MOVIE NIGHT: ‘Pavements’ With Hua Hsu, Plus an Interview With Director Alex Ross Perry

Yasi chats with New Yorker staff writer, Pulitzer prize–winning author, and known Pavement aficionado Hua Hsu about the 2025 film 'Pavements.' Is it a documentary? Is it a biopic? Is it a secret third thing? Did we like it? All these questions and more are answered. Plus, Yasi has a nice long chat with director Alex Ross Perry about the film and several other things, including but not limited to his take on vocal fry, 'Some Kind Of Monster,' and different approaches to mythmaking. Host: Yasi SalekGuest: Hua Hsu and Alex Ross PerryAudio Editor: Kevin PoolerAdditional Production Supervision: Justin SaylesTheme Song: Bethany Cosentino Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 2:16Yasi Salek?

  Hello and welcome to Band Splain. I am your host, Yasi Salek. This is usually a show where I invite an expert guest on to help me explain a cult band or iconic artist. But today's episode is a little different, you guys. We're back to film corner. It's movie night. Today's episode is about the film Pavements, directed by Alex Ross Perry, 2025. Okay, before we start, I just want to let everyone know that they should definitely stay tuned after this talk with Hua to hear an interview with Alex. That is really great. Okay, let's get into it. My guest today is New Yorker staff writer. Is that the correct title for you, Hua?

• 3:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:00Yasi Salek?

  And sorry, not, no big deal, Pulitzer Prize winning author. You guys, this man has a Pulitzer and he's taking time out of his Pulitzer winning life to come talk to me, an idiot about Pavements. You guys, welcome Hua Su to the program.

• 3:16Speaker 04

  Witnessing the intro live is, that was a thrill.

• 3:18Yasi Salek?

  Did you feel good?

• 3:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:20Yasi Salek?

  I was, I was doing a little freestyling. I did have some of it written out.

• 3:23Speaker 04

  It's, it's incredible to be here. I'm like, I could not be happier right now.

• 3:27Yasi Salek?

  The fact that now to date, we've had a MacArthur genius, an Oscar winner, and a Pulitzer Prize winner come talk to me, an absolute dumb bitch, is phenomenal. I've arrived.

• 3:41Speaker 04

  You have range, so.

• 3:42Yasi Salek?

  I do. I totally, I have range. I'm really excited. I've been trying to coerce Hua into coming on to this podcast for some time, even though I know that he would be an excellent guest with his eyes closed. I feel like he has like, and again, I just want to reiterate that he has a Pulitzer and also is a New Yorker staff writer. And also, aren't you a literal professor?

• 4:05Speaker 04

  Professor of Pavement Studies.

• 4:07Yasi Salek?

  Professor of Pavement Studies at prestigious university. He has imposter syndrome about coming on Band's plane.

• 4:13Speaker 04

  I do, I do.

• 4:14Yasi Salek?

  To talk about My Bloody Valentine, which you could probably do with your eyes closed, but we'll, we'll get it. This, this will be a nice, like, fluffing, so you can understand that it's not that bad, and then you'll come back.

• 4:26Speaker 04

  I mean, honestly, the, the episode you did with Chris on Pavement.

• 4:31Yasi Salek?

  Christopher Ryan?

• 4:31Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 4:32Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 4:32Speaker 04

  It made me wonder if I love anything as much as Chris loves, like, his 14th favorite band, you know? It was a real revelation, actually, because listening to you guys talk about Pavement for so much, it really made me doubt how much I actually like Pavement.

• 4:48Yasi Salek?

  No, here's the thing, you can't compare yourself to Chris Ryan in the realm of podcasting. That's like being like, oh yeah, I play basketball, but that's Michael Jordan. Do you know what I mean? Like, there's no point.

• 5:00Speaker 04

  I understand, I understand, yeah. He's, he's one of one.

• 5:04Yasi Salek?

  He's one of one, exactly, shout out.

• 5:05Speaker 04

  And you're one of one as well.

• 5:06Yasi Salek?

  In a different way, in a very different way.

• 5:11Yasi Salek?

  Well, I think we should just start off, we should talk about, or you should talk about to me, an engaged listener, tell me about your long and tender relationship with the band Pavement.

• 5:25Speaker 04

  So, I think I'm one of those people who is radicalized by, like, Nevermind and that whole movement, 120 Minutes. And so I think Pavement was one of the first things that seemed left of that, you know, like, a little bit more indie, like, I think I was listening to, like, Superchunk and Sebado and stuff like that, but I think everything that made Pavement kind of cool back then, somehow it came back, which I never thought it would, but, I mean, just an absurd name for a band, first of all. And the fact that none of the lyrics made any sense, but they all just, you, you, like, you, you wanted them to make sense, but they were just words.

• 6:06Yasi Salek?

  Right, yeah.

• 6:07Speaker 04

  I don't know, there was just something about it. I probably heard Trigger Cut first and thought like, wow, this is a lot chippier than I thought it would be. But it was really watery domestic, the EP that just... I was like, I understand music now. Now I understand that you could write an entire incredible non-commercial song about youth football.

• 6:29Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 6:30Speaker 04

  And this is like, this is, this is possible. Um, and yeah, it, it probably also radicalized me, Pavement also probably radicalized me into being like a quite annoying person at the age of 15.

• 6:42Yasi Salek?

  Many such cases, I think, honestly. And I'm not saying I don't, I think you were an annoying person, but I do feel that it's one of those bands that does sort of alchemize um, young people. I wanted to say men and not be a sort of a misandrist there, but I won't. People, all sorts of people.

• 7:03Speaker 04

  It's generous of you to shoulder some of that.

• 7:07Yasi Salek?

  You heard Trigger Cut, the song first? How is that possible?

• 7:11Speaker 04

  Um, I had a great college radio station growing up, KSU, Santa Clara University, and they played it. It was one of those things where you, you know, back, this is like when I revealed myself to be a 47-year-old person, like, you know, back when you had to read about things before actually hearing them.

• 7:30Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 7:30Speaker 04

  I remember reading about Pavement and thinking like, what could this possibly sound like? Like, it sounds like The Fall, but I don't know what The Fall is.

• 7:38Yasi Salek?

  Thanks for contextualizing it with two other like obscure bands that I've not heard.

• 7:45Speaker 04

  But then when, when I heard Trigger Cut, it was one of those things where you're like, this must be the band they're talking about. And, and of course it was.

• 7:53Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, that's a really great, because it's funny, you would think that Summer Babe would be the song played off of Slanted and Enchanted, but I like that they went, they went left and they played Trigger Cut, which is probably a more representative song of like what you're getting into when you get into Pavement.

• 8:11Speaker 04

  Totally. And then I, um, there's this local magazine in the Bay Area, it was probably California BAM?

• 8:18Yasi Salek?

  Oh, sure.

• 8:19Speaker 04

  It was Bay Area music, so it must have been a Bay Area thing. And it was always pretty corny, but they had this one picture of Pavement that I put on my binder. And then this girl in French class was like, who's that? And I looked at her and I said, they're like a popular Truman's Water.

• 8:39Yasi Salek?

  Oh, my God.

• 8:42Speaker 04

  Which is like

• 8:43Yasi Salek?

  She was like, I'm in love with you. She was like, would you like to go to the prom?

• 8:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. Sadie Hawkins season was right around. But it was like, I remember saying it and thinking like, I don't even know what Truman's water is, but I just assumed that they're a popular version of that. And so it's one of the most reprehensibly like annoying things I said in high school.

• 9:05Yasi Salek?

  It's so good.

• 9:08Yasi Salek?

  Talk me through the physics. Like, were we taking a bunch of clear masking tape and really affixing the whole thing so that it wasn't, you know, subject to the elements like rain and stuff onto your binder? Or was it just taped raw dog like out there to be scratched and fallen off and spilled food on it and stuff?

• 9:31Speaker 04

  No, I mean, you had the, I'm holding one up right now. It was just like the clear binder with

• 9:35Yasi Salek?

  Oh, one of the binders that you slipped in. Okay, yes. Well, I don't know why I thought in my mind I imagined a notebook. Yeah, okay, yes. Put it in the binder. Kids, do you think, oh yeah, you have a child. Do they carry binders? I guess maybe yours is not old enough.

• 9:50Speaker 04

  He has a trapper keeper with that.

• 9:52Yasi Salek?

  They still use trapper keepers?

• 9:54Speaker 04

  With like the really jazzy designs. Yeah, he does.

• 9:59Yasi Salek?

  Okay, that makes me happy.

• 10:00Speaker 04

  He doesn't do anything with it. Like, there's no work inside of it, but it does get Velcroed. The Velcro gets a lot of work, so.

• 10:08Yasi Salek?

  Sure. Yeah. I had a fourth grade teacher named Mrs. Brown who had a Beehive. And she, she hated two things. She hated the sound of Velcro, so none of us were allowed to ever close our trapper keeper. It had to be like folded under because if she heard the crinkle of it opening, she would lose her mind. And she hated if you tied your sweatshirt around your waist, which as you know, is the peak of fashion in 1990.

• 10:34Yasi Salek?

  I guess it was nineteen ninety when I was in the fourth grade. Um, and she would go skirt alert and like humiliate you in the hallway. So you couldn't even wrap your sweatshirt around your waist.

• 10:42Speaker 04

  Little, little phobic there.

• 10:44Yasi Salek?

  I, you know, she was, she was a tough lady, tough broad. Um, okay. So pavement made you annoying, gorgeous.

• 10:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 10:52Yasi Salek?

