‘The Goal Isn’t Trust but Malleability’: ‘Pavements’ Director Alex Ross Perry on the Terrible Truths of ‘Unimaginative Biopics’

Founded in 1989 in Stockton, California, the indie rock band Pavement became one of the most beloved and talked-about groups of the 1990s. Fronted by Stephen Malkmus, Pavement was your cool friend’s favorite band. The music he or she would listen to when everyone else wanted to put on grunge or Britpop.

Thanks to an ever-growing wave of appreciation that started first as an underground movement, Pavement released five albums before disbanding at the dawn of the 21st century. And they did so with some real acrimony. Film director Alex Ross Perry captured all this, including the rise and fall of the group, in the new magnetic biopic, Pavements.

We caught up with Perry—in character—to discuss the origins of the film, his mockumentary approach to it, and where it succeeded. What was it like to work with actor Jason Schwartzman? How did he try to capture the dynamic of the enigmatic band? How did he use music in the movie? Find out everything below.

VICE: What was it about Pavement that made you think they’d be so willing to share their deepest, most closely guarded secrets with yourself and your production team?

Alex Ross Perry: They had a clear vision for how they wanted their story to be told. A big part of the appeal of projects like this for their subjects is having the chance to rewrite the past in order to conform to how you now see it—in retrospect—or to refine moments that you wish had gone differently. So, as with all of these promotional, unimaginative biopics, the goal isn’t trust but malleability and lack of artistic forcefulness on my own part.

Naturally, these films have no interest in secrets, the truth, the actual intentionality behind artistic motivations, inspirations, or moments lived. The goal here is fabrication, and by agreeing not to plumb any deep truths, I became the right guy for the job. What you’d get from an honest exploration of such things would be a storyteller who says, “Do you resent Malkmus for being both the reason this band is iconic, and also the biggest obstacle to Pavement ascending to the heights they deserved?” That was not my job. My job was to ask only, “Tell me some vaguely dramatic things that happened or sort of happened, and let me contort them into moments bigger than they ever were, because audiences love that.”

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VICE: Was it hard, earning their trust?

ARP: I think if I came in with a strong directorial vision and many tricks of screenwriting and narrativizing that I wanted to do, I’d be the wrong person for the job. But the assignment was clear: make a historically inaccurate movie that heightens every single moment from an artist’s career into a perfectly formed dramatic morsel, loaded with meaning and relevance that could not possibly have been known at the time. They trusted me to do that.

VICE: What strategies did you deploy with each individual member and the band as a whole to get them to open up to you?

ARP: I simply had to tell them that no matter what, I was there to tell their version of the story. There would be no fact-checking, and whatever version of events they vaguely remembered 25 years later would be the version I committed to. This was my way of assuring them that in no way would the movie misrepresent the Pavement story, nor would it show the band in an unflattering light. The only concession I said would be made was that everything would be pitched at the level of high drama, no matter how mundane or tossed off it felt at the time.

VICE: Pavement have always seemed like quite a modest bunch. Was being able to take center stage part of the appeal?

ARP: The motivation behind this whole project—on their end—was to dispel the notion that they are modest, regular guys who happen to have been in one of the all-time great bands. In fact, they craved fame, wanted it very badly, and only via poor timing and various other obstacles were financial success and cultural domination out of reach. So part of making a fiction film was rooted in the desire to show the world that they belong center stage, taking their rightful place among such biopic’d luminaries as Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Elvis, Jimi Hendrix, Elton John, Bob Marley, the Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, Motley Crue, Tupac and all the rest. If you notice that this list reads like an index of Pavement’s peers and contemporaries, you are correct.

VICE: Did you have to massage any of the facts to make their story better?

ARP: All of them, and that is what people love and expect when watching a sensationalized biopic of actors pretending to be their favorite musicians. On its own, the Pavement story lacks the massive dramatic moments that a great biopic needs, and it was my job to take the truth and augment it with embellishment and dishonesty.

