Latest news with #StephenMalkmus
Yahoo
22-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'Pavements' director Alex Ross Perry spins fiction into one of the year's most fun and must-watch music films
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."
The Guardian
09-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Pavements review – US indie rockers and their dream director run four ideas at once
If ever a film-maker and a band were a match in indie heaven it is lo-fi writer-director Alex Ross Perry and 90s band Pavement, from Stockton, California (described here as 'the Cleveland of California'); the latter made critically adored albums throughout the 1990s with comparisons to the Fall and Lou Reed, while never signing to a major label. Now Perry has made a film about Pavement and it seems to be his intention here to avoid, strenuously and at all costs, obviousness – and perhaps the most clunkingly obvious thing for any newbie to ask about is the name. Pavement as opposed to Sidewalk because of a Brit affectation? No: just a functional name chosen almost at random and one that sounded right. Intriguingly, but finally a bit frustratingly, Perry is running four ideas at once, a kind of cine-quadriptych with the plurality signalled by the title. Firstly, it's a documentary about Pavement's return to live performance in 2022, complete with milky, blurry analogue video flashbacks to their 90s heyday. Secondly, an account of a touring museum exhibition about the band. Thirdly: a study of a jukebox musical project about Pavement called Slanted! Enchanted! after one of their albums, which had a three-day off-Broadway workshop presentation. And finally, a conventional fictional dramatisation of the band's history, entitled Range Life, of which we see a few clips, with Joe Keery as lead singer Stephen Malkmus, Nat Wolff as guitarist Scott Kannberg, Fred Hechinger as singer Bob Nastanovich and Jason Schwartzman as Matador Records chief Chris Lombardi. But it isn't entirely clear whether Range Life really exists as a standalone film, or how to judge or imagine its independent existence. We get a scene showing the actors doing an onstage Q&A after a screening, and it doesn't look like a fictional spoof. In the end, I wanted to see just one of these strands developed to feature length, perhaps especially the hilarious-sounding stage musical idea with Pavement tracks reinvented as showtune zingers. As it stands, Pavements doesn't have the clarity and punch of, say, Ondi Timoner's psych-rock documentary Dig!, or the dramatic cogency of Perry's recent 90s rock drama Her Smell. It is a palimpsest of approaches: four concepts placed on top of each other, but none can be seen clearly. For me, Perry's masterpiece is still his 2015 drama Listen Up Philip. But this film might well provide something for the Pavement fanbase. Pavements is on Mubi from 11 July.
The Guardian
09-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Pavements review – US indie rockers and their dream director run four ideas at once
If ever a film-maker and a band were a match in indie heaven it is lo-fi writer-director Alex Ross Perry and 90s band Pavement, from Stockton, California (described here as 'the Cleveland of California'); the latter made critically adored albums throughout the 1990s with comparisons to the Fall and Lou Reed, while never signing to a major label. Now Perry has made a film about Pavement and it seems to be his intention here to avoid, strenuously and at all costs, obviousness – and perhaps the most clunkingly obvious thing for any newbie to ask about is the name. Pavement as opposed to Sidewalk because of a Brit affectation? No: just a functional name chosen almost at random and one that sounded right. Intriguingly, but finally a bit frustratingly, Perry is running four ideas at once, a kind of cine-quadriptych with the plurality signalled by the title. Firstly, it's a documentary about Pavement's return to live performance in 2022, complete with milky, blurry analogue video flashbacks to their 90s heyday. Secondly, an account of a touring museum exhibition about the band. Thirdly: a study of a jukebox musical project about Pavement called Slanted! Enchanted! after one of their albums, which had a three-day off-Broadway workshop presentation. And finally, a conventional fictional dramatisation of the band's history, entitled Range Life, of which we see a few clips, with Joe Keery as lead singer Stephen Malkmus, Nat Wolff as guitarist Scott Kannberg, Fred Hechinger as singer Bob Nastanovich and Jason Schwartzman as Matador Records chief Chris Lombardi. But it isn't entirely clear whether Range Life really exists as a standalone film, or how to judge or imagine its independent existence. We get a scene showing the actors doing an onstage Q&A after a screening, and it doesn't look like a fictional spoof. In the end, I wanted to see just one of these strands developed to feature length, perhaps especially the hilarious-sounding stage musical idea with Pavement tracks reinvented as showtune zingers. As it stands, Pavements doesn't have the clarity and punch of, say, Ondi Timoner's psych-rock documentary Dig!, or the dramatic cogency of Perry's recent 90s rock drama Her Smell. It is a palimpsest of approaches: four concepts placed on top of each other, but none can be seen clearly. For me, Perry's masterpiece is still his 2015 drama Listen Up Philip. But this film might well provide something for the Pavement fanbase. Pavements is on Mubi from 11 July.