  Uh, and you, but you, you stuck around, right? You've, you've maintained your fandom all these years. Did you, did you fall out at any point? Like when they broke up, were you devastated?

• 11:07Speaker 04

  I, I think I fell out right before Terror Twilight.

• 11:10Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 11:11Speaker 04

  But it had less to do with them than with me. I think I was just kind of in this phase where I just didn't want to listen to anything that reminded me of like my youth at all. So.

• 11:21Yasi Salek?

  Like I'm a grown up now. I listen to underground backpack hip hop.

• 11:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, I was, I was more, uh, it was lyricist lounge days.

• 11:28Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, exactly. I listen into the living legends now. I'm an adult man.

• 11:33Speaker 04

  But I think up until, yeah, up until then I was pretty, I was like very into them, but then they kind of existed in their own universe. Like, a lot of things sounded like them, but didn't actually resemble them at all. You know what I mean? Like lyrically or just in terms of their affect, like the way they dressed. I think it was really impactful, but they just didn't really, it's not like Sonic Youth where fifty bands sounded like Sonic Youth.

• 12:01Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 12:01Speaker 04

  Just kind of listened to like the pretty parts of a Sonic Youth song on another bit. Like, nothing was like Pavement. And so I think when they broke up, I just accepted that this chapter of our collective lives was over.

• 12:14Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. It is, it's funny that you say that because now I'm thinking about it and I'm like, it's true. I don't, I don't imagine that like they velvet undergrounded in anywhere where like they launched a thousand other bands in their wake that were like imitating them. I think that happened later.

• 12:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:32Yasi Salek?

  Like when they were rediscovered, but it didn't happen in real time, right? Because like by ninety nine, by the time they broke up, I think, you know, to tie it into the film, and we're going to get into talking about the film, you guys, don't you worry, where it says, you know, you know, whatever it says pavement. Broke up in nineteen ninety nine, no one cared. And then the other day, it's like Pavement reunited, everyone cared, you know?

• 12:52Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 12:52Yasi Salek?

  And it's, it's kind of true, right? By ninety nine, like, there was no room for a band like, there was barely room for a band like Pavement in the popular culture that we just described. Hundred and twenty minutes, um, Lollapalooza, all that stuff. But there was room for them. Like, you know, you saw the cut your hair video on MTV. There was some place for that, but by ninety nine, that place had fucking disappeared. Like, there was no, nobody was even probably paying attention to what was happening. Not nobody, but you know what I'm saying?

• 13:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, I feel like they just got more, it's like they just became more themselves where, whereas like all their contemporaries seem to, I don't know, have more curiosity about what was going on in the world. I mean, I just remember around that time, people who liked Pavement also listened, like, you know, John Spencer Blues Explosion.

• 13:42Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 13:43Speaker 04

  And then they would have this remix with like Wu-Tang on it.

• 13:46Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 13:47Speaker 04

  And you're like, oh, this is modern music, you know, John Spencer and Kill a Priest. Or, you know, um, other mad, like Yolatango with these remixes, but Pavement just never did anything that, it, it's like they had no idea that the world existed outside of the art they were making. And it's kind of cool looking back, but at the time, it just, it did make it seem like, well, no one's ever gonna care about this again.

• 14:13Yasi Salek?

  Right. Cause like when, when everyone else was like, oh, this is cool electronic music raves, like rap. They were like, what if we made a cu- country type album?

• 14:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:24Yasi Salek?

  Um, yeah, it's very interesting. But then when they reunited, okay, when they reunited the first time, did you care?

• 14:32Speaker 04

  I went to, in like two thousand eight.

• 14:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I guess it was, was it twenty?

• 14:36Speaker 04

  Two thousand ten?

• 14:37Yasi Salek?

  Ten, I think, yeah.

• 14:38Speaker 04

  That's right. I went to the show in Central Park and I remember ten minutes in thinking like, oh my God, my life is complete. And then, but, but something about it, maybe it just wasn't. I think it hadn't been gone long enough. It's like with Oasis now, where it's been gone so long, now you really want it. I think ten years was enough time, but I don't think people really appreciated them enough to really want it as badly as like in twenty twenty two when they came back and they were just incredible all of a sudden.

• 15:10Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, yeah, I I definitely remember crying seeing them in twenty ten. I saw them, they played here at the Hollywood Bowl with No Age and Sonic Youth. And then they played a show the night before Coachella, which I think it didn't go to the Coachella, but they were able to play outside of their radius clause for whatever reason. And I went to that and that was like really moving for me. And I did feel like I was like, oh, I thought this was never gonna happen again.

• 15:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:42Yasi Salek?

  Almost more than I did when they came back the second time.

• 15:46Speaker 04

  I remember thinking like, you know, because I've been teaching college students for since two thousand, I don't know, like three or four.

• 15:54Yasi Salek?

  Mm hmm.

• 15:55Speaker 04

  And I'm always curious at what.

• 15:56Yasi Salek?

  I was in college in two thousand three.

• 15:59Speaker 04

  And like, nobody, nobody was into Pavement back then.

• 16:02Yasi Salek?

  Except for me.

• 16:03Speaker 04

  Right?

• 16:03Yasi Salek?

  For me, yeah.

• 16:04Speaker 04

  So you're, you were already a vanguard back then.

• 16:06Yasi Salek?

  Well, I think I just hadn't let go. It wasn't even a vanguard. I had just hadn't let go of my high school and middle school tastes, you know, like I was just still bumping, slanted and enchanted all the time. They've done a very interesting making themselves limited edition game for, for these like popping up once a decade or whatever. All right. Let's talk about, let's talk about the movies.

• 16:34Speaker 04

  I'm, I'm dying to know what you thought of the movie.

• 16:36Yasi Salek?

  Okay, well, we're not there yet because I have another general question. I'm laying, I'm trying, I'm putting on my best Sean Finacy hat and trying to do hello and welcome to the big picture. Um, I wanted to know where you land in general on music movies. I think I'm thinking specifically about biopics because I guess Doc, who has, nobody has like deep and deep thoughts about documentaries or maybe you do. Okay, so because here's what you said.

• 17:05Yasi Salek?

  In your brilliant New Yorker article, and I'm gonna read it here for those of you that don't have a subbie. Um, in fact, I did go to see A Complete Unknown soon after the Bob Dylan, Timothee C. biopic. A couple in Dylan's core demographic stepped out during the trailers complaining about the volume. I pretty much forgot about the movie after I left the theater, as I'm sure many did. But I also went back to some Dylan albums I hadn't listened to in years. It felt like this was one of the film's primary goals, to guide our Spotify searches. I had a chilling vision of someday shielding my ears during trailers playing before a biopics of my own teen heroes. So you didn't like that one?

• 17:44Speaker 04

  I don't know, it was entertaining, it was fine. I mean, I don't, I don't care about that history as much, so it was easy just to watch it as, as a Timothy Chalamet movie rather than a Bob Dylan movie.

• 17:56Yasi Salek?

  In the interview that is coming after this that I did with Alex Ross Perry, he calls it unwatchable.

• 18:02Speaker 04

  I mean, he has much higher standards for cinema than I do. I'll pretty much watch anything, so I don't know how much of

• 18:09Yasi Salek?

  I know, I agree.

• 18:11Speaker 04

  What it means that I

• 18:12Yasi Salek?

  Unwatchable, I'm like, what was the last thing I thought, found unwatchable?

• 18:15Speaker 04

  No, I have an affliction where, once I start a book, a movie, or a song, I have to

• 18:21Yasi Salek?

  Same.

• 18:22Speaker 04

  See it out, so, um, yeah, I mean, it was, it was a fine way to spend a random afternoon in Palm Springs.

• 18:28Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, listen, it was fun, it was a couple of music videos sished together. But, okay, do you like music biopics? Are there ones that you're like, they nailed it here? This was really good? Or, in general, do you kind of put them in the same bucket as, like, A Complete Unknown, The Queen one, whatever, the Elton John one, these are sort of a bit formulaic?

• 18:47Speaker 04

  I've never seen any of those other ones. Um, I don't like, I, I think that there are very few, I don't even know if there are good novels about music. I just think that music is great on its own, and so sometimes, other forms of art, other than criticism, obviously.

• 19:04Yasi Salek?

  Sure. John Caramanica, don't get mad.

• 19:07Speaker 04

  Um, I think that it's pretty hard to make, I don't know, it's, it's kind of hard to make A movie about kind of the random acts of genius that go into music, right? And so I was thinking about this because when you had Sean on, you guys were talking about 24 hour party people.

• 19:24Yasi Salek?

  In my opinion, the only good example of this genre.

• 19:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, and I think that it's great because it's more a movie about a scene.

• 19:32Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 19:33Speaker 04

  And it's about like the weird kind of goofballs that make up a scene rather than like this is what New Order were thinking when they made Blue Monday, you know?

• 19:43Yasi Salek?

  Right, right.

• 19:44Speaker 04

  I think that movies like, um, I don't like hype, even like Singles, which isn't a movie about music, but movies about people hanging out with music are good.

• 19:54Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 19:54Speaker 04

  Movies about people making music, like, I don't know, the Ian Curtis movie from way back or.

• 20:00Yasi Salek?

  Don't get me started, Control, don't get me started.

• 20:02Speaker 04

  Bob Marley, even like the NWA movie, like it just, it's so contrived because a lot of these genius things happen by accident, you know?

• 20:10Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 20:11Speaker 04

  Um, there is this one movie that I think is incredible and it's about music and it's, um, it's called The Posters Came From The Walls. Have you ever seen this?

