On the one hand I am managing/trying to address what appears to be a serious health deterioration.
On the other hand, tonight I went to watch “Pavements”. a film about. er, the band Pavement. Two star review in the Guardian amidst talk of missing the obvious (why the name) and confused narrative between the fictional and factual. However, Everyman in Manchester was showing it as a one off and I like the band so… well how wrong can you be.
At the risk of hype, this was an astonishing film. Anyone bored with endless music biopics and their predictable narrative arc - poverty, struggle for success, success, tragedy/dispute and redemption - should absolutely watch this. This is your wildest dreams come true. You don’t need to be a fan of Pavement, although there are laugh out loud moments if you are.
The basic premise is to imagine what would have happened if Pavement had not been on the one indie label all career, hadn’t blown up their own career with Wowee Zowee, hadn’t blown up Lollapalooza and hadn’t pretty much split up on stage. What would have happened if they had been as big as Tina Turner and as important as R.E.M.?
The answer of course is that they would eventually get a travelling museum exhibition/career retrospective, would get a standard biopic made using the above described narrative arc and, like Tina et al, eventually there would be a musical.
Here then we get the token nod to the narrative arc as the rehearsals and shows from the 22 comeback make up one quarter of the film. We get one quarter showing the recruitment for, preparation for filming of and the premiere of the fictional biopic. Joe Keery and Jason Schwartzmann are excellent. The third quarter is the lead up to and launch of the exhibition and the final quarter is the musical. Zoe Lister-Jones being one of several familiar faces. Split screens all the way through shouldn’t work as each of these are mixed seemingly randomly and yet… totally works.
Fact meets fiction as the band attend the opening night of the exhibition which of course contains amazing Pavement artefacts and, hilariously, very fake ones. They are visibly moved. Absolutely captures the spirit of Pavement. The snarky, slacker contrariness with an underlying sincerity and comic genius.
No-one can make this type of film again. It’s a complete one off and post cinema it’s been gratifying to read that everyone else has given it fabulous reviews.
The thing that makes it, bizarrely, is the musical. Hard to imagine anything less likely than a Pavement musical but by taking it so deadly seriously it manages to absolutely take the rip out of the medium in a manner akin to Spinal Tap. The whole thing looks embarrassing and is portrayed as an accident waiting to happen. All the more astonishing then that the band watch the opening night and we’re treated to an orchestral medley of the greatest never hits of Pavement. Talking to other cinema goers by the loos afterwards and we all went from laughing to having a huge lump in our throats. And yes, we all now think that the world needs an actual Pavement musical.
Brilliantly YouTube has a fake trailer for the fake biopic and the musical medley. Genuinely unique and magical filmmaking.