Josh Safdie Says ‘Marty Supreme’ Originally Ended With Kevin O’Leary As A Vampire Who Bites Timothée Chalamet

Some scenes can make or break a film; some of those ideas get scrapped or whittled down through the creative process, during filming, or in the editing stage. Well, there was one shocking element of Josh Safdie‘s Oscar contender “Marty Supreme” that didn’t make the final version: Kevin O’Leary‘s character happened to be a vampire in a different ending, biting Timothée Chalamet‘s Marty with him in old age makeup during the 1980s.

Speaking with fellow filmmaker Sean Baker (“Anora”) on a recent episode of the A24 podcast, who oddly enough brought up “vampires,” only for Safdie to bring up one of his original ideas for the film, which included an original ending with Marty going with his granddaughter to a concern in the 1980s, as Mr. Wonderful (O’Leary) comes up behind him and bites him as a vampire.

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“You’re on his eyes, we built the prosthetic for Timmy and everything, and Mr. Wonderful shows up behind him and takes a bite out of his neck, and that was the last thing in the movie,” Safdie revealed of his cut vampire ending for “Marty Supreme” to Baker.

Wild to imagine the movie ending like that, with a vampire’s bite, right? We have to imagine this is possibly an homage to films such as Tony Scott‘s “The Hunger or Joel Schumacher‘s “The Lost Boys,” which featured vampires prowling concerts/clubs in the 1980s (the latter film having the head vampire running a video store and trying to date the main character’s mother).

Given the mindset of Safdie wanting to include elements from that decade, including music that appears in “Marty Supreme” despite the 1950s-setting, it wouldn’t be all that surprising to have a vampire show up as wacky as it might have been for that specific story.

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Anyway, you can listen/watch that full exchange between Safdie and Baker below, in that podcast episode.