• 20:21Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 20:22Speaker 04

  It's by, um, Jeremy Deller, who's like this Turner Award winning, um, British artist. And it's basically, I think Depeche Mode commissioned it for one of their big anniversaries. But it's basically this history of Depeche Mode told through these like seven or eight fans around the world.

• 20:40Yasi Salek?

  I can't believe I didn't watch this when I was doing my Depeche Mode episode. Whoops, sorry guys.

• 20:45Speaker 04

  Well, it's been, I think because the band, I don't think they liked it. So I think it's actually not that easy to watch, but it's on Vimeo. But it's an incredible document because it's just about just these obsessed fans around the world. And I, I think that's way more interesting to me than who Depeche Mode actually are, you know?

• 21:05Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 21:05Speaker 04

  And I think in this case, it's like. I don't, you recognize how much Alex Ross Perry loves Pavements?

• 21:12Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 21:12Speaker 04

  And that's like actually more interesting in a way than, um, I don't know, than whether Spiral Stairs and Malphite actually like each other, you know?

• 21:20Yasi Salek?

  Totally. I, I, yeah, I think what, I think you've, you've hit on to something that I kind of think, and I haven't really totally put into exact words, which is like, I just feel to make it good, you have to come at it sideways, you know, like, and, and that's a great segue into Pavements, because talk about coming at it sideways from like three, three sidewayses, you know? Um, okay. So you're dying to hear my top line opinion.

• 21:47Speaker 04

  I am.

• 21:48Yasi Salek?

  Um, I really liked it. I, I, when I first watched it, I was like, huh. It was, it was a thinker where I was like, ob- obviously like just as a Pavement fan, the docu, like the, just the straight docu aspect is absolutely like eating a box of chocolates. To me, it's delightful. I could stare at videos and, you know, photos of them in the nineties for hours and be totally happy and titillated. Um, I personally hate musicals. So at first I was like, what in the what are we doing? Disrespectful.

• 22:27Speaker 04

  Wait, how much, how much did you know going into the film?

• 22:30Yasi Salek?

  I didn't know anything. I mean, I knew, I knew, I guess I had like a press release and I kind of read it. And I, I think if I remember correctly, it said something like, he made three full-length things, but then ended up stitching them together or something. And obviously I had been privy to all the happenings. Like I had seen the stuff about the musical. I'd seen the museum stuff in real time.

• 22:59Speaker 04

  So you knew that it was a bunch of shenanigans?

• 23:02Yasi Salek?

  Kind of, yeah. So I'm like, that, like, I was interested to see how they were gonna like play into it, but. Once like I even through the first watch, like after the musical part, I was like, actually, this is so genius. You're such a genius. You're such a genius because what is pavement if not sort of like off putting? You know what I mean? And like, like creating of discomfort in a way, but also beautiful and like emotional. And I feel like the musical thing really like drove that home in a way that like, I was like, oh, that's so genius. And obviously the biopic stuff is just funny because it's riffing on what we were just talking about, which, you know, I think

• 23:43Yasi Salek?

  Alex has more vitriol for unwatchable music biopics than maybe me or you who would just like, put it on a plane and be like, this is fine, I guess. But yeah, like I watched it. I ended up seeing it twice. And yeah, I thought, I thought it was, I thought it was really good. I was like, also because of the sideways thing. I was like, thank fucking God. I like, there's no other way to make this film.

• 24:05Speaker 04

  Mm hmm. Yeah.

• 24:06Yasi Salek?

  What, what did you think?

• 24:08Speaker 04

  So I don't remember when, but it was like, maybe around 2022 or 23. Like I, a friend of mine is a producer and he was like, have you heard about this pavement film? And he started describing, he didn't know what it was, but he's basically like, there's an aspect of it that's a musical. And I'm like, that's crazy. And then I saw the musical advertised. So naturally, like I bought a ticket and went. And my friend Andrew and I were walking around, Yasi can see this, no one else can, because podcasting is not a visual form, but I'm wearing the T-shirt from the Slanted Enchanted Musical. And I remember sitting there and Andrew and I walk in and we

• 24:51Speaker 04

  see the merch and we're sort of like, we have to have the pavement, the musical merch, right? Because like, no one else will ever have this.

• 24:58Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 24:59Speaker 04

  And I say to him, I wonder if, I wonder if they're filming this for the movie. Or like, I wonder what parts of this are being filmed for the movie. And then the person selling the T-shirts was like, wait, how do you know that this is a movie? And I'm like, I'm a bit of an industry insider.

• 25:17Speaker 04

  And I know what's going on here. And she's like, okay, well, this is part of a production, but like, don't tell anyone. And I, we sat down and it was an actual musical. I mean, my mind was blown within like two or three minutes because like, I hate musicals. I've never actually, I say that having never actually been to one, but I just assumed that I'll hate them. And all of a sudden I was like, oh my God, you can act out every Pavement song. Like every Pavement song can actually also be interpreted as a story of a boy and a girl, or a kid in the suburbs. Like, and I think for my whole life, I've just sort of preserved

• 25:59Speaker 04

  this mystique around Malkmus and, you know, all the, all these lyrics about like architects and the Civil War, thinking that none of it actually meant anything. And here it was, not only just like deeply emotional and deeply earnest, but like they were acting these songs out and they were all part of this narrative. And I was like, I think I've completely misunderstood this band my entire life.

• 26:25Yasi Salek?

  That was your, that was your response to the, okay.

• 26:28Speaker 04

  I was like freaking out. I mean, also the song sounded so good that way. I thought, wow, like, they do have, they do have-

• 26:34Yasi Salek?

  Songs sounded so good that way. I mean, I didn't see the whole musical, but I, I saw the bits that are excerpted in the film. And you, you really, you get, you're like, wow, these, again, like, I don't think Sonic Youth would, you know, work as well in a musical format. Like, you really understand that these are like extremely melodic. And also, like, it shows you how emotional the music is. Because, we should say for people who haven't seen it, and you should go see it. I don't know why you're listening to this if you haven't seen it. It's available for streaming now on movie. There are like basically four parts to this film. One is the slanted enchanted.

• 27:18Speaker 04

  We should have explained this up top.

• 27:20Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Okay, Sean Fantasy's job is hard, actually. One part is this musical, it's called slanted exclamation point enchanted exclamation point a pavement musical, the stage musical. It starred Michael Esper, which was like a very winking form of casting because he played whatever. I've not seen it, but he was the star of the American idiot, Green Day musical. And it also featured Catherine Gallagher, who was the star, I think, of the Alanis Morissette musical. Is that right?

• 27:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:50Yasi Salek?

  Um, along with Zoe Lister Jones and Alex Ross Perry, who is absolutely criminally insane. I guess went to like a retreat, an artist retreat and spent the whole time with no internet, writing the full fucking musical with all of these songs to put it on. I think even kind of soon, pretty soon, knowing it would not fully make it into the film. But was like, but I will make the entire thing. And it ran for what a week or something?

• 28:23Speaker 04

  I think they did like three shows, so it was, yeah, however long and, and trust me, people were so confused. Like everyone was just like walking around because it was also in the middle of the day. So it wasn't like a traditional nighttime.

• 28:38Yasi Salek?

  Jobless, jobless behavior, yeah.

• 28:40Speaker 04

  And everyone was just like, what, what was that? But I, I really enjoyed it. I thought it was like surreal and beautiful. But yeah, that was just one, one of the things he did for this film.

• 28:54Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I'm so jealous that you got to experience it in real time, although we should talk about how it, how it presents in the movie. But yes, that was one of the things. The second thing was a rock biopic.

• 29:05Yasi Salek?

  Uh, called Range Life. Um, that was, I believe, not filmed in its entirety, but like, he did write a 50 page script for it. So even that, the whole thing is not included. Um, it stars Joe Keery, um, from Stranger Things fame, I think, as, as Stephen Malkmus. He's also a musician. So, uh, he plays the guitar. Nat Wolf, um, playing Spiral Stairs. Logan Miller, who played Mark Eibold and Griffin Newman, um, playing Steve West. Um, and Fred Hetchinger plays Bob Nastanovich. And then Gerard Cosler and Chris Lombardi are played by, uh, Tim Heidecker and Jason Schwartzman.

• 29:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, they're great. They're very good.

• 29:46Yasi Salek?

  So I felt like that part really like, well, did a couple of things, but one for me was like, the riff on the biopic was really great. And when they did the split screen scenes with like, Joe Keery and Stephen Malkmus, because one thing that really bothers me, and I know it shouldn't, because it's like, obviously this is never going to happen one to one, but it's just really throws you out of it when you know so well what the, the actual subject looks like. And then the actor is so different looking and you're like, well, I'm supposed to buy this bitch? I'm not buying this. I don't look like Malkmus.

• 30:21Speaker 04

  It actually bothers me more when they look like 70% like them, because then I forget what the original person looked like. You know what I mean? Like then they get supplanted, but, um,

• 30:32Yasi Salek?

  Does, do you feel Joe Keery was 70% Malkmus face?

• 30:36Speaker 04

  No, no, he didn't look anything like him.

• 30:38Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I didn't look anything like him there. Good hair, good hair match though, but.

• 30:41Speaker 04

  Within the film, he, he was just trying to like copy his affect and, and, and, and I think that's the weird thing about it, right? It's not just that it stitches together scenes from this biopic. There's also all the behind the scenes biopic stuff.

• 30:56Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 30:56Speaker 04

  Of like Keery trying, working with the voice coach to master.

• 31:00Yasi Salek?

