That weird Pavement jukebox musical from earlier this month is part of a weird movie directed by Alex Ross Perry, though nobody, especially not the filmmakers, seem able to articulate what that means.
According to a new profile in the New Yorker, Pavement’s label Matador Records reached out to Perry three years ago. The band sought a movie, but frontman Stephen Malkmus did not want a documentary. He “wanted to hire a screenwriter. But he didn’t want a screenplay.” According to Perry, “No one knew what that meant.”
Perry decided to make something “legitimate, ridiculous, real, fake, idiotic, cliché, illogical,” he said. “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.”
Slanted! Enchanted! A Pavement Musical was part of that vision, pairing Pavement’s songs with dancing Santas and elaborate musical numbers set in IKEA. “Malkmus is neck and neck with [Stephen] Sondheim in terms of his narrative storytelling, his sense of allusion and wordplay.” Perry said. But was the musical all a joke? Not quite. “The ultimate joke is that it’s actually good,” Perry said.
This maybe the only new Pavement project to look forward to any time soon; Malkmus recently said it would be “total cringe” if they wrote new music today. The band is currently on the Australia and New Zealand leg of their reunion tour, and tickets are available here. If you’d like, you can revisit our list of the band’s 10 best songs.
