Earlier this month, one thing actually foolish occurred. A Pavement-themed musical known as Slanted! Enchanted! had a three-day run in New York, and it left our critic Arielle Gordon pretty nonplussed: “Maybe the awkwardness is the point. Maybe it’ll all make sense in the context of some forthcoming Pavement mockumentary.” Well, Gordon should be psychic. There is certainly a brand new Pavement film on the best way, and it’s coming from director Alex Ross Perry, the identical one that staged Slanted! Enchanted! But it’s not solely clear whether or not “mockumentary” is the suitable phrase for this cinematic endeavor. It’s not clear if there is a proper phrase.
Alex Ross Perry is a filmmaker with a protracted historical past of constructing music movies for indie bands: Sleigh Bells, Vivian Girls, Soccer Mommy. (He’s additionally a frequent and intensely entertaining visitor on numerous movie podcasts.) Perry’s most up-to-date movie is 2018’s Her Smell, through which Elisabeth Moss performs a struggling ’90s rocker. Earlier this 12 months, Perry directed a brand new video for Pavement’s “Harness Your Hopes.” And as a New Yorker profile explains, Perry is now engaged on a hard-to-define Pavement movie. Here’s how author Hannah Seidlitz describes what’s taking place:
Three years in the past, Pavement’s label, Matador Records, approached Perry a few collaboration. The band needed a film, however Stephen Malkmus, the frontman, stated he wasn’t fascinated by hiring a documentary filmmaker. He needed to rent a screenwriter. But he didn’t desire a screenplay. “No one knew what that meant,” Perry stated.
Perry resolved to strategy the unattainable task from unattainable angles: “Legitimate, ridiculous, real, fake, idiotic, cliché, illogical,” he stated, and provided a Bob Dylan analogy. “You take the Todd Haynes Bob Dylan movie, the Scorsese documentary, the Pennebaker documentary, and the movie Dylan himself directed that everyone hates” — Renaldo And Clara — “and put them all in a blender.” The ensuing movie will likely be a mélange of bio-pic, museum footage, bits of Slanted! Enchanted!, tour doc, farce, and paean. Perry formulated his personal thesis: What if Pavement, the Pynchonian rock group that by no means had a platinum report, was crucial band of all time?
Sounds bizarre! You can attempt to determine extra from that New Yorker profile right here.