  So when they get a photo of inside his mouth, this also illuminated me and I did end up asking Alex Ross Perry about this, but like, I didn't realize, but Stephen Malkmus is the OG vocal fry and nobody gets mad at him about it. It's only, they only get mad at me, but he, this is a man who has popularized vocal fry. People celebrate him for, they lionize him.

• 31:24Speaker 04

  I think, I think you're right.

• 31:25Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's fucking patriarchy.

• 31:29Yasi Salek?

  But yeah, I feel like those elements really worked. And then I guess the third and fourth elements. I mean, the third element is just straight documentary, right? Alex followed the band.

• 31:41Speaker 04

  Leading rehearsal scenes.

• 31:42Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, leading up to that big. Return tour, which you went, you went to one of those shows.

• 31:49Speaker 04

  I went to two of them.

• 31:50Yasi Salek?

  The Kings Theater. Yeah, I went to. I went to two of them as well. And I went to the one that is in the film that was at. The Palladium. Is that the Palladium? Which was that first like sort of underplay? So that part is part of it too. So there's an actual docu aspect of like, we're following this band on the road to their great reunion tour and.

• 32:16Yasi Salek?

  And then the museum exhibit, which was also false.

• 32:22Yasi Salek?

  There was not a museum exhibit about pavement.

• 32:26Speaker 04

  Well, wait, there was, there was, right? But everything in it was fake.

• 32:31Yasi Salek?

  There was, but it was manufactured for the film, right? So it's not like, you know, it's not like the MoMA was like, what we need is a, you know, retrospective on pavement. It was like simply put together. They should. I would, I would go to it. And then even some of the, the ephemera was manufactured. Some was real and some was fake.

• 32:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think they borrowed the Beastie Boys VMA or something like that.

• 32:57Yasi Salek?

  Oh, is that where that came from?

• 33:00Speaker 04

  So it's like, it's so hard to explain, you know? That it's also hard to process as an experience, I feel. Yeah, I remember, I think the first time I saw was at the New York Film Festival. And. I think it was, it was very, it was weird because like having seen the musical when everyone was just. Absorbed and confused and realizing how funny it played in the film. Like it was just sort of, it was, it was really hard to wrap my head around how you were supposed to feel about anything.

• 33:34Yasi Salek?

  Right, right.

• 33:35Speaker 04

  I think going back to the band itself, it kind of makes sense, right? Because the band could be kind of, they can, they can inspire you to, to be annoying or to do annoying things.

• 33:46Yasi Salek?

  That's, that's really what I, that's what I landed on. I was like, also, the band is like, I think sometimes people are confused about how to feel when first confronted with their work.

• 33:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, I, they're, they're, they're a band that have meant so much to me, who I never want to interact with in real life. You know, like I, I see Mark Ibold in my neighborhood all the time.

• 34:10Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 34:11Speaker 04

  I've heard he's a nice guy. I never want to interact with these people because I would just want to preserve this image of them as the kind of weirdos that they probably are.

• 34:20Yasi Salek?

  Totally. He seems really nice. He's also the only one that's, um, seems to have attended the musical.

• 34:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. And he seemed a good sport about it.

• 34:31Speaker 04

  But I remember just, I was very, it was just so densely meta that I can't say I enjoyed it the first time I watched it, right? Because I was just sort of trying to figure out what it meant. You know what I mean?

• 34:45Yasi Salek?

  Right, right.

• 34:46Speaker 04

  Like I appreciated that it was a spoof of biopics and that I liked the musical and like all these things. But then the, I think after I left and after I thought about it, I was like, wow, that was, it's incredible, not only that Alex made something that is so intensely like loving, like that, that is, it's like a object of devotion, right? This film, but it's also just phenomenal that artists would let you do that, you know?

• 35:17Yasi Salek?

  Well, it's interesting and I don't want to spoil the conversation I have with Alex too much, but I will say my take on it, and I asked him about it and you guys can listen to see what he says, my take on it is a little different, which I feel like. That's also mythmaking. They didn't let him, they made him, you know, like, they wouldn't have ever let him make a Bob Dylan style.

• 35:38Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, no, I see what you're saying. Yeah.

• 35:39Yasi Salek?

  Like, they, they created-

• 35:42Speaker 04

  The musical and all that stuff.

• 35:44Yasi Salek?

  No, but they created the circumstances in which it had to be left of center and weird, like-

• 35:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 35:52Yasi Salek?

  Or else they wouldn't have co-signed it. And so like-

• 35:54Speaker 04

  And that inspires me.

• 35:56Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and that's its own mythmaking, right? Yeah, it's great, but it's not not mythmaking. It's like, it's not slacker, it's not not caring.

• 36:03Speaker 04

  Oh, totally, yeah.

• 36:04Yasi Salek?

  You know, it's still having some control over your own narrative. It's just an, kind of a different approach than wanting to like, lionize your legacy or whatever, which I think is the more common way to, uh, to allow people to make. Yeah, it's, you know, it's funny, I agree with you, like, when I first watched it, well, both, I was like paying close attention because I knew I was gonna end up talking about it here, all of that ended up taking many months, but also, it wasn't enjoyable, which very, I feel like Alex Ross Perry style.

• 36:38Yasi Salek?

  But it was thought provoking and it, and I thought about it a lot afterwards, whereas like, again, not to like, poor drag, poor, a complete unknown into this over and over, but it did just come out around the same time.

• 36:51Speaker 04

  It's fine, I think.

• 36:51Yasi Salek?

  And I think, and I think Bob Dylan is a, is a more closer comp in a way to Pavement than like Elton John or Queen or whatever, because he is sort of held in such a high regard by people who are all, can also be very annoying about music, you know, and like, um, I didn't think about it once afterwards, unless I, like, I wouldn't, I probably wouldn't have thought about it once unless I was like paid to, or I was like listening to a podcast about it or something. It was just like a nice lobotomized time at the movies where I was like, I love that song. Timmy Chalamet, good bun structure, you know, like, it just wasn't, it wasn't really challenging. And I think that's interesting.

• 37:32Speaker 04

  You know that, um, what was it, I'm Not There, was that?

• 37:34Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 37:35Speaker 04

  See, like, that film where he just sort of takes Bob Dylan and then makes like, I don't know, 20 short films about him?

• 37:41Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, the 2007 Todd Haynes film.

• 37:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, that was a way more interesting approach, which I feel like is more in the spirit of Pavement, or Pavements is more in the spirit of that.

• 37:52Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 37:53Speaker 04

  But Pavements is funny. I'm not, there's not, it doesn't really, it's not like a prankster-ish film, the way I think Dylan is kind of a prankster sometimes, and so.

• 38:03Yasi Salek?

  It's a prankster's film in the like archetypical, like, what is the archetypical, uh, mystical prankster, you know, talking about how it's like the mask? Like, I feel like it is in that sort of high-minded sense, where it's like, hee hee, like, de de, like, running off, but it's not like hilarious.

• 38:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:21Yasi Salek?

  The way Pavement says.

• 38:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, I, yeah, I walked out and I was, I was like, really having a hard time articulating what I thought of it. But I thought that that was the strength of the film. Then when I watched it the second time, I'm like, I'm, I'm so locked in. This is so funny. And, um, knowing, I think, once I knew that there was no actual biopic, because I knew that there was an actual musical.

• 38:46Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 38:47Speaker 04

  And then I remember emailing the production people and being like, can you please tell me if there's an actual Range life? Because like, I need to see it.

• 38:55Yasi Salek?

  I need to see it. Can I have the, the, the whole uncut? Um, I wish there was.

• 39:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, you know, they should, uh, they should consider that. But, um, I just, I think just thinking about the fact that, you know, maybe that's not the movie I would have made, not that I could make a movie, but, um.

• 39:15Yasi Salek?

  You have a Pulitzer, man, you can do anything.

• 39:17Speaker 04

  But this was clearly made by someone who has put even more thought into this thing I love than I have, you know? And like, that comes across and it's a real, I don't know, it's a very, it's very winning to realize, to, to realize that like, this guy couldn't help but make a movie like this, you know?

• 39:36Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it, it's also very Pavement-esque, even just in, in a meta way to make the movie love of this, like, A, like, I absolutely respect and admire his game as a similar person who does the most for no reason, you know, like, like, no need to have put on a full-scale musical, but also like, was never gonna, Pavement, you know, a thread of the, the film is like, they were, they were never gonna be the mainstream success band, and this film was never gonna be the mainstream success film. It's, it, it couldn't be, you know? And in that, it's like also in step with its subject matter.

• 40:19Speaker 04

  But in a weird way, while watching it, I know that, you know, at the beginning of the film, when it says like, they were the most important band of the 20th century, or whatever it says. I know a lot of that is, you know, ironic, whatever, but there were definitely moments where I thought, I kind of misremembered, I had that kind of like Sinbad, Berenstine Bears thing where I was like, oh yeah, they did have a bunch of gold records, or, you know, Cut Your Hair really was a VMA winner. And like, none of these things were actually true, but I somehow convinced myself while watching it that they were actually much bigger than they, they were. You know what I mean?

• 40:57Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it did a great job. Even me, and you'll hear me say it unless they cut it out of the Alex Ross Perry interview, I was like, yeah, I was at that Palladium Show. Grounded was the first song, it was so crazy. And he was like, no, it wasn't. He's like, I made it seem that way, and now it's supplanted your memory. And I was like, oh my God, I was literally there. And I decided that that was what happened, because you put it in the movie like that. That was, I think, also the like, real pièce de résistance of the film for me, when all the four timelines kind of crash into one another, not even timelines, all the four aspects crashing into one another with the song Grounded. It was like, it was, again, I'm getting the chills. Like, to me, it was really, to a real pavement stan, you really got me in the heart. You got me where it, where it hurts.

