\n<\/p>\n
The Bob Dylan Center gathered some 6,000 items from the musician\u2019s archive in an Oklahoma museum<\/a>. Green Day\u2019s \u201cAmerican Idiot\u201d album was adapted into a Broadway show<\/a>. The Queen biopic \u201cBohemian Rhapsody\u201d won four Oscars and was nominated for best picture.<\/p>\n If these artists could burnish their legacies and become part of a wider cultural conversation outside of music, then why not Pavement, the beloved \u201990s indie-rock band that was about to reunite for its first concerts since 2010?<\/p>\n That\u2019s the animating spirit behind \u201cPavements,\u201d the director Alex Ross Perry\u2019s audacious documentary about the band, which opens Friday<\/a>. Perry did, in fact, write and direct a stage show called \u201cSlanted! Enchanted! A Pavement Musical\u201d that played for two nights in Manhattan in 2022. A museum<\/a> touting \u201crumored relics of the band\u2019s real and imagined history\u201d popped up in TriBeCa that fall, coinciding with the initial Brooklyn run of the group\u2019s (very real, and very successful) reunion tour. And Perry filmed portions of a fictionalized Pavement biopic \u2014 starring Joe Keery (\u201cStranger Things\u201d), Jason Schwartzman and Tim Heidecker, among others \u2014 then staged a \u201cpremiere<\/a>\u201d for it in Brooklyn.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In \u201cPavements,\u201d all of this is intercut with archival imagery from the band\u2019s history and footage from the reunion tour\u2019s rehearsals and performances, sometimes presented in two-, three- or even four-way split screen. (The plural title is quite literal.) Overall, the effect is about as far from the typical rock documentary as you could get.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI was told, \u2018They want nothing traditional,\u2019\u201d Perry said in a video interview last month, adding that the group\u2019s frontman, Stephen Malkmus, texted him, \u201c\u2018Avoid the legacy trap.\u2019 Possibly in all capitals.\u201d At this point in the life cycle of Pavement or any other band, Perry said, the question becomes: What else do we do with our story? A documentary, a series, an exhibition, what? \u201cSo that, for me, became the actual text of the movie,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n In a phone interview last week, Malkmus said that Perry\u2019s pitch was \u201ca little less risk-averse\u201d and seemed like it would lead to a more interesting film: \u201cYou don\u2019t want it to be a hagiography of just perfection and coolness, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n Malkmus and the guitarist Scott Kannberg, known as Spiral Stairs, formed Pavement in the late 1980s in suburban Stockton (\u201cthe Cleveland of California,\u201d as Malkmus puts it in the movie). Gary Young, who ran a recording studio there, joined as a drummer and all-around chaos agent before being replaced by Steve West; the band\u2019s other members are Mark Ibold, on bass, and Bob Nastanovich, who provides percussion, keyboards and extreme enthusiasm.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The most straightforward parts of \u201cPavements\u201d trace the band\u2019s rise, never to mainstream fame but at least to indie-rock renown, opening for Sonic Youth and facing \u201cnext big thing\u201d expectations in the wake of the acclaim for \u201cSlanted and Enchanted,\u201d the group\u2019s 1992 breakthrough album<\/a>, and the meteoric success of Nirvana. They were expectations that a band like Pavement probably never could have met, but the group earned a reputation for tanking its chances, or at least being indifferent to them. (It was the peak Gen X slacker era, after all.) Even Beavis and Butt-Head took potshots: \u201cThey need to try harder<\/a>!\u201d<\/p>\n Angst over this dynamic forms the dramatic core, such as it is, of \u201cRange Life,\u201d the fake Pavement biopic that stars Keery as a bratty Malkmus. It\u2019s the documentary\u2019s most overtly satirical segment \u2014 Perry says the musical theater section is a completely earnest experiment \u2014 and mainly seems aimed at skewering Hollywood re-creations like \u201cBohemian Rhapsody\u201d and \u201cA Complete Unknown.\u201d During overheated moments, melodramatic music swells, and \u201cFor Your Consideration\u201d titles appear onscreen.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Bob Dylan movie is not good or fun,\u201d Perry said, adding that \u201cif it was 30 minutes, I think it would be as watchable as 30 minutes of Joe Keery playing Malkmus. But the problem is these things are often over two hours long.