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Pavements
Pavements
Directed by	Alex Ross Perry
Screenplay by	Alex Ross Perry; Stephen Malkmus
Based on	Slanted! Enchanted! A Pavement Musical ; by Alex Ross Perry ;
Produced by	Craig Butta; Danny Gabai; Peter Kline ; Robert Greene ; Lance Bangs ; Alex Needles
Starring	Pavement; Zoe Lister-Jones; Michael Esper; Kathryn Gallagher; Joe Keery; Jason Schwartzman; Nat Wolff; Fred Hechinger; Logan Miller; Griffin Newman; Tim Heidecker;
Cinematography	Robert Kolodny
Edited by	Robert Greene
Music by	Pavement ; Keegan DeWitt ; Dabney Morris
Production; companies	Matador Records ; Pulse Films ; Field Recordings
Distributed by	Utopia
Release date	September 4, 2024 (Venice);
Running time	128 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

Pavements is a 2024 American experimental musical biopic concert film directed by Alex Ross Perry. It is a documentary/fiction hybrid film about the American indie band Pavement, incorporating scripted scenes with documentary footage of the band and a musical stage play consisting of songs from their discography. It premiered at the 81st Venice International Film Festival on September 4, 2024.^[2]

Plot

Described as "a semiotic experiment",^[3] the film combines elements of documentary with a spoof biopic of the band, and incorporates moments from Slanted! Enchanted! A Pavement Musical, a jukebox musical using Pavement's music. That play is about Essem, an aspiring Stephen Malkmus-like musician in a small town, who meets and falls in love with a woman named Anne, boards a train for New York City with her, is tempted by fame and glory, has an affair with another aspiring musician named Loretta, and wonders if love is worth it. The story loosely tracks the progression and themes of Pavement's works, chronologically.^[4]

Cast

Stephen Malkmus as himself
Bob Nastanovich as himself
Scott Kannberg as himself
Steve West as himself
Mark Ibold as himself
Michael Esper as Essem
Zoe Lister-Jones as Anne
Kathryn Gallagher as Loretta
Joe Keery as Stephen Malkmus / himself
Jason Schwartzman as Chris Lombardi
Nat Wolff as Scott Kannberg
Fred Hechinger as Bob Nastanovich
Logan Miller as Mark Ibold
Griffin Newman as Steve West
Tim Heidecker as Gerard Cosloy
Alex Ross Perry as himself
Violette Trotter as Donna Matthews
Ben Arauz as David Berman
Keith Poulson as Radio DJ
Holden Seidlitz as himself
Kim Gordon as herself
Lindsey Jordan as herself
Soccer Mommy as herself

Lucy Benzinger, Brandi Campbell, John El-Jor, Tenaya Kelleher, Joe Laplant, Nicholas Lovalvo, and Sophie Morris appear as ensemble members in Slanted! Enchanted!

Production

Matador Records first approached Perry about creating a film with the band, except that frontman Stephen Malkmus wasn’t interested in hiring a documentary filmmaker, instead wanting to hire a screenwriter who would not write a screenplay. Inspired by the elliptical nature of that request, Perry conceived a version of the project that would defy explanation, comparing it to a film about Bob Dylan that combined D.A. Pennebaker’s Dont Look Back, Todd Haynes’ I'm Not There, Martin Scorsese's Rolling Thunder Revue and Dylan's own Renaldo and Clara.

The film's production encompassed the creation of "Pavements 1933-2022: A Pavement Museum", a touring museum exhibit composed of real and fake artifacts from the band's history.^[5]

The production of Slanted! Enchanted! signals the first foray into musical theater for Perry, who had previously worked with Pavement on a music video for their song “Harness Your Hopes” and aided in creating the aforementioned Pavement Museum,^[6] Longtime Perry collaborator Craig Butta produced the play, enlisting Angela Trimbur to choreograph the musicals extensive and complex dance sequences along with co-choreographer Tenaya Kelleher.

Keegan DeWitt and Dabney Morris, film composers and previous collaborators with Alex Ross Perry worked on the arrangements, re-contextualizing the indie rock slacker songs into the big broadway musical parlance. Robert Kolodny, another Perry collaborator, created the on stage projections which play throughout the entirety of the performance. John Arnos created the set and Amanda Ford designed the costumes.^[7]

Michael Esper was cast in the lead of the show, with actor/director Zoe Lister-Jones and Kathryn Gallagher also appearing.^[8]

The New York off-Broadway production started previews on December 1, 2022 at the Sheen Center for Thought and Culture in Manhattan's NOHO neighborhood.

A film directed by Perry, entitled Range Life: A Pavement Story, premiered at the Park Slope location of the Nitehawk Cinema on September 14, 2023, described as "a one-of-a-kind, never to be repeated journey through the histories of Pavement."^[9] This turned out to be a presentation of a semi-fictional biopic of Pavement that spoofed larger well-known music dramas like Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocketman, and, like the musical and museum exhibit, comprises one strand of the film.

Reception

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 100% of 10 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.1/10.^[10] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 82 out of 100, based on 7 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".^[11]