• 41:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, I thought that that moment in the film was, it was like, really overwhelming, you know, just to think about all these different, like, versions of this thing that we love. Some of them were made kind of as a joke, but were even more affecting than the actual thing, you know, the musical. I think the musical also ends with this medley, it might be on Spotify, it might be on the soundtrack now, you know what I'm talking about, where they, they do a sort of like, medley of-

• 42:12Yasi Salek?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 42:13Speaker 04

  And I, I remember when I was there watching it, thinking like, this is, this is phenomenal. Like, this is a great moment.

• 42:20Yasi Salek?

  You were when you were watching the actual musical.

• 42:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, just because at that point, I was completely on board with the idea that-

• 42:29Speaker 04

  Malcolmus was like one of the great American, like Roger Hammerstein, Gershwin level. I'm like, these songs, the core, the, the bone structure of these songs is like immaculate.

• 42:39Yasi Salek?

  But it's true. I mean, I feel like that's like, that's the one thing, like, maybe it was the most embarrassing for Pavement where it's like, they've been revealed to be just really good pop songwriters.

• 42:51Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah, I think there was this quote I once read where he was talking about, it might've been, you might've mentioned it in, um, the like seven hour Pavement podcast, but where he was talking about how he grew up listening to like Creedence, like all these things from the seventies. That he like, didn't want to like, but the way he processed that was just by writing songs that sounded like that, but that were better or just like a little rough around the edges. And it definitely came out once you, at the musical.

• 43:22Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I thought, I thought it was great. Okay. My last question would be, you obviously came into this as like a mega Pavement fan, you know, picture in the binder. Um, and it exceeded or at least met your expectations of like what you, the level to which you hoped it would be in terms of how good it was?

• 43:44Speaker 04

  I mean, it's not something I would have ever wanted. You know what I mean? Like, I don't necessarily, I feel like there's a Pavement book that came out, maybe like 15 years ago. It's like hard to find now.

• 43:56Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's called, uh, Perfect Sound Forever. If anyone has an extra copy and wants to mail it to me, that'd be wonderful. I'd like to have it again.

• 44:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, plus, plus one for that.

• 44:05Yasi Salek?

  Plus one, yeah.

• 44:06Speaker 04

  And I think that there are certain things where I just never, like, I never read it because I just, I like the songs, you know, I like the band. And I like my memories. So I don't know if I had expectations, you know, I was just sort of like.

• 44:19Yasi Salek?

  But were you like bracing yourself? Were you like, don't fucking, don't blow this bitch like that?

• 44:25Speaker 04

  I think I went into it expecting something that was like wowee zowie level, like bizarre. And, and it, it was, and I really appreciated that. I mean, it, like I said, like, I think when I first watched it, I walked out of the theater thinking like, I was not, I like didn't enjoy it, but and it's weird to say that, given that you're you're gonna run an interview with Alex Ross Perry in a few minutes.

• 44:55Yasi Salek?

  No, but I think he, I think he would understand.

• 44:57Speaker 04

  But then the moment I sort of understood the vision and why I was having that erection, it was because I was so protective of my own version of these things.

• 45:07Yasi Salek?

  Right, right.

• 45:07Speaker 04

  You know, and the fact that you could then recognize that this was like someone else's equally intense or even more intense version was like, it was really powerful and it was really cool then to revisit it and think like, wow, he really, he really nailed a strange assignment. Well, you know?

• 45:25Yasi Salek?

  Absolutely. And again, like, I don't think, and I don't want to put words into his mouth and like, I didn't ask him about this, but like, I don't get the sense that his end game was for us to, for people to enjoy it. Not that he wanted people not to enjoy it, but I don't think that was like, what the project of the film was. And I think that's cool, right? Like, I think that is also in and of itself, like, the project was to like, make something fucking weird and cool and different and sort of have some commentary around not just the legacy of this band and, and the way they're understood in culture, but also like, all sorts of other things that go along with talking about, you know, what is it they say, talking about music is like dancing about architecture?

• 46:10Yasi Salek?

  I don't even know if that's a real quote, or I just remember it from the Angelina Jolie movie.

• 46:16Speaker 04

  Wait, what Angelina Jolie movie is that from?

• 46:18Yasi Salek?

  Playing by Heart. Have you ever seen this movie?

• 46:20Speaker 04

  No, I didn't.

• 46:21Yasi Salek?

  Fantastic. It's called a comedy drama, but I would say it's a rom com. Angelina Jolie, Sean Connery. Oh, it wasn't, it was Ryan Felipe, not Johnny Lee Miller. Anyways, that comes up within their relationship.

• 46:37Speaker 04

  Did you see the, um, the Gary Young documentary?

• 46:40Yasi Salek?

  I didn't. I should watch it.

• 46:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, you should watch it. It's, it's like a cool companion to this because it's a lot more serious and.

• 46:49Speaker 04

  Like all the guys in Pavement kind of submit to a more traditional line of like documentary questioning.

• 46:55Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 46:56Speaker 04

  And it's like interesting to see that they're capable of doing that, especially when talking about Gary Young.

• 47:03Yasi Salek?

  Was the documentary made, obviously, it was recent, so it was way after his death.

• 47:10Speaker 04

  It came out, I think he was still alive when it came out and then, and then he died around the time when it was like, like around the festival.

• 47:18Yasi Salek?

  That's really interesting. So when they were being filmed talking about it, they weren't like sort of, how do I say, like, you know, like rose colored glasses saying what they were gonna talk about because they were speaking of the dead, you know?

• 47:30Speaker 04

  They're, the, the glasses are only like occasionally rosy, like they're pretty, they're pretty blunt about, I think, how difficult it was, but you know, they're also pretty successful. So they look back on it with some fondness, but I don't know, I would recommend it. It's a cool companion. It's also pretty weird because there's a lot of puppetry in it.

• 47:51Yasi Salek?

  Oh, sure. Well, you know, when you don't have footage, there's only a couple of ways to go. You can do cartoons or you can do puppetry.

• 48:00Speaker 04

  So it's not, it's not totally, it's not, you know, mangled level versus solitude or anything, but um, yeah, it's, it's, it's pretty good too. But um, it's a very different approach to the band.

• 48:11Yasi Salek?

  I, I like to watch it also because that, I don't, this is not a criticism of Pavements, but I did notice, and maybe again, a more lay fan, if there's such a thing as a lay fan of Pavement, I don't know if there is, um, might not have like noticed this, but like because I studied so much of the band and all of their origins, like I was sort of like noticing the absence of Gary Young. Like he is talked about, but like it's, he's not really a central figure in the documentary slash movie by any means.

• 48:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 48:42Yasi Salek?

  Um, and I do feel like he was sort of a really crucial figure if you were gonna tell the straight head story. So that is interesting. You guys, yeah, do a double feature, do a double header at your house. Invite all your most annoying friends.

• 48:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 48:58Yasi Salek?

  Make it a costume party.

• 48:59Speaker 04

  I'm just, I'm just sitting here reflecting on all the annoying things I've said in my life that have to do with Pavement, so.

• 49:06Yasi Salek?

  I'm reflecting on the annoying things I've said is literally my full-time job. That's what I do 24 hours a day in my sleep. I'm subconsciously reflecting on the annoying things I said, and now I make a living out of saying annoying things. So you never know where it could go.

• 49:22Speaker 04

  I just remember when Cut Your Hair came out and someone, uh, someone in my journalism class was like, this is that band you like, right? Pay, this, the song's good. And I was like, yeah, it's okay.

• 49:35Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, you're like, that's their lesser, lesser work. Um, you wouldn't, you wouldn't understand. Of course, you would like that song.

• 49:41Speaker 04

  Yeah. And then I remove them from my binder and.

• 49:45Yasi Salek?

  You're like, not on my fucking watch. Um, do you think, this is my last question. Do you think a person who has little to no knowledge or understanding of the band Pavement would enjoy this film?

• 50:03Speaker 04

  Possibly even more.

• 50:05Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's, so I brought this up because I wouldn't have thought so, but then at the screening we went to in LA, um,

• 50:15Yasi Salek?

  I was sitting with, who was I sitting, I sat with Amanda Dobbins, who, who I think is not like a huge Pavement fan. I don't want to bespurge her name, but I think so. And we talked about it afterwards and she said she really enjoyed it. And also Tim Simons, um, the actor who I, my memory is so shocked to hell, but I'm pretty sure he also was like, oh, I wasn't like a hugely knowledgeable Pavement person for this, but I really enjoyed the film. And I was like, oh, that's so cool. Cause I genuinely finished watching it for the second time, being like, you, if you're not up on Pavement, you probably hate this, but I was wrong.

• 50:45Speaker 04

  I feel like it's just so whimsical and strange and it's like absorbing, you know, even though.

• 50:53Speaker 04

  You may not understand the lore like it's so it's crap in a way where you can't help but feel immersed in it. So

• 51:00Yasi Salek?

  Totally. It's really brilliant. It is like this. You are following the story and also you're like, who is this Malkmus character? Like even if you didn't know anything about him, be like, what, what is up with this guy?

• 51:11Speaker 04

  Like, it's really funny that, um, what's his name? Joe Keery?

• 51:14Yasi Salek?

  Joe Keery, yeah.