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Scenes of Keery dreaming of Oscar buzz and preparing for his \u201cRange Life\u201d role drip with deadpan humor. He visits the Whitney Museum\u2019s former home on Madison Avenue for inspiration (Malkmus and West worked there as guards), and sees a vocal coach to try to nail the singer\u2019s California accent. \u201cI feel like it would be possible to get a picture of Stephen\u2019s tongue,\u201d Keery suggests in the movie. \u201cIt would be super helpful to know what it looks like.\u201d<\/p>\n Malkmus said he found Keery\u2019s portrayal funny, even if much of the biopic is poking at him \u201cmore than most people would be comfortable.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cProbably some of my friends would say that I\u2019m getting trolled a bit, but I think you just have to say in the end that that\u2019s because, like, I\u2019m rad,\u201d Malkmus said, laughing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n One real incident dramatized in \u201cRange Life,\u201d when Pavement walked offstage early at Lollapalooza in 1995 after the crowd in West Virginia pelted the band with mud<\/a>, has a crossover moment in the Pavement museum, where the musicians\u2019 purported clothes from the gig \u2014 still muddy! \u2014 are on display. The entire museum was initially going to be that type of put-on, Perry said, but the euphoric reaction to the reunion-tour shows, along with the unexpected viral success<\/a> of the obscure Pavement B-side \u201cHarness Your Hopes,\u201d led him to realize that \u201cthis has to basically be celebratory in a genuine way.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe real world had become the fiction of the movie,\u201d Perry said, and his ironic conceit of Pavement being a huge band everyone knew was seeming less like a conceit. He cited the Malkmus joke in \u201cBarbie\u201d<\/a> as another \u201cyou can\u2019t make this stuff up\u201d example.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Still, some of the museum\u2019s exhibits weren\u2019t real; Pavement never won a V.M.A. or did an Absolut Vodka ad. (Let\u2019s hope the \u201cGary Young toenail\u201d was fake, too.) And within the prankish world created by the production, not everyone was in on the joke. Some attendees of the ersatz \u201cRange Life\u201d premiere in Brooklyn, where about 60 minutes of mock footage, screen tests and table reads was shown, thought they had seen an early cut of \u201cPavements\u201d and pronounced it terrible.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIt\u2019s time to set the record straight on this and shut up all of these babies on Pavement Reddit,\u201d Perry said when asked about the confusion.<\/p>\n Reactions to the actual \u201cPavements\u201d were largely positive when it made the film festival rounds last year, including a premiere at Venice and a New York Film Festival slot. The New York Times critic Alissa Wilkinson called it<\/a> \u201cterrifically strange and entertaining.\u201d But some viewers have been left more bewildered. A review in The Hollywood Reporter<\/a> maintained that the movie would hold little appeal for non-die-hards.<\/p>\n Perry said that while \u201cPavements\u201d is focused on one band, it also explores more universal themes of legacy and music history. \u201cI think they are the most fascinating text you can study if you want to study every single question about music in the 1990s,\u201d he said of the band.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n When Pavement played a show in Manhattan on the eve of the movie\u2019s New York Film Festival debut in October, digging deep into its back catalog<\/a> more than two years after the reunion tour started, the release of \u201cPavements\u201d seemed like it might mark the close of one of the band\u2019s most successful chapters. But Malkmus said it\u2019s still open.<\/p>\n \u201cThings are alive in Pavement,\u201d he said. \u201cWe get offers to play shows, and we consider them \u2014 it\u2019s hard not to. People really like you, and we like each other, and we\u2019re getting older and we should do it while we can.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n And though Perry said that his concept could apply to any long-lived band (\u201cyou could do a Weezer musical\u201d), it seems perfectly suited to the group that sang<\/a>, \u201cYou\u2019ve been chosen as an extra in the movie adaptation of the sequel to your life.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cPavement are slippery,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re many things to many people.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n