Maverick filmmaker Alex Ross Perry takes on cult indie rockers Pavement to deliver a music doco unlike anything you’ve seen before. A fittingly absurd and satirical tribute to a band that defined a generation.
A thrillingly creative music documentary… the sense of fun that Perry is having behind the camera is both palpable and infectious.
Pavements 2024
Led by the caustic wit of inscrutable frontman Stephen Malkmus, Pavement was one of the defining underground rock bands of the 90s, achieving critical success and a devoted cult following across five studio albums before breaking up in 1999. As much of a non-conformist in the film world, Alex Ross Perry upends usual documentary conventions to pay cinematic tribute to these indie legends, muddling fact and fiction into a glorious celebration of not giving a fuck.
While the band prepare for a 2022 reunion tour, they share screen time with retrospective footage from their 90s heydays as well as the production of a new jukebox musical, the creation of a museum exhibition in New York and, most exciting of all, behind the scenes footage of a new Hollywood movie, Range Life – a prestige biopic starring Stranger Things’ Joe Keery, who hopes to ride Malkmus’ volatile slacker energy to Oscar glory.
Rolling four or five films into one gleefully idiosyncratic whole, Perry so succeeds in blurring reality that Pavement fans may well be left wondering if this all actually happened or if it was just a fever dream, while those unfamiliar with the band may question whether any of it was ever real at all. — Michael McDonnell