• 51:15Speaker 04

  That he's so obsessive. Like when he goes to the museum and he's like, there should be a plaque that he was a security guard at the Whitney. Like Malkmus doesn't actually seem like someone who appreciates or would be, would feel comfortable with that amount of idol worship.

• 51:32Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 51:33Speaker 04

  And so it's like, it's probably even funnier and more, I don't know, like interesting if you didn't know that, right? And you just thought like, that everything was, was sincere.

• 51:43Yasi Salek?

  Right, right. No, totally. Oh, this was a real joy and pleasure. I'm so pleased that I finally tricked you to coming on this podcast. I'm also insanely jealous because am I correct in understanding that after the New York Film Festival screening of Pavements, you were treated to what I have come to understand as the best pavement show in 20 years?

• 52:07Speaker 04

  It was the day before.

• 52:09Yasi Salek?

  The day before?

• 52:09Speaker 04

  Yeah. It was the, um, show at the, it was like some tiny theater in Times Square and, uh, I don't know. I thought the, I thought that the reunion show I went to in 2022 was better.

• 52:23Yasi Salek?

  Interesting.

• 52:24Speaker 04

  But this was, but I think the expectations for this show were so much higher because it was, it was like a tiny venue, but

• 52:31Yasi Salek?

  Right. And there was only the five of them, right? They didn't have the keyboardist, the woman who's joining now on tour. She was unavailable or something.

• 52:40Speaker 04

  But I just have this burning memory of, it might've been the show, did they play Fillmore Jive when you went in Brooklyn?

• 52:47Yasi Salek?

  Yes, yes.

• 52:49Speaker 04

  I just remember I, I was like, it was like one of the last songs. I was like, I treated myself to a sh- a seat in like the third row.

• 52:57Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 52:58Speaker 04

  And Fillmore Jive comes on and then the people next to me suddenly stand up and start like being really, like they had been sort of like into it, but not as into it as when Fillmore Jive came on. And then I turn, I realized I'd been sitting next to Chloe Sevigny the whole time. And I was like, this is great. It's like, we all, we all love, we all love the same thing, you know?

• 53:19Yasi Salek?

  That's why you enjoyed it more because it was a real, it was a real 360 experience for you.

• 53:25Speaker 04

  I think the, yeah, I just think that the, um, I don't know, just seeing them.

• 53:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, just the environment was, was, was pretty awesome.

• 53:34Yasi Salek?

  Okay. Well, that makes me feel better because I did receive a breathless phone call from Christopher Ryan.

• 53:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 53:39Yasi Salek?

  After that show that I was literally like, why? I was like, I don't think Chris Ryan's ever called me on the telephone at that point. I was like, why? I was like, is this a pocket call? What's going on? I was like in the parking lot at Houston's restaurant about to go in to eat. And it was literally to tell me about how incredible the show was.

• 53:55Speaker 04

  I was, I was with Chris and I think they started with She Believes and, and then they did You're Killing Me.

• 54:01Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, because they kind of did chronological a little bit, like starting from the beginning.

• 54:05Speaker 04

  I think, and we turned to each other and we're like, dude, they're going chronological. And it was, uh, it was un, it was unreal. Like it was, it was pretty cool. And then at the end, when Malphus is like, well, that's our career and walks off. It was, it was pretty great.

• 54:20Yasi Salek?

  Now I need to write myself a buddy com-drom about you and Chris Ryan seeing this show and then embarking on an adventure afterwards because you're so inspired.

• 54:34Speaker 04

  We should work on that.

• 54:35Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, let's, let's workshop that. All right, Juan. Well, thank you so much. Seriously, this has been a joy and a pleasure. I really enjoyed talking to you.

• 54:41Speaker 04

  It's been one of my highlights, the highlights of my year so far. So I was able to wear my musical T-shirt. I even bust out my mem- my weird pavement memorabilia.

• 54:51Yasi Salek?

  This ashtray, Juan and I have the same disease where we like cannot stop collecting

• 54:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 54:58Yasi Salek?

  ephemera from. The days of yore, when also when people really went for it with like promo gear.

• 55:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 55:07Yasi Salek?

  Um, and obviously I have to start over and guess who helped me with that? Guess who sent me a gorgeous massive box of some of the finest uh nineties music magazines and Prescotts I've ever seen? That's right. It was Joa. What a wonderful man.

• 55:21Speaker 04

  Well, thanks for having me. This was uh, it's good to hang out with you on on Riverside.

• 55:27Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's been a great time. See you, see you when you come back for my birthday of Valentine.

• 55:30Speaker 04

  Cool.

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• 57:02Yasi Salek?

  Okay, let's go now to my talk with director Alex Ross Perry. You guys, we're joined by not Alexander Ross Perry, as he's just informed me that he was born and named Alex. His parents were like, oh, we saw this baby and we were like, oh, this is an Alex?

• 57:18Speaker 07

  No longer name needed. You know, these things happen. You meet people. Yeah, our daughter has a friend. His name is Alfie. It's not Alfred. It's not anything longer than that. People are given short names.

• 57:31Yasi Salek?

  I just feel like not of your generation, though. That's what's surprising to me. Were your parents Bohemians?

• 57:37Speaker 07

  No.

• 57:38Yasi Salek?

  Oh, no, okay.

• 57:40Speaker 07

  No, it's not like a lifestyle choice. I think it just made more sense to them. I don't know. Maybe Alexander felt like too much of a name and that the expectations for my life would have been higher.

• 57:50Yasi Salek?

  Do you believe in nominative determinism? Because I do.

• 57:53Speaker 07

  Yeah, I think so. Now, now, having named named a kid and, you know, you meet a kid named like Boomer. You don't think he's going to grow up and be the president?

• 58:03Yasi Salek?

  No, Boomer probably won't be the president.

• 58:08Yasi Salek?

  Alex, I'm so thrilled to have you here to talk about Pavements. I'm particularly thrilled that this is probably the very tail end of your illustrious press tour and you're probably sick to death of talking about this film. And I think that gives us a rich tapestry to work from.

• 58:26Speaker 07

  More than you could even imagine, truly. It's beyond comprehension. And if this was anything other than you, I would have no interest in going back to the well. And I'm only, I'm only completely flattered to be part of this and grateful for the opportunity. And yeah, I'm just so, you know, so spent. But I have no doubt that you are likely to have lines of inquiry that other people don't.

• 58:57Yasi Salek?

  I hope so. I mean, the good news is we play by our own rules here on the Bands Plan Podcast and maybe much to the chagrin of my boss, bosses. Hello, Sean Fantasy, if you're listening.

• 59:10Speaker 07

  Is he really your boss?

• 59:12Yasi Salek?

  Technically, yeah.

• 59:14Speaker 07

  Technically, but not literally.

• 59:15Yasi Salek?

  Well, literally, he was up until not that long ago.

• 59:18Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 59:19Yasi Salek?

  And now he's like my grand boss.

• 59:21Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah.

• 59:22Yasi Salek?

  You know, so he's a delightful boss to have. I recommend it to anybody. Um, I just like it. I feel like it's a psychological space that we can play in because, you know, much like how Steven Malkmus was sick to death about talking about the art project of his life since the day he started it, you're in that headspace, which was really wonderful, a place for us to talk about this.

• 59:43Speaker 07

  That's true. So it's like, it's like a boxer who waits for their opponent to be weak and then knocks them over. That is where we find me here.

• 59:51Yasi Salek?

  Let's take it not even from the top. Let's take it from prior. You made the music video for Harness Your Hopes, right? The surprise TikTok hit of 2022.

• 1:00:03Speaker 07

  That is correct. I did make that.

• 1:00:05Yasi Salek?

  How did that come about?

• 1:00:07Speaker 07

  Well, we've been working on the movie for almost two years.

• 1:00:11Yasi Salek?

  So the movie project predated you doing that music video. That was just sort of like a little side bonus.

• 1:00:18Speaker 07

  It was like a side bonus. What's like the thing they bring before you eat a meal that's like a tiny little thing?

• 1:00:24Yasi Salek?

  And a moose bush?

• 1:00:25Speaker 07

  Yeah, that's right. I knew it wasn't an appetizer. Yeah, it was like that where, starting in 2020, I had been researching and outlining the movie and conceptualizing these different styles of it. And then we spent pretty much all of 2021 trying to get money and assuming that we would launch into filming the movie in earnest when we had it. And also just knowing that at some point when the band got together to rehearse, that was it. And then at the end of, um, 2021, I guess, was when the song was starting to creep up. And the Terror Twilight Deluxe Edition was finally coming out after like a 12-year delay or something.

• 1:01:09Speaker 07

  And then, yeah, it was just time to do the video. And since I was already. Dipping my toes in, we just kind of treated it like it was day one of the movie.

• 1:01:19Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:01:20Speaker 07

  Do you like the video?

• 1:01:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I did like the video.

• 1:01:22Speaker 07

  Okay, that's good.

• 1:01:23Yasi Salek?

  I thought it was really good. I really liked that Sophie Thatcher, is that her name?

• 1:01:26Speaker 07

  Yeah, seems like someone you would get along with.

• 1:01:28Yasi Salek?

  I don't know her, but I do kind of, I do kind of feel that. I feel we could be friends. She probably has a good taste in music.

• 1:01:34Speaker 07

  I'd say it's second to none, based on the sort of nonsense she's always screen grabbing her, her listening to. I, it's like, I don't know, I like, it's funny, I don't even know, like, it's her esoteric curiosity into the world of like, experimental and lo-fi, and she's just like, screen grabs these YouTube links. I'm just like, how do kids do it now? Like, there used to be such a channel of your life where you would hear about such things, and now we've got like these, I don't know how old she is, like 23, it's like, just listening to shit on the internet all day and going so deep.

