forward.
The romance with Kay began with Marty overhearing in the hotel lobby that Kay was a famous actress from back in the day. Fast forward to room service, Marty had ordered two of everything and called Kay to invite her over. She was not interested at first, but Marty kept her talking and entertained her enough to make a connection. A powerful moment that some of you have seen in the trailers, where Kay is shitting on Marty’s dreams of being a world-class athlete. Trying to, more like. Her dreams of being a famous actress have faded (although, maybe she was once an extraordinary fame, we don’t get all the context as an audience). Marty does not need anyone to believe him, though.
“Let me ask you something. You make money with this little table tennis thing?” She asks condescendingly.
“Not yet,” Marty replies
“You have a job?”
“No,” Marty replies
“With the confidence that if I believe in myself the moneyâs gonna follow. Ultimately, my struggle isnât even about money.”
Now that I’ve found the script to Marty Supreme online, I’m looking forward to reading it!
Timothée Chalamet stood on top of the Las Vegas sphere in order to promote this movie. It has been everywhere online, and rumors say that Marty Supreme is gearing up to be the first movie that A24 has ever produced to surpass $100 million in Box office revenue. That is truly insane!
This was a film reportedly nearly a decade in the making for director Josh Safdie, and his first film without his brother, Benny. The two are carving out their own careers seperately, it seems.
I’m glad I got to take a trip down to the city to view this movie. I look forward to reading the Marty Supreme script as well, and perhaps taking a stab at the Uncut Gems script as well. For the next blog post, see you soon!