Review: Pavements

Director:  Alex Ross Perry

Stars:  Stephen Malkmus, Joe Keery, Scott ‘Spiral Stairs’ Kannberg

On-screen text at the beginning of Pavements describes Pavement as “the world’s most important & influential band”, while featuring archive footage of the group, tired and onstage, arguing about what song to play next. The blowhard nature of the text is cast wryly. This, one feels, is something that they would never say about themselves. The moment is presented in split screen with 2022 footage of the band reforming, with the archival footage screen right. Taking a Western left-to-right approach to cadence and chronology, the dual imagery is in the ‘wrong’ order. We’re backwards. But Pavements is a film about flipping things on their head, playing with realities and conventions. It’s an editing marvel (kudos producer and documentary whizz Robert Greene), and a playful invitation to (re)live the mess and magic of one of the defining ’90s bands.

The Stockton, California alt-rockers fronted by Stephen Malkmus became indicative of a certain ineffable American Gen-X spirit during the decade of their prevalence. A little bit nerdy, a little bit slacker, certainly a bit cynical. With Pavements, Alex Ross Perry follows his messy punk-rock project Her Smell with his first feature foray into documentary, idolising the band and mocking such reverie at the same time.

Three strands are explored. There’s the auditions for the reunion tour (definitely real), the Hollywood biopic starring Logan Miller, Fred Hechinger, Joe Keery and Nat Wolff (definitely not real), and an aborted attempt at a jukebox musical starring Michael Esper (almost real). It’s all a melting pot, reflected in the colourful montage of the band listing their influences. Pavements reflects the complexity of the band’s songs, running in these three modes, often simultaneously. 

The wealth of archive material is gorgeous, scratchy, bleedy, fascinating; incredibly evocative of an era and an aesthetic that it’s often tough to imitate authentically. It’s a wheelhouse that Perry’s cinema has dabbled with previously, not just with Her Smell. There’s elements of this vibe in Queen of Earth, in The Color Wheel. An urge to be deliberately off-piste. Defiantly independent. A spirited contrariness that we see now in emerging filmmakers like Owen Kline or Sean Price Williams. Perry exists within a continuum, and with Pavements he reaches back to its origins in his life. Pavement. Those songs. Those guitars. That spirit.

The ‘behind the scenes’ with actors like Miller, Hechinger and Jason Schwartzman spin the movie into pure Spinal Tap territory (and it will be interesting to see if Rob Reiner’s belated sequel later this year comes up with anything near as funny). But even in it’s straighter documentary sections, there’s a sense that Perry and Greene are mocking the conventions of the staid rock doc for the MOJO crowd. When set against all the rest, cod phrases celebrating the band’s achievements are robbed of their authenticity and are made to feel closer to, well, the attitude of Pavement. The genre is slanted and enchanted to fit the modes of this subject.

But hey, Pavement’s story is inherently Tap-esque. A sense of perpetual accident. A band who, in interview, constantly seemed mildly surprised at the attention coming their way. There’s even a documented drummer tragedy. Even the reunion has its share of bittersweet wryness. Take Scott Kannberg’s anecdote about applying to be a Seattle bus driver the day before Stephen called up to get the band back together. There’s something unexpectedly touching in that decision. What a person does after they’re a legend. A poet driving a bus like Adam Driver in Paterson. 

Greene’s influence here feels key, beyond his editorial flare. The interest in blurring the authentic and the performed links intrinsically into his own oeuvre, as anyone who’s seen Kate Plays Christine, Bisbee ’17 or even Actress can attest. 

Having set out a stall and set it out so well, Pavements does plateaux somewhat, cruising into a rhythm and kinda sticking there. As much as that groove shakes up the status quo of the rock doc, it’s still becomes a comfort zone. It’s a little long, like a record with three sides. That is, until around the 90 minute mark, when performance – past, present, real, fictionalised – takes over, and Perry’s movie sets sail for the skies. At least until the mud-slinging incident at Lollapalooza crashes the party.

Pavement die-hards will be in hog’s heaven of course, but the impish spirit ensures that it isn’t impenetrable for the uninitiated. As a viewer of a certain vintage now, there’s definitely a certain nostalgia to it, even if my own relationship with Malkmus bloomed later in his work with The Jicks. Pavements gives plenty of inspiration to start working backwards. 

Documentary? Mockumentary? Way of life?? For your consideration.