• 1:02:08Yasi Salek?

  I knew that it would only take us like seven minutes to devolve into old man shaking fist at clouds, and I'm so happy about it.

• 1:02:15Speaker 07

  Yeah, well, I'm, I'm always left behind. I should also mention that I was amused when, um, do you remember the music video that the Rolling Stones made with Sydney Sweeney for their last album? That it came out like a year later, but had the same, like, one-sentence concept?

• 1:02:30Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:31Speaker 07

  Which was like, what if this young contemporary actress was sort of like, put into stock footage and interacting with the band from the past? But that looked like it cost over a million dollars, which our video definitely didn't.

• 1:02:44Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, but, you know, I feel like your video was probably more enjoyed by the fanbase.

• 1:02:50Speaker 07

  Perhaps, perhaps.

• 1:02:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:52Speaker 07

  Did I sidetrack you, talking about Sophie's music taste?

• 1:02:55Yasi Salek?

  No, I, well, because I thought, that's what I was thinking about. I thought it was really cool, because actually, I think that's quite unusual, and I think that because of the like, overwhelming amount of options for listening to music for young people, the opposite has happened, where they actually only listen to like the same seven things for the, by and large. And then the ones that are sort of like excavating YouTube are more rare, but that's just my, I don't know a ton of 23-year-olds as I think is good and healthy and normal for a woman of my age.

• 1:03:24Speaker 07

  Perhaps, perhaps.

• 1:03:25Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Okay, so you had a little convo. In one of your 800, this, this one you're not doing in character. I noticed you did quite a few interviews in character, but now you're not.

• 1:03:36Speaker 07

  Yeah, something that really backfired, um, I would say nine out of 10 times that we attempted that. And I guess like, it's good that the movie is something that people see as elastic enough that their own attempt to write about it or cover it could take on something creative, which is rarely the case.

• 1:04:01Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:04:02Speaker 07

  The problem is that most of people's creative attempts were to ultimately make me look like an idiot. And I participated in all of it, not knowing that like, if the introductory paragraph to a bit isn't typed correctly, then the whole thing just seems horrible.

• 1:04:17Yasi Salek?

  Right. Yeah, it does need, and it does need to be contextualized properly. Um, but the one that you did with, uh, the god Jonas Ackland, that was not in character. That was just you being you talking to your, your pal.

• 1:04:29Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 1:04:30Yasi Salek?

  Um, you, I thought this was interesting and I think we, we talked about this, um, separately off mic in a conversation, but he asked you just point blank, like, are you a Pavement fan? And your answer was not as much of a fan as I was of Metallica, but a fan for sure. And I guess like, I wanted to ask you, and I'm sorry if you've already answered this. I did try to listen to a lot of your interviews. Do you think it was easier or harder to make the film from the place of like, a slightly detached, like, you know, like a, like, you're like, yeah, I like this, but you weren't like an obsessive.

• 1:05:09Speaker 07

  Yeah, and it's worth mentioning that I'm, I'm only making that comparison while talking to him because he has a Metallica movie.

• 1:05:17Yasi Salek?

  You were like, that wasn't my go shoot.

• 1:05:19Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's not like, it's not like, it's not like inside me, there are two wolves in this pavement in Metallica. It's that we were also talking about Jonas's new Metallica film.

• 1:05:28Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:05:28Speaker 07

  And it's more like. I mean, that's just more me saying that the whatever I feel like, have you done a lot of metal or rock of that caliber?

• 1:05:39Yasi Salek?

  We did Metallica because obviously, and it's a good

• 1:05:43Speaker 07

  There's not much of that caliber, but.

• 1:05:45Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I mean, we'll probably do, we did Guns and Roses, which just doesn't really count. We'll eventually do Kiss, which I know holds a special place in your heart. Um, Metallica one was, was a really, if I may say so myself, a good, a good double. It's two episodes. But it's a good time for me to just mention, and I want to talk about it after you answer this question. I really want to talk about some kind of monster.

• 1:06:06Speaker 07

  Okay, with me right now or at some point when you?

• 1:06:09Yasi Salek?

  No, with you right now. Yeah.

• 1:06:11Speaker 07

  So yeah, it's not, so the Metallica thing was just sort of by point of comparison, but I think like, I guess, like also, I'm just partially exaggerating because I'm just so sick of this band and their story that it's more fun for me to imagine. Like what Jonas went through making like, you know, the 12th good Metallica movie, not the 12th best, the 12th good one. But, um, I think like the secret weapon was that I, I'm a fan of this band, simply put, like I'm not a rabid fan. And I think that the rabid fan who wants to make something about their favorite, like obviously you're in, not you, because you get to put out so much stuff, but if someone's like, I'm going to spend four years

• 1:06:57Speaker 07

  making something about my favorite thing.

• 1:06:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:00Speaker 07

  It's going to be bad. Like it's just not going to be three dimensional, or it's not going to be welcoming. And I always felt like my greatest asset is that, you know, of the three tiers, like top tier, middle tier and bottom tier, like pavement are a top tier band for me. Like they're not somewhere in my brain, like they're a top tier band. I was so excited when they reunited now 15 years ago. I don't know if you remember those Central Park reunion tickets went on sale like 11 months.

• 1:07:35Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I like, I went to the Hollywood Bowl show, but I would, I cry, I would literally don't misunderstand. I remember it like it was yesterday.

• 1:07:40Speaker 07

  Oh, like, do you remember how early the tickets went on sale? It was like the Oasis reunion of its day where it was like.

• 1:07:46Yasi Salek?

  Because people thought it was over forever, like that was the, it's a good comparison. It is like the Oasis reunion. People were like, oh, I thought I was never gonna see Pavement play again. And I was like, it's done.

• 1:07:56Speaker 07

  But also, like, it made no sense to me why the tickets were on sale 11 months in advance. It was just very confusing. So, you know, you don't, not a casual fan would buy a ticket 11 months out. And I was there and I had a really good time, but my approach was like, the band is fascinating. They stand for so much that I think is dense, rich, complex, academic, artistic, and beautiful. But my approach is that this story can be so much bigger than, you know, for your standards, like, it's not a compelling dramatic narrative. There's not a lot there for us to dig in on, like, every betrayal, turn, this, that.

• 1:08:40Speaker 07

  Like, it's a very, very flat 10-year story. And that's fine, that's, that's very mature. But their, their 10 years of initial existence don't have a lot of drama in it. And that made the approach so much more creative. But also, the secret weapon was, I'm conceiving of the movie, filming it, deconstructing it, putting their narrative back together, but then turning this footage over to Robert Greene, who they are his number one favorite band of all time.

• 1:09:10Yasi Salek?

  I listened to you guys talk about it on the podcast.

• 1:09:12Speaker 07

  You listen to him as well?

• 1:09:14Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:15Speaker 07

  Yeah, like, we did, like, I did everything I could in the conception and execution of our three primary stunts of the musical, The Museum, and the biopic, to not make a Hagio graphic, this is my favorite band movie. And then I turned it over to someone who's like, I will now edit a Hagio graphic, this is my favorite band movie, out of footage that resists it, from a concept that is designed in opposition to it. And I just think that that was a fun approach. And Jonas was, you know, kind of frank and interesting to listen to, where he said, you just can't come from that perspective. And I don't really know what is the best version of.

• 1:09:55Speaker 07

  Ex artist makes a thing about their number one fave and it just has to be good. I feel like most of the time, those, those things will be watchable, but I don't know how clever they would be.

• 1:10:07Yasi Salek?

  Right. Yeah, they're definitely not going to be clever. This is kind of like a simplistic question, but I was curious because I do feel like you've talked a lot about the industry and like the woes of the industry and you came to this project with a ton of constraints, right? That's like the whole thing. Like you came up with this really ingenious bizarre way to tackle the story because you had a lot of constraint. You had the band being like, we barely want to be in it. We're not this. Make it interesting. Don't do this. Don't do that. Do you, do you find that those, like, are you one of those people that thinks that, like, constraint benefits your creativity?

• 1:10:49Yasi Salek?

  Or do you kind of wish that you had had like, I think some kind of monster is kind of a good example, right? That, that movie seems like there wasn't much constraint at all. They were just like, you can do whatever you want. You can sit in here with us while we have fucking therapy. Like you can film everything and we will allow it.

• 1:11:04Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, that's obviously a one of one film.

• 1:11:08Yasi Salek?

  Never.

• 1:11:08Speaker 07

  And it's inimitable and it is kind of remarkable that it was made or that it exists. It's kind of, you can't even conceive of something being made under those circumstances, considering that even for us, we're going to shoot the band's first rehearsals and first time they've seen each other in 12 years. And I said, it'd be great to be in the room when they see each other for the first time since 2010. We were told like that you, you, you can come on day two.

• 1:11:37Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:11:38Speaker 07

  So I was like, you know, there's, there's already something there that, yeah, it might make a good 30 seconds in the movie, but we're not, we're not welcome.

• 1:11:46Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:11:47Speaker 07

  Which is fine. That's not what the movie's about or what it needs. I think.

• 1:11:52Speaker 07

  If you come from nothing, like I do, making movies where like the first couple of things you ever do are absolute micro budget, everyone's doing you a favor projects and with music videos, I'm still always doing constraints on top of constraints. We have one day when we need two, we have X when we need Y. It's just, it's, it's second nature. And while this movie had logistic constraints and creative restraints, I guess I don't view that as a problem because I can't imagine ever having it any other way. I've never really been without constraints.

