That completely bonkers Pavement jukebox musical, and the equally surreal pop-up museum, weren’t simply stilly stunts to have fun the indie band’s newest reunion tour — they have been foolish stunts for a brand new Pavement film directed by Alex Ross Perry.
Perry revealed the broader machinations in a brand new New Yorker piece that provided a glance contained in the rehearsals for Slanted! Enchanted!: A Pavement Musical, which briefly ran in New York Metropolis earlier this month. The film wasn’t precisely being stored a secret, both. As Perry — who’s most likely finest recognized for his 2018 punk flick Her Scent — famous in a follow-up e-mail to Rolling Stone, there was correct signage at each the museum exhibit and musical alerting attendees that the proceedings have been being filmed for a film. (Rolling Stone’s Rob Sheffield even quietly famous the movie’s existence in his glowing evaluation of the musical.)
“It simply stands as a testomony to the followers perception in Pavement Energy that the notion of visiting a painstakingly curated Pavement Museum or a lavishly staged Pavement Musical was so logical, so apparent that comparatively few individuals stopped to assume if there may be extra happening than meets the attention,” Perry mentioned. “As is typical with Pavement, and has been for over thirty years, the reply is each sure and no.”
Perry advised The New Yorker that Pavement’s label, Matador Information, approached him a couple of challenge three years in the past, however frontman Stephen Malkmus had sure circumstances: He didn’t need a documentary, however he didn’t need a film with a conventional screenplay both.
As Perry places it: “Nobody knew what that meant.”
The answer will apparently be a film with somewhat little bit of every little thing, with Perry describing it as “like throwing spaghetti on the wall.” It’ll reportedly be form of like a biopic but additionally a tour documentary, in addition to a glowing tribute to the band, amongst different issues. The jukebox musical and the retrospective museum exhibit (“Pavements 1933-2022: A Pavement Museum”) will function in it, too, and so they assist illuminate Perry’s guiding thesis for the movie: What if Pavement was a very powerful band ever?
To many, after all, Pavement is a very powerful band ever. And Perry’s thesis technically ran opposite to a different instruction Malkmus gave him early-on: “Keep away from legacy lure.” Because the director advised Rolling Stone, this turned his “floor rule,” which he tried to stick to by completely upending.
“‘The Pavement Hagiography’ film shouldn’t be one thing the band would have enjoyable taking part in, nor I making,” Perry mentioned. “However to conceptualize this notion, and create a film inside a world the place Pavement Hagiography is a given was — to reference the staging of the museum and the musical — approach of getting my cake and welcoming 1000’s of others to eat it.”
Contemplating this surreal mix of truth and fiction — or as Perry put it to The New Yorker, “Authentic, ridiculous, actual, pretend, idiotic, cliché, illogical” — it’s no shock to listen to the director sum up his Pavement challenge by turning to the varied documentaries, mockumentaries, and flicks about (or by) Bob Dylan.
“You are taking the Todd Haynes Bob Dylan film [I’m Not There], the Scorsese documentary [either Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story or No Direction Home], the Pennebaker documentary [Dont Look Back], and the film Dylan himself directed that everybody hates [Renaldo and Clara] and put all of them in a blender.”
This story was up to date 12/19/22 @ 6:03 p.m. ET with further quotes from Perry to Rolling Stone.