Irish Times
09-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Pavements review: Brilliantly unclassifiable salute to the 1990s indie-rock legends Pavement
Pavements Director : Alex Ross Perry Cert : None Genre : Documentary Starring : Pavement, Rebecca Clay Cole, Gary Young, Joe Keery, Nat Wolff, Fred Hechinger, Logan Miller, Griffin Newman, Tim Heidecker, Jason Schwartzman, Michael Esper, Zoe Lister-Jones, Kathryn Gallagher Running Time : 2 hrs 6 mins Alex Ross Perry 's Pavements is a love letter, a mischievous jape and a deconstructed rock documentary all at once, a brilliantly unclassifiable salute to the 1990s indie-rock legends Pavement that improbably juggles four separate projects (a documentary, a musical, an art exhibit and a fake biopic) into one shaggy, self-aware, mostly made-up opus. It shouldn't work. And yet this overstuffed eclair stays sweet. Perry, whose coruscating Courtney Love-adjacent drama Her Smell demonstrated a keen faculty for musical chaos, pivots that instinct toward unbridled creative joy. The film is framed around Pavement's 2022 reunion tour, but it quickly spirals outwards into giddy metafiction. Stranger Fiction's Joe Keery leans hilariously hard into method acting as the Pavement frontman, Stephen Malkmus , in the fictitious biopic Range Life. Real and fake artefacts are carefully curated into Pavements 1933–2022, a gallery show. Eager musical tryouts belt out Fin in an earnest, off-Broadway musical. These are not just grandiloquent gags. They slowly form portals into understanding the band's elusive slacker magic. Pavement were never the 1990s sensation that Perry's film pretends. They mooned an irate Kentucky audience at Lollapalooza in 1995 and simply shrugged and walked away from one another in 1999. READ MORE The inventive writer-director makes merry with that anti-arc, trading the bombast and preshadowing of traditional music biopics for something playful, generous and nonsensical. Pavements pokes fun at the genre's many cliches, from tortured-genius montages to melodramatic studio scenes, by re-enacting them with angular absurdity. [ Alex Ross Perry on his Pavement documentary: 'The concept was an absurd notion that this band would ever go gold or platinum' Opens in new window ] That silliness never tips into snark or cynicism, whether it's Keery reverently photographing Malkmus's throat or the band reordering their set list for a bandmate's daughter. Perry and his editor, Robert Greene (using split screens and collage techniques), build a dizzying kaleidoscope of timelines, earnestness and glee. What emerges is a film that's as formally adventurous and oddly affecting as the soundtrack. Pavement's songs, ever teetering between slacker irony and accidental profundity, land the film they richly deserve. And, with a pronounced irony that could only have originated with a Gen X joint, Perry's exaggerated trajectory is mirrored by the band's explosive recent popularity with Gen Z. Pavements is on cinema release and, from Friday, July 11th, on Mubi
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
How the Director and Stars of ‘Pavements' Brought Many Stephen Malkmuses to Life
The prevailing initial state of the two actors tasked with portraying Pavement frontman Stephen Malkmus in Alex Ross Perry's multifaceted, genre-warped film Pavements was, reasonably, confusion. Pavements — which releases in theaters across North America June 6 — is nominally, and for the most part, a documentary. It follows Pavement as they prep for their 2022 reunion tour and uses archival footage to tell the story of a band of alternative-nation outsiders who made erudite, inscrutable, and irresistible tunes; navigated the post-Nirvana Nineties with blasé circumspection; broke up as cult heroes; and returned decades later as widely-recognized, era-defining greats. More from Rolling Stone 'Titan': See Trailer for Netflix Doc That Dives Deep Into OceanGate Disaster Martin Scorsese's Career Goes in Front of Camera for Five-Part Apple TV+ Documentary That Doc on Shia LaBeouf's Acting School Is Even Crazier Than You've Heard But along with parsing and probing Pavement's importance, Perry also wanted to explore the ways we bestow that importance. So, he cooked up the various kinds of cultural schlock that get pumped out when it comes time to celebrate (and profit from) legacy acts — a biopic, a jukebox musical, even a museum exhibit filled with phony and real artifacts — and combined them to create a Russian nesting doll of a film, genres stacked on top of one another, reality packed inside fiction. And for the actors Perry hired to star in his real-but-not-real biopic and musical, performing in Pavements was a confounding but also intriguing prospect. Joe Keery, the Stranger Things star and Djo musician, who plays Malkmus in the Oscar-baity biopic-within-the-movie, tells Rolling Stone, 'I didn't understand the full context of the movie until I showed up a couple of days before and we were doing the [costume] fittings and stuff. 