Joe Keery has found the role of a lifetime in Stephen Malkmus, the enigmatic and ambivalent frontman of seminal rock band Pavement. Like so many performers inspired by the particular charisma of a music icon, Keery has thrown himself into the role with zeal and commitment, studying countless hours of performance and interview footage while attempting to nail Malkmus’ Stockton incarnation of a California accent for Range Life, a biopic of the Pitchfork faves from writer-director Alex Ross Perry. And like Austin Butler in particular, he may have trouble shaking the nonfictional character from his psyche once he’s done flying so close to the indie-rock sun.
The only thing is, Range Life isn’t real. Neither is the stage musical Slanted! Enchanted!—also purportedly directed by Perry—though that one might sound less convincing from the jump. Then again, maybe not; do any musical acts seem truly off-limits for awards-baiting biopics or reductive jukebox musicals? Pavements, an actual Alex Ross Perry movie that exists enough to show at the New York Film Festival this week, aims to take playful advantage of these grim inevitabilities. For this sorta-documentary, sorta-spoof, Perry cuts together five different Pavement sorta-narratives: The making of Range Life, particularly the lengths Keery (playing himself) goes to assume Malkmus’ slacker persona; the making of Slanted, which looks vaguely inspired by the Jagged Little Pill musical that hit Broadway a few years back; the opening of a Pavement-themed museum exhibit (real but full of jokes); the history of Pavement as told by non-fake archival footage; and contemporary footage of the band as they prepare to embark on their 2022 reunion tour.
It all threatens to resemble a hat on a hat, possibly worn by a snake eating its own tail. Yet Perry isn’t really going for a trippy hall-of-mirrors approach, even when he cuts together multiple performances of songs so that Pavements past, present, and fake-ass trade verses on their catalog of ’90s non-hits. In fact, the straight documentary material is surprisingly linear, carefully following the band’s history from the late ‘80s through the end of the ‘90s, though it largely trails off around 1995, covering Brighten The Corners and Terror Twilight—and the band’s ensuing break-up that confines their entire recorded output to a single decade—only halfheartedly. It would be a decent primer for casual fans or even newcomers, if it weren’t contained within a two-hour chronicle that, unlike its subject, doesn’t know precisely when to quit.
Then again, there’s a certain thrill in a star-studded motion picture paying so much attention to a band that normally has to make do with the odd, thrilling reference from a mainstream movie. (Yes, the line about Malkmus from Barbie turns up here.) Perry captures the quietly prickly band dynamics without goading them into big drama—and then winks at that shambolic, sometimes-opaque quality with clips from Range Life that attempt to goose moments from the band’s career into exactly those kinds of conflicts. Meanwhile, bits and pieces from the musical inject the band’s deadpan affect with discomfiting theater-kid emotions. Everyone involved purports to be a huge fan, claims that are once believable (you’d have to be a huge fan to want to spend time making a half-fake Pavement movie) and a little nebulous. There are refreshingly few direct testimonials about what anyone—cast, crew, or outside voices—particularly likes about Pavement’s songs or albums. The strongest cultural critique from outside the band comes from a famous Beavis And Butt-Head clip where the boys exhort them to “try harder.” Maybe the filmmakers suspect anything more flowery would feel too much like parody.
Still, the question arises anyway: Is Perry, the celluloid-loving indie filmmaker whose previous fiction film (Her Smell) also got up close and personal with ‘90s rock, actually much of a parodist? The Range Life clips are hit and miss; sometimes they resemble what it might look like if Perry actually took on the job of turning Pavement into a mainstream rock-and-roll story, once in a while they actually look like a hacky rock biopic, but mostly they seem to hope they’ll get laughs by existing. (This technique is also referred to as “There’s Jason Schwartzman!”) Most of the time, the stage-musical clips aren’t sustained enough to create more than a general impression, though a full-cast, multi-voice performance of “Spit On A Stranger” is hilariously spot-on and earns any audience cringes with honor. The museum footage, on the other hand, truly blurs the line between documentation and fakery; by the time a line-up of Snail Mail, Speedy Ortiz, Bully, and Soccer Mommy are turning up to perform Pavement covers to a packed opening crowd, fans may yearn for another chance to catch it, despite much of the memorabilia on display constituting dry-witted sight gags that make the reality of the whole thing seem questionable. (No, the band did not pose for a “Think Different” Apple ad.)
What these threads have in common is that they all go on for a long time. As fun as many of its moments are, there isn’t much build to Pavements—not emotionally, comedically, or dramatically, as Perry lingers with, then circles back to, all of his different visions of the band. That this is a rock biopic that can accommodate multiple visions, even as a joke, makes it probably the most formally ambitious such undertaking since I’m Not There. Todd Haynes' movie turned its incarnations of Bob Dylan into a kaleidoscope of the singer’s, and America’s, selves. That Pavements doesn't have such lofty designs is welcome, and signaled with its repeated tongue-in-cheek description of the band as the most important in the world. It's also characteristic of that band’s brilliant and occasionally maddening output that they're able to make Dylan’s alleged inscrutability look downright legible. But absent obvious catharsis or theorizing, Perry can't locate a satisfying stopping point, and his movie trails off agreeably—the cinematic equivalent of an exhibit sneaking in some good jokes.
Director: Alex Ross Perry
Writer: Alex Ross Perry, Stephen Malkmus
Starring: Stephen Malkmus, Scott Kannberg, Bob Nastanovich, Steve West, Mark Ibold, Joe Keery, Nat Wolff, Jason Schwartzman
Release Date: October 1, 2024 (New York Film Festival)
