Alex Ross Perry's mythic film about the band Pavement, Pavements, premieres at the Venice International Film Festival today. Every time we're privy to new information about the movie, it gets weirder and weirder: the "screwball" project — not really a documentary or a biopic, but kind of? — has resulted in both the staging of a musical production in New York City and an international pop-up museum exhibition with bogus artifacts.
"You're only going to get to make one Pavement movie," Perry told Vanity Fair in a new interview. "This isn't Scorsese getting to make his fourth and fifth Dylan film. So why don't I just make every Pavement movie that I, as a fan, would ever want to watch — or hate-watch."
If you're still confused, the publication's exclusive premiere of a clip from Pavements should help. The scene sees Stranger Things star and Djo musician Joe Keery make his debut as frontman Stephen Malkmus, with Tim Heidecker and Jason Schwartzman playing executives from Matador Records. This is preceded by archival footage of the actual band, with a voiceover from Malkmus talking about thinking they were hot shit when they were young, even if the members of Pavement were trying to appear humble in interviews.
Keery does a dramatic reenactment of this attitude, strumming his guitar on a hotel bed while on the phone with Heidecker and Schwartzman, who give him the news that Lorne Michaels wants the band to be on an episode of Saturday Night Live hosted by Quentin Tarantino. Spoiler alert: Keery's Malkmus is less than excited about the opportunity.
According to Perry, this made-up scenario represents a lot of similar situations Pavement experienced. "Every music biopic is blending the relationship between history and fiction," he explained. "If you think the scenes in these movies happened, you're a fool. This is a composite scene. We don't need to show the seven things he turned down, so we just combine them all into turning down the biggest thing that never got offered."
Head over to the Vanity Fair article to watch the clip.