'Then I started to wrap my mind around it. They had done the musical already, so I had the reference point of, 'It's this real thing, but it's fake, and it exists within the world of the movie.'' Michael Esper, an established theater actor, remembers his own bewilderment when Perry called him 'out of the blue' to offer him the role of Essem, the Malkmus-esque (emphasis on the 'esque') lead in the film's off-Broadway jukebox musical component, Slanted! Enchanted! 'I couldn't tell how serious he was,' Esper says. 'Like, how real do you want it to be? How much of a joke? Are we really doing this in front of people? How earnest am I supposed to be? Pavement is cool with this?' He adds with a laugh: 'It was such an insane idea, and the potential for humiliation was so high.' Perry was compelled to cram all of these sub-projects into Pavements because he firmly believes 'we don't actually want these things.' He argues, for instance, that no one is asking for a 'cliché, birth-to-death biopic' of Kurt Cobain, yet the likelihood of one existing, eventually, seems disconcertingly high. Perry also saw huge potential in this multigenre approach. 'The truth I'm reaching for,' he says, 'is [that] this format of prismatic, hall-of-mirrors storytelling is the only way to even consider approaching the truth of any great artist.' Pavement, and Malkmus in particular, is uniquely positioned for this kind of interrogation. Perry argues the frontman is up there with 20th-century geniuses like Bob Dylan and David Bowie 'because he's this enigma — he's so fascinating, and the music is so good.' Keery also uses that word — 'enigma' — while Esper, a longtime fan who was scouring zines and VHS tapes in the Nineties for anything Pavement-related, calls Malkmus an almost 'mythical figure.' And like Bowie or Dylan, Malmkus has played with personas, cultivating a distance between his public-facing artistic self and the human behind the mask. Perry notes that, since Pavement began, 'Malkmus has presented the idea that he is playing a character' known as 'The Singer.' 'He christened himself with this moniker at the age of, like, 21, to become this other personality,' the director says. 'To hide behind the idea of, 'That's what the singer would do.'' (He cites, by way of example, two early Pavement tunes in this vein, 'Our Singer' and 'Shoot the Singer.') So as Perry set out to design the Malkmuses that Esper and Keery would portray in Pavements, he made sure they had 'nothing to do with the real person.' That's certainly the case with Essem, a small-town boy with big rock dreams, who moves to the city with his girlfriend, becomes successful, meets another girl, and ultimately has to choose between the two. (That this love triangle framework maps almost exactly onto last year's Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown feels like an affirmation of Perry's feelings towards the legacy-act industrial complex.) The name Essem is, of course, a phonetic representation of Malkmus' initials, S.M. But in terms of actual similarities between character and person, there's only the vague echo of Malkmus' own journey from the Central Valley suburb of Stockton, California, to New York City in pursuit of rock & roll. 'To try and do some kind of real, authentic characterization of Stephen Malkmus in this context felt so wildly inappropriate,' Esper says. 'To try and put him in a jukebox musical just feels like it wouldn't serve what they were trying to do [with the film]. It functioned like a ride — you just throw yourself into it and perform that as best you can.' As for the embedded biopic, titled Range Life, Keery says his performance 'is not a direct reflection of Malkmus' but 'the punch-up Hollywood biopic version that they would write' if such a film were to be made. He continues: 'It's not exactly who he was. It's sort of the antithesis of the guy.' (Keery also gets to send up his own profession in several behind-the-scenes-featurette-style sequences, in which he descends into Method acting madness — asking to be called 'Stephen,' working with a voice coach to perfect his imitation of Malkmus' fried California tone, and eventually worrying he might've gone too far.) The Range Life scenes primarily fictionalize a real pivot point in Pavement's story: their brush with Nirvana-sized success with 'Cut Your Hair' and 1994's Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, followed by the underappreciated triumph of their third album Wowee Zowee. It's perfect fodder for overwrought episodes in which the band and their Matador Records bosses (played by Jason Schwartzman and Tim Heidecker) debate artistic integrity and commercial reality. The most melodramatic moments are emblazoned with an awards-thirsty 'For your consideration' watermark. And yet, it's still rooted in something real, because Perry plucked much of the heavy-handed dialog Keery delivers verbatim from the Wowee Zowee press kit, contemporaneous Malkmus interviews, and things Malkmus told Perry himself. Keery says it was 'stressful' at times to navigate this multifaceted, hyper-meta narrative, but also fun. 'I enjoyed being put into this gray area where it's like, 'Is this really happening? Is this shtick?' It felt like the perfect way to pay homage to the band.' Perry wanted to preserve a sense of mystery around Malkmus, one epitomized by an early shot of the frontman hunched over a desk, writing a set list, back to the camera. 'You obviously see him throughout the movie, but you see him from the back,' Perry says. 'We see Joe and Michael from the front, but the front has a mask on.' Mysterious as Malkmus may be, Perry's instinct reflects something that distinguishes Malkmus from so many other mythical, enigmatic artistic geniuses we scrutinize. Esper pinpoints it, too, when discussing all the time he spent as a teenager poring over Pavement lyrics, learning the band's songs on guitar, and reading any interview he could find: a wariness of ever getting 'too close to knowing too much about' Malkmus himself. This was partly because, Esper jokes, 'I felt like I would discover that he would hate me.' But it was also the sense that behind the Singer was just a normal guy. 'I did feel like to figure out too much about him, his personal history, or even what his intention was lyrically or musically, was a mistake,' Esper says. 'I had some kind of instinct around that boundary, where [with] other musicians, I would do a really deep dive. I'd want to know everything about Bowie or Lou Reed. With him, I really didn't want to know that much.' Having studied and spent time with him, Keery describes Malkmus as someone who's 'just doing things because he loves them. Or not doing things because he doesn't [love them]. Which is something I admire.' And Perry says that while making Pavements he did get to glimpse the 'big Rosetta Stone' when he watched Malkmus interact with his wife and children. 'That's the guy. That's a real person,' Perry says, while also stressing that those moments were completely irrelevant to the film. 'There is no single truth to reach with this kind of character,' Perry says. 'The movie could never singularly decode who this man actually is, nor would that be of any interest to me. The movie can only address the buffoonery of other works of art that attempt to do a version of that.' Nowhere does the film distill this ideal better than the scene where Keery is working with the voice coach and shows her what he says is a photo of Malkmus' actual throat, hoping it might unlock the secret to a perfect performance. Asked — half as a joke, but also out of curiosity to know the extent to which the bit was committed — if that was indeed a photo of Malkmus' throat, Keery deadpans, 'He wouldn't release that. That was a step too far. But I'm still hunting that down. I'm determined to get that tongue pic. I think it will reveal a lot for everyone out there.' Best of Rolling Stone The 50 Best 'Saturday Night Live' Characters of All Time Denzel Washington's Movies Ranked, From Worst to Best 70 Greatest Comedies of the 21st Century
