PAVEMENTS Documentary

Screening to be followed by a conversation with director and writer Alex Ross Perry.

Alex Ross Perry’s imaginative documentary about the ‘90s-era indie rock band Pavement follows a dreamlike logic: this band should have been bigger back in the day, so why not create a world where they were, with a museum show, biopic and a jukebox musical too? Perry documents all of it – the band’s rise from underground sensations being touted as the next big thing, their subsequent implosion in 1999 and their successful 2022 reunion tour – and then some, printing the legend by actually mounting a museum show, with real artifacts from Pavement’s past displayed alongside those of humorously dubious provenance. He stages the Pavement jukebox musical “Slanted! Enchanted!” for a limited run, featuring Broadway pros, and gets rave reviews. And the band’s travails are given tongue-in-cheek dramatization in clips from the reputed biopic RANGE LIFE, featuring STRANGER THINGS’ Joe Keery as Pavement frontman Stephen Malkmus, and Jason Schwartzman and Tim Heidecker as his put-upon Matador Records’ bosses. Perry’s three-sided record of a film glides between documentary, mockumentary and dream world, an elaborate inside joke that says come on in to the viewer. It’s slanted and enchanting. –Todd Hitchcock