'Pavements' director Alex Ross Perry spins fiction into one of the year's most fun and must-watch music films

Yahoo

6 days ago

We've seen music documentaries parodied in then past, but nothing's like Alex Ross Perry's Pavements (on Mubi). Part mockumentary, part parody and part biopic, with a jukebox musical production thrown into the mix, it's a particularly fitting execution to reflect the band Pavement.
Perry blends different real, fake and satirical elements about the band for this brilliantly chaotic and satisfying film. The Pavement biopic "Rage Life," starring Joe Keery as Stephen Malkmus, isn't real. The stage musical "Slanted! Enchanted!" isn't either. But it also makes for one of the most riveting music films, honouring the legacy of the '90s indie band with a witty intro presenting Pavement as the "most important" band in the world.
While it all feels like quite a lofty undertaking, this was the first and only idea Perry presented for Pavements.
"There wasn't a version of this before the maximalist version and there was never going to be, ... it was as simple as that," Ross told Yahoo Canada. "My approach was, immediately, it's a documentary that takes place in a fictional world where Pavement are the most successful band of their generation, which is borrowing an opinion shared by their fans, but turning that into a fact."
"And in this world, the band is so successful that every form of ancillary legacy storytelling and financial investment in building a museum or making a movie is theirs, and that will be the movie, and that was kind of just a fully formed ... idea."
An absolute highlight is Keery, who we see going through method acting-style preparation to play Malkmus.
"His work is just undeniable," Ross said. "He's so charming and funny and self-effacing and satirical and committed, and it's risky. He's putting his own name on the line to play this version of himself in a kind of outlandish way. And I found that his agreeing to do the movie and his willingness to play along and f—k around, for lack of a better term, was just so inspiring."
"It just felt like this guy who probably gets asked a thousand things just had a lot of trust in me and in this strange project to do something entirely unique. And actors tend to want to do things that are entirely unique."
The power of editing
In order to a balance each moving piece of the puzzle, Ross credits editor and producer Robert Greene.
"Robert Greene, who's the film's editor, and this is our fifth movie together, edited this movie in a way that no one else could have," Ross said.
"His ability to both make something that is alive and playful and dynamic, also telling what we feel in a cohesive story, in two hours, and also doing all of this about his favourite band of all time. They're so close to his heart that he's the best and worst person to make something like this, because he loves every single thing about them, and somewhere out of that emerged exactly what we got."
But with Greene's skill also came the ability for Pavements to appeal to both Pavement fans and those who have never even heard of the band, something proved at a screening in Toronto during the Departure festival where you saw Pavement newbie getting increasingly invested in this band.
"Something that is simply for die-hard fans, it's just not enough," Ross said. "Oftentimes when I watch something about a subject that I am a die-hard fan of, it is clearly only made for me, and it's not the kind of thing I can, for example, convince my wife to watch."
"It's just very clear to people when a movie is going to invite you in versus keep you at arm's length as an audience member who may or may not have the correct prior knowledge to really get everything out of the film. And all we ever talked about was that is the only goal we need to be reaching for. ... Maybe you've never heard of them at all and the movie just is its own thing."