Pavements
published:
So they made a new documentary about Pavement but it's a bit weird. They also shot half of a fake melodramatic biopic. They also made a half-fake museum. They also made a jukebox musical that I thought was fake but I guess also ran for a weekend or something.
It starts out with some typical music documentary footage of the band in the then-present day preparing for a reunion tour interspersed with archival footage from their early days. These bits are interspersed with the fake movie shoot (which is a pretty good gag) and museum (which is weird but also has some good gags) and musical (which, like I said, I thought was fake). It's a bit disorienting, and honestly I was mostly interested in the documentary part but a lot of it felt like a re-hash of Slow Century (good doc, recommended).
I thought the most interesting bit is how they weren't exactly shying away from (in fact, kind of reinforcing) the narrative that Stephen Malkmus is kind of a self-sabotaging prima donna and a dick. But still, I wondered what the point of it all was.
It was around the midpoint, where we get to the infamous Lollapalooza concert with the mud-sligning where things fell into place for me. Where the real-life footage of the disaster, played to the climax of Fight This Generation leads into the fake-movie recreation of the behind-the-scenes moments before and after. The actors covered in terrible mud makeup, blowing up melodramatically at one another. Managers angry that the band walked off the stage. Malkmus storming out in a huff.
Then they cut to actual camcorder footage after the event. A bunch of kids giddy with adrenaline, laughing and freaking out about how crazy that was. Looking for all the world like a band that's going to last forever. Then there's a cut to the museum, with a mannequin in a display case wearing the "authentic" soccer jersey SM was wearing at the time, still covered in unwashed mud of course.
I start to wonder about how much the "real" parts of the documentary are messing with the narrative. Just how on-the-nose all of the Malkmus-isms come across. How the interview clips are always ones that make him seem like a jerk but also are the ones where the interviewers are truly asking the most insipid questions. Of course, any documentary is going to be crafting a narrative through editing, any grown-up should be aware of this. But you usually don't think about it while it's happening, that's no fun.
The other connective tissue regarding perceptions and narratives is how the documentary bits and the fake movie bits tell a story of struggling one-hit-wonder band over their head in commercial expectations and self-sabotaging to avoid them. How true is this story? Who's to say? But by the end of Pavements you see a band 25 years on from their heydey playing to sold-out audiences, crying with joy. You are reminded of that weird time when one of their obscure b-sides went viral and then went viral again, this time with the TikTok generation. You see the museum grand opening with a bunch of the next generation of trendy indie-rock bands playing covers of music that they probably first heard in their parents cars as kids the way I first heard Jethro Tull or something. You see the silly jukebox musical put together what should be an incredibly dumb medley at the end and yet it totally rules and you are quietly sad you never had the chance to see it in person. Whatever the narrative, time has rewarded the band for sticking to their guns. The music's stood the test of time.
Three Stars.
Pavements is the: