PAVEMENTS, the movie about Pavement that filmmaker Alex Ross Perry (Her Smell, Golden Exits) has been working on for a few years, will make its world premiere at the 2024 Venice Film Festival, which runs August 28 – September 7. That’s Venice, Italy and not Venice, California if you were wondering.
Alex Ross Perry says: “It’s a musical. It’s a museum. It’s a movie. It’s a mosaic. What if the music documentary can actually be a film? I asked this question in June of 2020 when I began talking about this project. I dunno, it’s a weird movie and I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Among the things Alex Ross Perry staged for PAVEMENTS: an art exhibit/museum that included such questionably legitimate artifacts as late Pavement drummer Gary Young’s toenail clippings; a jukebox musical titled Slanted! Enchanted! that had two “workshop performances” in NYC; and a “world premiere” for the film that was shot at Nitehawk Prospect Park in Brooklyn last year. Perry also shot at Pavement’s 2022 Kings Theatre run. ARP also thanks Lance Bangs “who has made sure fans will see new images they’ve never glimpsed.”
The Venice Film Festival page for PAVEMENTS says the film is 128 minutes long and the cast includes Joe Keery, Jason Schwartzman, Nat Wolff, Fred Hechinger, Logan Miller, Griffin Newman, Tim Heidecker, Michael Esper, Zoe Lister-Jones, and Kathryn Gallagher.
The poster for PAVEMENTS is based on an old Matador Records publicity photo for the band that at first appears to be mirrored, but when you flip it around it’s a group of actors, including Joe Keery (Stranger Things) as Stephen Malkmus, and Griffin Newman (Blank Check podcast) as Steve West. Check that out below.
Stay tuned for more news about PAVEMENTS and see Alex Ross Perry’s Instagram post about the film and its premiere below.
Meanwhile, Stephen Malkmus has a new band, The Hard Quartet, with Matt Sweeney, Jim White and Emmett Kelly that they are very slowly teasing out info on.
