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Pavements, the experimental musical biopic concert film directed and written by Alex Ross Perry, was released in limited theaters in the USA on May 2, 2025. After its premiere at the 81st Venice International Film Festival on September 4, 2024, Utopia acquired the film's distribution rights for the North American region.
The synopsis for the film, as per its official website, reads:
"Documentary about the American indie band Pavement, which combines scripts with documentary images of the band and a musical mise-en-scene composed of songs from their discography."
Pavements combines documentary-style filmmaking with a spoof biopic of the band known as Pavement. It also includes moments from Slanted! Enchanted! A Pavement Musical, a jukebox musical using the band's music. The film loosely follows their progression as a band, along with their works in chronological order.
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Pavements is available exclusively in limited theaters
As of now, the experimental biopic has been released in limited theaters and will be available from May 2 to May 9, before being released nationwide on June 6, 2025. As per IMDb, Pavements has a positive approval rating of 7.1/10, based on 174 user reviews so far, and the movie has a runtime of 2 hours and 8 minutes.
What is the biopic all about?
The trailer for Pavements was released on March 24, 2025, and is available for viewers on the official Utopia YouTube channel. The trailer begins with a disclaimer for the audience, following which comes unseen footage of the band Pavement.
The clip cuts to Joe Keery, who also features as himself in the film, practicing the guitar and then speaking about starring as Stephen Malkmus, the lead of the band. The biopic within the biopic, titled Range Life, is supposedly a career-changing role for Joe.
The video also shows the real Stephen Malkmus speaking about their music, followed by interviews highlighting the experience of being a fan of Pavement. The trailer then concludes with Joe Keery performing the band's music at a concert. Multiple positive reviews from film critics are also shown at the end.
In an interview with Loud and Clear in September 2024, director Alex Ross Perry and editor Robert Greene spoke about the process of making Pavements. The duo explained how they sorted through the multiple options and material available for the film, and how it was an emotional project for Robert.
Alex explained that the duo usually edits their projects together, but this one was handled individually by Robert.
"Well… I just let Robert do it! He really wanted to do it by himself this time. Usually, we sit in an editing room together, but this was too emotional for him - to have the fulfillment of his lifelong dream to make a narrative fiction hybrid about his favorite band... He just requested to be alone with the material for a year and a half," he said.
Robert jokingly continued Perry's explanation, saying,
"The emotion was that I just didn’t want Alex talking to me the whole time because he’s a millennial, so you can’t really trust his ideas about Pavement, you know? They’re corrupt by the 'evil poptimist movement that came after Pavement;' he’s got a broken sensibility and doesn’t really understand what Pavement really is."
He continued to speak in a humor-filled manner, further expressing that he wanted fans of the band to connect with the film and let the movie showcase the ideas of music.
"I was like, 'Just you stay in New York, make several other movies, and I’ll be here meditating and thinking hard about what it means to be a Pavement fan and do a lot of split screens.' No, that’s all actually true, but the truth is that we wanted the movie to be about the ideas of the music," Robert added.
Pavements cast and crew members
Pavements is written and directed by Alex Ross Perry. It is produced by Craig Butta, Danny Gabai, Peter Kline, Robert Greene, Lance Bangs, Arrow Kruse, and Alex Needles, while the credited cinematographer is Robert Kolodny. Further, the distribution rights for the North American region were acquired by Utopia.
The cast for the film includes the band members from Pavement, Michael Esper as Essem, Zoe Lister-Jones as Anne, and Kathryn Gallagher as Loretta. It also features Joe Keery as Stephen Malkmus and himself, Jason Schwartzman as Chris Lombardi, Nat Wolff as Scott Kannberg, Fred Hechinger as Bob Nastanovich, and others. The director, Alex, also appears in the film.
Stay tuned with us for further updates.
