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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Laura Snapes

Pavement: director Alex Ross Perry to make ‘ridiculous, real, fake’ movie about US indie band

Stephen Malkmus of Pavement performing at the Primavera Sound festival, Barcelona, June 2022.
Stephen Malkmus of Pavement performing at the Primavera Sound festival, Barcelona, June 2022. Photograph: Jordi Vidal/Redferns

The film director Alex Ross Perry is set to make an unconventional movie about the beloved US indie band Pavement.

In November, Perry debuted a musical, Slanted! Enchanted!, about the band in New York City. In a new interview with the New Yorker, the director of films such as Listen Up Philip and Queen of Earth said that the production is part of a larger film project about the band.

Alex Ross Perry with frequent collaborator Elisabeth Moss in 2019.
Alex Ross Perry with frequent collaborator Elisabeth Moss in 2019. Photograph: Rob Kim/Getty Images for MoMA’s The Contenders

Perry told the magazine that Pavement’s record label, Matador, contacted him three years ago to propose a collaboration – albeit one with a typically cryptic directive from frontman Stephen Malkmus: that he did not want to hire a documentarian; he wanted to hire a screenplay writer but did not want a screenplay.

“No one knew what that meant,” Perry said.

The unorthodox film – which Perry described as “legitimate, ridiculous, real, fake, idiotic, cliche, illogical” – will combine elements of a biopic, tour documentary and footage from the musical and its making.

Perry likened the project to the unusual films made about Bob Dylan. “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.”

Discussing the musical, Perry likened Malkmus’s songwriting to that of Stephen Sondheim “in terms of his narrative storytelling, his sense of allusion and wordplay”.

Pavement: Harness Your Hopes (dir Alex Ross Perry)

Perry previously directed a new video for the 1999 Pavement single Harness Your Hopes, which was released earlier this year.

The New York-based film director is known for has collaborations with actor Elisabeth Moss; their latest, Her Smell, was released in 2018 and centred on a volatile musical performer inspired by Courtney Love.

Pavement are in the midst of a second reunion tour following a previous reunion in 2010. The five-piece California band initially split in 1999.

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