Curtain opens, introduction of film through personal anecdote
I was one of those lucky enough to start following Pavement early in their career due to a college girlfriend with better musical taste than I had at the time. I managed to see them play live quite a bit during their initial run, so my perception of the band might be slightly different than some. Experiencing their career in real time and having opportunities throughout the years to chat with members after shows, or when I ran into them elsewhere, might give me a broader perspective than most, simply due to timing.* Could anyone in the band pick me out of a lineup today? Absolutely not. I just happen to know they are one of the best bands in the world while absolutely understanding they are also just a group of guys making sounds the only way they know how, and happened to get reasonably famous while doing so. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s open the review and ask the obvious question.
The obvious question
The Pavement documentary Slow Century already exists and since it was put together near the end of the group’s initial run with the band’s blessing and reasonable involvement, it pretty accurately captured the band’s history when they were an active, ongoing concern. So why do we need another Pavement documentary?
The answer
Alex Ross Perry’s new Pavements movie is not a documentary, but it does an excellent job of capturing the public’s fractured view of the band through various prisms and then filtering through the director’s own objectives. It uses the pseudo-documentary format to explore a wide variety of Perry’s personal interests, but it also pulls off the neat trick of showing us all the different things Pavement has become to different audiences at different times.
Early on the movie states that when the band broke up in 2000, it wasn’t a really big deal at the time, but by the time they reunited 10 years later their profile had grown into legendary status by many who had never had a chance to experience the band the first time around. And then between 2017 and 2020, a late B-side from the band suddenly became first their most-played song on Spotify and then a TikTok viral phenom.
Pavements shows us all these impressions of the group, often in entirely fictional or carefully fabricated settings, simultaneously; archival artifacts with replicas in a pop-up museum dedicated to Pavement, staging a jukebox musical of their material, and retelling the band’s history using well-known actors reducing the band to the historical stereotypes and press cliches shot through the lens of a Bohemian Rhapsody-like biopic.**
Untangling the multiple, untrustworthy perspectives
Does this sound incredibly or overly complicated and twisted and seemingly impossible to navigate? Does Pavements, at times, come across as Perry trying to pull off some of these off-the-wall stunts just to see if he could? While I know that last point to be true—Perry has done a slew of open interviews that clearly outline what he was trying to accomplish—it is an easily watchable and digestible film, while also taking a deep dive into Perry’s own creative process and urges to see seemingly impossible scenarios through to the end. Since the band has undergone several evolutions in how the general public perceived them over the years, certain elements of the film are used to accentuate these perceptions and show the distance between fact and fantasy.
Perspective #1
Pavement’s frontman Stephen Malkmus has justifiably been the center of attention throughout the band’s career. In the 1990s, the mirage of Pavement being super-smart slackers who managed to create amazing music almost accidentally took hold and has only grown as the band/s musical influence became one of the iconic cornerstones of what we used to call indie rock. This version of the band is on full display in the fake Range Life biopic that lives within the confines of Pavements. It hilariously adheres to the tropes abused by most movies of this ilk, at times deliciously puncturing the illusion by running concurrent footage of actual events with completely different band reactions.
Perspective #2
Pavement’s goofier side, the one that spurred unexpected early “hits” and ultimately turned the group into a TikTok meme, is captured in the Slanted! Enchanted! jukebox musical. Unlike Range Life, which exists only as snippets (despite Pavements covering its “premier," complete with band and director Q&A), Slanted! Enchanted! Was performed in full a few times for illusion in Pavements. Ironically, now that Pavements is out and people have seen it, the fake musical within is now being discussed for a potential revival and longer run. But this is the piece of the movie that really recognizes the re-contextualization of the band in younger (or newer) fan’s eyes.
Perspective #3
Pavement’s (mostly) actual history is handled primarily through the blink-and-you-missed-it run of the Pavement pop-up museum Perry and his crew created, alongside archival footage from the past mixed with new footage of the band preparing for their 2022 reunion tour (and reacting to the various other Perry stunts that form the framework of the film). These snippets are the segments of the movie that shows the band as I recognize them. It is here that Malkmus’ impish smile is most present.*** Co-founder Scott “Spiral Stairs” Kannberg is incredibly approachable and friendly. Bassist Mark Ibold beams at the young actors giving their all to a fake musical. Drummer Steve West remains a man of few public words. And multi-instrumentalist Bob Nastanovich comes across as, well, the dude everyone wants to be around because there isn’t an unlikable cell in his body. Most of all though? They all appear comfortable and happy and finally in a position to enjoy their legacy instead of feeling flummoxed or burdened by it.
Perspectives #1-3, closing orchestral cue
All this fits comfortably within the framework Perry has set up. It doesn’t matter that much of the original motivation for that framework was built on Perry’s own creative interests, using the band Pavement as a vehicle, to fulfill his more personal pursuits. As the fictional and real bounce back and forth and off each other throughout the movie, the friction between those things created an emotional truth for me. And isn’t that kind of the whole point?
Pavements opens a run at The Music Box Theatre starting Friday, June 13. Get your tickets now!
Post-credits, close curtain
This is my take on the film. As I said earlier, Perry has been rather open in interviews promoting the film, so I have avoided much of the mechanics and motivations he’s made clear. If you’ve seen the film and want all your questions answered, I recommend you check out his entire recent conversation with The Big Picture (starting at the 1:02 hour mark), since it covers pretty much every base you could imagine.
And if you want to do a real deep dive, Revolutions Per Movie did a weeklong series dedicated to Pavement, running through all things Pavements and Pavement-film related. You can start here with a conversation about Sow Century that sets up the week and work your way through the rest.
Finally, the soundtrack to Pavements mixes performances (and spoken words bits) from the movie and ended up being a pretty fun post-film listening experience for me. Give it a spin and see what it does for you.
Pavements (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) by Pavement
The footnotes
*The Midwest in general was gifted plenty of Pavement appearances since their longtime booking agent David Viecelli (a.k.a. Boche Billions has always been based in Chicago. Full disclosure: I once interviewed for a job at Billions, but I was not nearly cool enough. (I mean that in a complimentary fashion; I’ve always really liked Boche and trust I wouldn’t have been a fit.)
**By the way, it’s BIO-pick, not bi-AH-pick. Has been for decades, and I’m not sure what in the last couple of years changed that. Wait, maybe I do … could it be a generation of podcast hosts talking into a mic who realized they had never said the word out loud themselves? Seems as good an explanation as any.
***I still don’t understand people who view the man as inscrutable or impossibly haughty—he is literally just a guy who happens to be a very good songwriter and feels comfortable enjoying and exploring the things he enjoys from a confident perspective. It’s pretty simple.
