Marty Wolf

"You can take it from me. The truth? It's overrated."

- Marty Wolf

Martin "Marty" Wolf is the main antagonist of the 2002 comedy movie Big Fat Liar. He is the founder and former chairman of his studio Marty Wolf Pictures until the events of the film.

He was portrayed by Paul Giamatti, who also played Stan Beals in Warner Brothers' The Ant Bully, Aleksei Sytsevich/Rhino in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and Karl Hertz in Shoot 'Em Up.

Personality
Underneath his public persona as a well-known film producer, Marty Wolf is very selfish, greedy, deceitful, and manipulative in nature. He likes to lie a lot, thinking it can benefit him the most. He is also very abusive towards his employees as he treats them harshly and even fires several for stupid reasons, he even demoralizes one of his elderly employees Vince from going with his granddaughter to a birthday party. In fact, the closest thing to something Wolf genuinely cares about is (bizarrely) his stuffed chimp Mr. Funnybones. These traits are what led to his downfall in the end when he is exposed for stealing Jason Shepherd's paper to make his movie.

He is also very foolish and unintelligent, so he never seems to learn his lesson since he greatly underestimates Jason, despite being tricked by him multiple times.

History
Marty Wolf first appeared when Jason Shepherd (a pathological liar and the main protagonist of the film) demands a ride to his school so that he can turn in his writing assignment to pass English class after Jason came up with a creative story idea for his writing assignment which are based on all of his lies from his past. During the ride to his school, Jason confesses that he is a liar while telling Wolf that he got caught red handed by his teacher for lying about his assignment, to which Wolf admits that he is also a compulsive liar, but a more professional one. After stopping at Jason's school, Jason heads off, not knowing that he accidentally dropped his report on the limo. Upon seeing it, Wolf initially intends to call out to Jason to hand him back the paper, but upon seeing how very good after reading it, he decides to keep it. This puts Jason in trouble with his parents and his teacher Phyllis Caldwell, forcing him to fail English class and undergo summer school to repeat the entire English class. At the same time, Wolf was in town filming Whitaker and Fowl starring Jaleel White and a chicken.

Later on, Jason and his best friend Kaylee found out that Wolf has plagiarized Jason's paper and is now planning it to turn it into a film after seeing a movie trailer of it. Jason is outraged of the fact that Wolf plagiarized his story, but his parents refused to believe this due to their mistrust towards Jason over the incident. Deciding to take action and taking advantage of his parents' trip to the Grand Canyon, Jason decides to confront Wolf, so he arranges himself and Kaylee to fly to Los Angeles, where Wolf is preparing for production for his movie in his studio. After having Kaylee to trick Wolf's secretary Astrid Barker into letting Jason into Wolf's office, Jason tries to convince Wolf to return the stolen paper to him and call Jason's dad and confess to them that he stole it. However, rather than doing so, Marty instead purposefully burns the paper with one of his cigars and his alcohol (much to Jason's shock and anger). Marty Wolf then calls his head of security Malone to send up two security guards to escort Jason and Kaylee out of the building.

Angered by this turn of events, Jason and Kaylee plan to inconvenience Wolf until he agrees to fess up, and a limo driver named Frank Jackson helps them out, stating that he was once a struggling rising star until Wolf demoted him to being a driver. They do so by committing several pranks such as dying his skin blue upon dumping blue dye in his swimming pool, dying his hair orange by placing orange dye in his shampoo, and sticking his phone earpiece with instant krazy glue. They also tricked Wolf into going into a kid's birthday party that his stunt coordinator Vince wanted the day off for instead of the house of his boss Marcus Duncan (the president of the studios), and modifying his car's controls which leads to an incident resulting Wolf's car to be destroyed when he insults a monster truck driver named Masher after he was rear-ended into him by an old lady.

Despite this turn of events, Marty arrives at the premiere of Whitaker and Fowl where Marty will still not give in to Jason's demands. After a lot of people made a comment that Whitaker and Fowl did bad, Marty starts to lose support from Duncan, who states that Whitaker and Fowl costs the studio a lot of money and threatens to pull the production of Big Fat Liar. Jason then offers a deal to Wolf: he'll help him out in pulling the greenlight for the production if he gives the call to Jason's parents and confess to them about the report theft. Jason helps Wolf make an astounding speech that inspires Duncan to green-lit the movie production, but rather than calling Jason's parents, Wolf instead betrays Jason again by calling in Malone and his security guards, who orders Jason and Kaylee to be sent home in disgrace and that they never speak of this again.

Upset by this turn of events, Jason is about to accept defeat and is forced to call his parents to tell them the truth. Fortunately, Wolf's assistant Monty Kirkham arrives to help as she has grown tired of her boss' abusive and argumentative behavior and having learned of the theft. Arranging a meeting of several employees who were treated badly by Wolf, Jason, Kaylee and Monty concoct one final plan of revenge to expose Wolf of his true colors.

The next day, Wolf spent hours with a can of turpentine to get rid of the blue dye on his skin. He then heads to the studio to being his shooting of the movie, but his employees enact several mishaps to delay his arrival. As soon as Wolf finally arrives to the studio, he spots Jason, who has stolen his stuffed toy monkey Mr. Funnybones. After a chase across the studio, Marty finally recovers his toy monkey and taunts Jason for trying to make him confess about his theft, blurting out that he deliberately stole Jason's story and believing that no one has heard it. However, Marty is shocked to realize that several of his employees have recorded his confession with cameras from multiple angles, exposing him of his true colors to everyone in the studio (including Jason's parents, who were brought over to the studio by Frank). Disgusted by Marty's actions for all the trouble of stealing the idea of his movie from a 14-year-old boy, Duncan fires Marty by telling him that this is the end of the line for him. Jason thanks Marty for teaching him the importance of telling the truth. Enraged by his dismissal, Marty chases after him, but Jason jumps off the building to avoid him and land safely on the inflatable stunt mat. When Wolf shouts that they have a film to work on, everyone starts leaving in disgust. Wolf states that they can't turn their back on him and yells at them that they were all fired, but one person tells Marty that he sucks.

With Wolf's actions exposed to the public, Wolf was forced to declare bankruptcy by selling away his assets to avoid prison for his acts of theft and copyright infringement, resulting his studio to be shut down. Despite this, the production of Big Fat Liar continues on forward (even Frank becomes the starring actor of the new movie after being rehired by Duncan), proving to be an instant hit in the theaters. Jason is credited for writing the original story and Jason's parents and Mrs. Caldwell are proud of him.

In the final scene, Marty is now reduced as a birthday clown with Mr. Funnybones as his assistant. After being paid to attend a birthday party for a boy named Darren, Wolf is shocked to realize that Darren is the son of the Masher. The Masher orders Darren to show his move called the Nutcracker, and Darren charges at Wolf by striking him in the testicles, causing him to groan in pain.

Trivia

 * The blue dye was actually blue tattoo ink that was sprayed in several layers on his body occasionally throughout the day to keep it topped up. According to Paul Giamatti, it was fairly easy to apply, but was a bit more difficult to get off, particularly his feet, for some reason. They stayed blue for several months.
 * Wolf is an example what Jason would have become if he did not learn the importance of honesty.
 * Peter MacNicol and Bradley Whitford were both considered for the role of Wolf.