128 mins |
Rated
Not Rated
Directed by Alex Ross Perry
Starring Joe Keery, Michael Esper, Mark Ibold, Kathryn Gallagher, Stephen Malkmus, Scott Kannberg, Bob Nastanovich, Steve West, Jason Schwartzman
An examination of the iconic 90s indie band, “Pavements” appears to be just another music documentary, until it doesn't. A prismatic, narrative, scripted, documentary, musical, metatextual hybrid, the film intimately shows the band preparing for their sold-out 2022 reunion tour while simultaneously tracking the preparations for a musical based on their songs, a museum devoted to their history and a big-budget Hollywood biopic inspired by their saga as the most important band of a generation.
Director’s Statement
The music documentary has run out of gas. The musician biopic seems doomed to be a part of our lives forever, the lowest form of highbrow storytelling. But I also, against my better judgement, love all of these movies that are never very good, and rarely qualify as cinema. I love-to-hate cliche storytelling in phoney baloney biopics. I will watch any archival documentary that invites me to revel in the aesthetics of a bygone era that I miss dearly. I love musicals, but I'm skeptical and curious about the ongoing cultural project of repurposing bands we love and their catalogues for parallel mediums. With Pavements, I wanted to explore my dubious passion for all of this, and make a movie in a style of directing that was devoid of the pressure of "the shot" or "the take."
My goal was to not direct scenes or shots, but entire experiences and allow them to be documented naturally - the opening of a museum, opening night of a musical - as a means of creating storytelling that plays out in public, but is all being done for a movie. Only the nonsense biopic scenes would be filmed "normally" but true to that genre of film, the images would be unremarkable, and the coverage would be endlessly traditional. Pavements is 4 or 5 films rolled into one, because I wish that all musical biopics and standard-issue documentaries were 30 minutes long. I'd watch more of them that way.
There has never been a band like Pavement, and I hope there has never been a film like Pavements. It both is, and is not. It presupposes that an iconic band are deserving of all the cultural victories typically afforded much more financially successful artists. But what I learned making the museum and the musical, and thus the film, is that Pavement are deserving of these tributes. It is time to ask questions about the way stories about musicians are told and sold, and for us as the audience to demand more innovation in our biographical portraits.
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An examination of the iconic 90s indie band, “Pavements” appears to be just another music documentary, until it doesn't. A prismatic, narrative, scripted, documentary, musical, metatextual hybrid, the film intimately shows the band preparing for their sold-out 2022 reunion tour while simultaneously tracking the preparations for a musical based on their songs, a museum devoted to their history and a big-budget Hollywood biopic inspired by their saga as the most important band of a generation.
Director’s Statement
The music documentary has run out of gas. The musician biopic seems doomed to be a part of our lives forever, the lowest form of highbrow storytelling. But I also, against my better judgement, love all of these movies that are never very good, and rarely qualify as cinema. I love-to-hate cliche storytelling in phoney baloney biopics. I will watch any archival documentary that invites me to revel in the aesthetics of a bygone era that I miss dearly. I love musicals, but I'm skeptical and curious about the ongoing cultural project of repurposing bands we love and their catalogues for parallel mediums. With Pavements, I wanted to explore my dubious passion for all of this, and make a movie in a style of directing that was devoid of the pressure of "the shot" or "the take."
My goal was to not direct scenes or shots, but entire experiences and allow them to be documented naturally - the opening of a museum, opening night of a musical - as a means of creating storytelling that plays out in public, but is all being done for a movie. Only the nonsense biopic scenes would be filmed "normally" but true to that genre of film, the images would be unremarkable, and the coverage would be endlessly traditional. Pavements is 4 or 5 films rolled into one, because I wish that all musical biopics and standard-issue documentaries were 30 minutes long. I'd watch more of them that way.
There has never been a band like Pavement, and I hope there has never been a film like Pavements. It both is, and is not. It presupposes that an iconic band are deserving of all the cultural victories typically afforded much more financially successful artists. But what I learned making the museum and the musical, and thus the film, is that Pavement are deserving of these tributes. It is time to ask questions about the way stories about musicians are told and sold, and for us as the audience to demand more innovation in our biographical portraits.