One thing that annoyed me was after a particularly meaningful and emotional scene where Chris Lombardi (played by Jason Schwartzman) has to talk Malkmus into playing Lollapalooza—because the tour comes to New York and Malkmus was embarrassed about performing in front of a hometown crowd—Jason was asking me if I thought a moment like this ever happened. Of course it didn’t. And that’s besides the point. The story was rooted in fact—both Lombardi and Malkmus told me as such. But whether it played out as an earnest, heart-to-heart moment with swelling music is irrelevant, and those making a biopic should know that. Audiences enter into an agreement with these films that every scene is 20% fact and 80% bullshit, exaggeration, historical revision, and movie magic.

VICE: What’s next for you after this?

ARP: In a recent interview, Kerry King said he’d like there to be a Slayer biopic, and that he feels Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson would be the perfect choice to play him. I am pursuing this job with everything I’ve got.

VICE: Have you got your sights set on any bona fide pop megastars for your next biopic?

ARP: I think Wesley Willis is calling out for a classically structured, melodramatic film, and I believe a script of that caliber would land on the black list for sure. That is a role sure to win acclaim and awards, what with the music, schizophrenia, early death, and all.

VICE: Were there any key elements of the Pavement story that you were trying to leverage against current trends and themes in the zeitgeist?

ARP: The best version of a movie like this is one that answers the beloved question financiers and producers ask: why now? What is the relevance of a story set between 1989 and 1999 to modern audiences? I think our work here was easy because 1995-era Pavement are not against current trends, they ARE current trends. TikTok success and all.

This movie would have made less sense a few years ago. This mathematical logic is why we are inundated with a never-ending stream of films about musical icons beloved to baby boomers: you must wait until your audience needs a hit of uncomplicated nostalgia and familiar songs, which is to say: the bread and butter of great cinematic historical storytelling.

VICE: Will you be seeing much more of the band now that the filming is done?

ARP: One thing they looked forward to doing was appearing on as many red carpets as possible, standing alongside the actors who portrayed them. So while there is a bit more of that fun to be had, the journey is nearly at an end.

VICE: Were any prosthetic body parts required?

ARP: My one regret is that we didn’t make a film that required any fake noses or wigs. I know from reading the press on most of these biopics that there is nothing the public loves more than looking at an actor who vaguely resembles the person they are imitating, except for a nose or perhaps the color of their eyes. It was a blessing that Joe Keery’s iconic hair is adjacent to the iconic hair of Malkmus, but it did mean my dreams of working with a wig maker and having this process covered breathlessly by the press and awarded thusly will have to wait.

VICE: How much is the Pavement brand worth?

ARP: Like the 90s release of the Beatles anthology albums and accompanying documentary, the sole purpose of this project was to contextualize the band for a new generation. Fortunately, during our years of production, the “Harness Your Hopes” explosion happened, as did the massive reunion tour, which mostly came about due to the fun they all had getting on the phone with me to reminisce about old times. What is clear now is that, due in no small part to the film’s success, not to mention the astronomical sales of the soundtrack, Pavement stock is at an all-time high, and the only place to go is further up.

Vice: Why do awards matter?

ARP: They are, simply put, the sole determining factor of whether or not your movie succeeded or has marketable merit. If the impressions in the film are excellent, the awards follow, and this was our primary goal. It is important for Joe Keery to show people that, beyond being an incredibly well-liked actor on one of the most successful shows of all time and a technically skilled and highly acclaimed musician, he is also good at doing impressions of famous people and winning awards for that. The effort to build his campaign—bought and paid for, cold and calculated but masquerading as grass roots enthusiasm based on the film’s merit—was present from the day he signed on, which was also the last time I spoke with him, because ever since then I have only known him as an amalgamation of the Joe i once knew, and the Malkmus character he inhabited. On tour, he continues to wear clothing from the film, some of which was from Malkmus’ personal archive. This character will never leave him, and the more awards he received for it, the tighter the seal became.

Pavements expanded nationally last Friday, June 6, and 50 AMC Theatre locations will be playing the film for one night only on Thursday, June 12th. To find showtimes and purchase tickets, you can go here.