The “Marty Supreme” Oscar campaign is off to a wild start — and it looks like the next few months are going to be pretty entertaining for all of us.
There’s the film’s lead, and apparent Oscar frontrunner, Timothée Chalamet, posting a bizarre video on social media featuring pumpkin-headed figures playing ping-pong while “I am the clit commander” blares in the background — not to mention his recent acceptance of the “White Boy of the Year” award on a podcast.
Meanwhile, Gwyneth Paltrow keeps dishing about her “palatable” sex scenes in the film, and how kissing Chalamet felt like “tongue choreography,” while also admitting she had no idea who he was before working with him on ‘Marty.’
Then there’s Kevin O’Leary, who plays Paltrow’s husband in the film and claims the production wasted millions by hiring human extras — money he believes could have been saved by using AI-generated stand-ins.
“Almost every scene had as many as 150 extras,” O’Leary told World of Travel in an interview. “Those people had to stay awake for 18 hours, fully dressed, moving around in the background — not even always visible on camera — and it cost millions of dollars to do that.”
The investor-turned-actor argued that the expense is outdated when artificial intelligence can easily create realistic background characters. “Why couldn’t you just use AI agents in their place?” he said. “They’re not the main actors; they’re only there visually. That same director, instead of spending $90 million, could have spent $35 million and made two movies.”
O’Leary even pointed to an infamous digital performer as an example: “Tilly Norwell is an actor who’s burst onto the scene — she’s 100 percent AI. She doesn’t exist, but she’s a great actress. She can appear at any age, she doesn’t need to eat, and she works 24 hours a day. The union is going out of their minds. I’d argue, for the sake of art, you should allow it in certain cases — and extras are a great use case. You can’t tell the difference. Just put 100 Tilly Norwells in there and you’re good.”
I haven’t even seen “Marty Supreme” yet, but the cast’s off-screen antics have already made it one of the most entertaining campaigns of the year.
The short version: "Woman Unknown" was a compromise. The jury deadlocked over "Possible Love" and "NAZA," not able to com to terms, fell back on their #3, May el-Toukhy's film.