‘Pavements’ Review: Alex Ross Perry Blends Fact, Fiction, and Trolling with Hilarious Experimental Music-Doc
Alex Ross Perry's successful voyeuristic style poured into his previous film, Her Smell, was sufficient to convince a casual moviegoer that the fictional band Something She was real. His latest feature, Pavements, an experimental documentary about the beloved ‘90s slacker band, Pavement, is a new level of trolling. While Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story was a direct attack on James Mangold's Walk the Line, Pavements is a three-way assault on post-modern musician-to-media institutions. By amalgamating a fake movie, a stage play, and a museum, Perry achieves the ultimate feat of having one's cake and eating it too.
Image copyright (©) Courtesy of Utopia
NR
Runtime: 2 Hrs and 8 Minutes
Production Companies: Matador Records, Pulse Films, Field Recordings
Distributor: Utopia
Director: Alex Ross Perry
Writers: Alex Ross Perry, Stephen Malkmus
Cast: Pavement, Zoe Lister-Jones, Michael Esper, Kathryn Gallagher, Joe Keery, Jason Schwartzman, Nat Wolff, Fred Hechinger, Logan Miller, Griffin Newman, Tim Heidecker
Release Date: N/A
During the reemergence of Pavement in 2022, director Alex Ross Perry decided to cash in on their comeback. Thus, he embarked on three separate Pavement-centric projects – a jukebox stage musical called Slanted Enchanted featuring Kathryn Gallagher (Jagged Little Pill), Michael Esper (Broadway Idiot), and actress/filmmaker Zoe Lister-Jones, Pavements 1933-2022: A Pavement Museum with never before seen notebooks and wardrobe from the band’s misadventures throughout the ‘90s, and lastly a Hollywood blockbuster biopic called Range Life starring Joe Keery as frontman Stephen Malkmus. Amid the production of all three projects, blurring the line between joke and sincerity, the film assembles archive footage of the band’s decade-spanning career and the days leading up to their first reunion show.
Before my NYFF press screening, I didn't know Pavement existed. Based on the archival footage amassed for this film, my ignorance is a compliment, for they're comfortable maintaining their indie status. It's reflected in the footage of Stephen Malkmus as a 20-something during the ‘90s and even now, as an experienced musician. Nevertheless, I’m sold on listening to their works based on how Perry's multilayered love for the band textured via committing to the bit (three bits, rather).
Perry mines great meta-humor by capitalizing on a band that doesn't care about capital. It’s the same kind of satirical irreverence an episode of Clerks: The Animated Series or Clone High would do. However, Perry presents this with ambition and intuitiveness, blending fact, fiction, sincerity, and sarcasm, intertwining the production of the respective projects while simultaneously unraveling Pavement’s career. Editor Robert Greene's dizzying split-screen footage framed the band’s on-the-whim artistry and easygoing nature via candid interviews, juxtaposed with the legitimate practices that go into the Slanted Enchanted musical, factors into the immensely clever farce.
The documentary is insanely funny, with some of the best humorous sections in the mockumentary-styled production of Range Life. Many of those moments involve Joe Keery portraying a fictionalized version of himself in a series of vignettes, venturing around New York in preparation for his role as Malkmus. His scenes are presented with a playful tone akin to This Is Spinal Tap, as they feel like a direct rebuke to actors who have employed method acting in biopics to secure an FYC campaign (Cc: Austin Butler, Jamie Foxx, Jim Carrey). Keery goes to such extreme, hilarious lengths that even when the joke feels worn out, his commitment to the bit garners a heavy laugh. Keery as Stephen Malkmus is a brilliant example of meta humor, enough to make me want to start an FYC campaign for him.
Logan Miller, Griffin Newman, Nat Wolff, and Fred Hechinger are added to the Range Life mix as the rest of Pavement, while Jason Schwartzman and Tim Heidecker portray their managers. It’s difficult to refrain from laughing at the interviews conducted behind the scenes, where seasoned comedians such as Heidecker and Newman candidly express their affection for the band. Even on the technical font with the faux Range Life scenes, meticulous details, such as the project being shot at Kodak and an FYC watermark appearing during the dramatized beats, elevate the comedy. That effort is also evident in the Slanted Enchanted scenes and the making of the Pavement Museum, but they’re not focused on as heavily as the faux movie. That said, it’s amusing to see it all come to fruition, blurring the lines of the joke. New-age bands like Soccer Mommy and Snail Mail performed at the Pavement Museum, and even I had FOMO.
These different projects show how the industry treats musicians with a capitalistic mindset, sometimes burying their legacy. Most of these sequences are juxtaposed with Pavement footage. For uninformed viewers like myself, you get a feel of not necessarily who this band was, but what they represented. One genius example is a Range Life scene that dramatizes a major moment in Pavement's history when they were pelted with mud bombs at Lollapalooza ‘95. The film treats it as a low point, as any other lazy formulaic movie of the same ilk would, but the archival footage shows the band vibing, celebrating a little. Perry's affection for the band takes a novel approach, as he's operating on a solid foundation of trolling.
Pavements is a joke that runs longer than necessary. By a certain point, we get it. The film pushes towards a two-hour runtime that is truly excessive. I get you have to package an entire decade of footage between the other contemporary things, and while you’re ready for the film to end, it continues for an encore that you know would be stronger if cut short. Perry and Greene attempt to examine the band's work and how they made music compared to other popular chart-toppers at the time, but there's not much conversation to be had. These guys were young weirdos against the mainstream establishment, who got out when they could and got back together with a mature sense of self (mostly the moody Malkmus) nearly 30 years later. But that is not a major negative, critical factor, as I had a blast the entire time and learned a lot.
In a perfect world, Alex Ross Perry's Pavements would be the final nail in the coffin for the institutions in which the entertainment industry produces content based on a musician's discography – whether it's the musician to jukebox Broadway play, music museums, or my least favorite, the movie biopic. Regardless, this experimental music documentary stomps the establishment by satirizing and honoring slacker bands within a fresh framework of sincerity that many others should strive to achieve.