• 1:12:31Speaker 07

  And which is pathetic considering I've been making things for like over 15 years, but I've never had that. We were without, the imagination was uncon- like there was no constraints on the imagination of the project, which it was kind of incredible.

• 1:12:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:47Speaker 07

  But the budget of the movie that we ended up making it for is slightly less than 50% of the budget that we budgeted it for.

• 1:12:55Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:12:55Speaker 07

  Of like, this is what it would cost to do all of this the way we want. We, we got maybe 45% of the way to financing and then we were like, we'll just make it. We're never going to get another dime.

• 1:13:05Yasi Salek?

  What would you have done if you had gotten a hundred percent? Like what would that version have looked like for like the, the people? Cause now it's, I know you've talked about it for months and months, but it's about to be watched by a way broader amount of people, right? Because it's about to be, this will come out after it's already been on movies. So.

• 1:13:25Speaker 07

  And it's on like the other places, like, you know, your iTunes and your Apple now. So hopefully people can find it. The only, I mean, the two main differences, which also, you know, none of this matters now because it made the movie better. Which is a Malcolmus line where he says, you make a virtue of deficiencies. Which is something he seems to feel very strongly about and it ended up being what we did. The difference of the other. You know, the other hundreds of thousands of dollars was that the fake biopic was meant to be entirely filmed. Oh, the like two hours. No, like forty five pages instead of the like sixteen that we could film. And the musical would have been just staged in a more expensive way.

• 1:14:11Speaker 07

  And those are kind of the two differences. But the movie is better because that's not what happened. The movie is better because we had no money to do the biopic. So we could only shoot three or four scenes rather than thirty five scenes. And therefore we had to shoot the table read, the auditions, Joe Keery getting into character. The movie is better because of that. So I'm glad we didn't have all that money. I'm not glad for my pocket and the pockets of other people who spent four years working on the movie. That's another thing you don't really get when you cut your budget in half is paid. But it's all part of the continuum, but the constraints are interesting because

• 1:14:57Speaker 07

  yes, there's these constraints of like, we want a movie, but we're modest, working class, normal guys who don't want to be on camera celebrating ourselves as though, you know, because to do that would be to telegraph to our fans that we think we deserve this, which they were not willing to do. Right. But the constraints were always interesting to try to figure out, I guess. The, the thing I always was fascinated by was that we were given this opportunity to tell this story in such a bizarre three hundred and sixty degree way with a band who was giving us complete permission to kind of do whatever felt creatively fulfilling. But that mattered and we were handed.

• 1:15:40Speaker 07

  20, 30 years of legacy and integrity and fandom and critical respect and appreciation. But then we were told you can do whatever you want, which is the kind of thing that Jonas, who works with dozens of bands is like, the bands that want to do anything, that doesn't matter because nobody cares about them. They only want to do anything because anything they can do will get attention and that's good. The bands that are very guarded and very specific about what you can and can't do are the bands that have a 30 year legacy that they really need to do something to protect. And for some reason, at the conception of this movie, anyway, they were like, yeah, we have that legacy, but we don't value it at all because to admit that we value it would be uncool.

• 1:16:22Yasi Salek?

  But isn't that, okay, see, I think that that's actually the same thing. That's, I really have been thinking about this because that's actually one of my ma- like my preoccupations is myth making, obviously because I'm studying it all the time. And also I see it in action, even with people like this. And even pavement instructing how the legacy is portrayed in a not celebratory way is there is myth making. They're just making the myth the way they want it. It's the same thing as you two being like, don't say the bad stuff or whatever.

• 1:16:59Speaker 07

  No, you're absolutely right.

• 1:17:00Yasi Salek?

  It's just a different lens on it, which is fine. Everyone's gonna make their own myth. It's, you know, my favorite example of this is Miss Patti Smith, who of course, huge fan. But it's like, you look at her now and the work she puts out in her public persona and she's like the benevolent poet grandmother of rock and roll. And you go back and read things that are out of print and people are like, she was such a bitch. She was mean and, and both things are probably true, but it's so interesting how you just choose to craft your own myth. And you participated in crafting their myth with their instruction.

• 1:17:35Speaker 07

  Yeah, no, it's, it's myth making as anti effort, which is so in keeping with what they were doing from 89 to 99, which is.

• 1:17:46Speaker 07

  Underdoing it to such a baffling extent that it seems deliberate, but it also seems hostile. But it also seems cool in this weird contradictory way.

• 1:17:56Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:57Speaker 07

  That is inimitable. And as, as I know you know, it makes them one of one because to hit that, you know, like you'll see sometimes those funny like Venn diagrams that people will make where it's like genre A, B and C. And then there's just like one band that fits into the middle.

• 1:18:12Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:13Speaker 07

  Like if you're doing that of like actual talent, but a complete lack of interest in playing the game, but also like a bizarre driven sense of perfectionism.

• 1:18:22Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, because they weren't Sonic Youth, right? Like you, you want to be illegible, you can be Sonic Youth, you know, they were big too, but like they don't have the kind of legacy that Pavement does because despite themselves, Pavement made really catchy commercial-esque music, even they couldn't help themselves because that's they make melodic, beautiful music. Whereas like, I think a Sonic Youth, for example, wasn't often doing that.

• 1:18:50Speaker 07

  No, you're absolutely right. And it's the kind of thing that you're obviously uh, the, the authority on analyzing, which is just fundamentally comparing these two bands where Sonic Youth existed before Pavement, overlapped for entire careers and then existed after is like, there's just a difference between a band that puts it down, puts pencils down in 1999 and an eighties band that continues to put out new music and tour relentlessly into the point that for me and for you, this is a contemporary band, even though their first albums were put out when I was in elementary school. And by hitting this bizarre mark of doing nothing

• 1:19:32Speaker 07

  for 11 years, reuniting once, then doing nothing for 12 more years. It's just, they kind of get Pavement kind of created this in this perfect shape that no other band resembles. And you know, Sonic Youth never went away and then they just went away for good. And it's one of those things.

• 1:19:49Yasi Salek?

  Make themselves limited edition.

• 1:19:50Speaker 07

  No, it's one of those things where like, it just goes without saying that a band that's always around just has less appeal than something that has this mystique of you missed it or.

• 1:20:04Speaker 07

  Like for me, at the same time of the Pavement story, like Rivers Cuomo just disappearing for like five years, like the idea of something just going away is very specific, very few things just go away. And

• 1:20:18Yasi Salek?

  Especially now.

• 1:20:19Speaker 07

  Yeah, and like talking about some kind of monster, just to, you know, not, not, not to gloss over that. But like, you know, being a teenager, when Load comes out, like I didn't know how long it had been since Metallica put out an album.

• 1:20:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:34Speaker 07

  Right? Like it's the, it's a version of that where it's like fans, for fans, this is five years or six years or whatever it was. And then for non-fans, like, or for new fans, you know, who were six when Black Album came out. You're like, I don't, this is just new to me, but there hasn't been this absence, this mystique of like, I don't know what's going on. And you talk about like mythmaking is anti-mythmaking. Is there any doubt that the only reason Metallica still exists and are popular is that movie? Because when that movie comes out, like they're just a punchline post Napster.

• 1:21:12Speaker 07

  And like these two kind of, you look back at Load and Reload and they're just, you know, to me, these were the first contemporary albums put out by this band that I grew to really like. You look back at the aesthetics and the marketing of that and like the eyeliner and like the

• 1:21:27Yasi Salek?

  Oh yeah, it's absolutely, hey kids, we have grunge too.

• 1:21:30Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's like really, it's really unfortunate, I imagine, if you like came up with the band in the late eighties. But to me, I didn't know that, but then, so they sort of had this weird middle period and then they lost a lot of credibility with Napster, which of course they now look smart for. But that documentary was so humanizing and somehow along the way, you have to suspect that somebody was like, the only move we have. Is to appear vulnerable because we've, we tried to chase trends and it worked kind of. We like tried to stop the future and now it kind of worked, but we looked bad for it suing fans and whatnot. And then appearing vulnerable is now like a footnote in a career that's now in the annals of the upper levels of everything.

• 1:22:15Yasi Salek?

  I could talk about that documentary for seven hours. I can't like it's, if you guys haven't watched this, I think it's a nice pairing with Pavements, honestly. I think you should do a little doubleheader because just fucking wow, especially when you, when you think about James Hetfield as a person, like who that man was coming into this, like it's insane that they got him to sit and, and speak so plainly and honestly and that there's people fucking crying and that Lars Ulrich's dad comes and tells him he's a piece of shit. Like it is so insane and that they included it all and they said, no problem. Put that in the film.

• 1:22:57Speaker 07

  Yeah. And it's, you know, it's almost two and a half hours long. It's not like an accessible piece of filmmaking. It's like you have to really commit to it, but it's, it's of course highly watchable. I would have liked to seen in Pavements where we did like the Lars art auction joke of having some guy in the band who doesn't seem like he's wealthy auctioning off like a hundred million dollars worth of art. But it is the idea of mythmaking and legacy storytelling, which of course we are doing with this movie. We're doing it in direct opposition to the emotional whims of Malcolm Mas, but in direct

• 1:23:36Speaker 07

  unison with the professional and sort of like iconic whims of him, which is that he knows that that's what the band is. He knows that's what he is. He also knows that admitting it would make him look stupid.

• 1:23:52Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:23:52Speaker 07

  So he has to do everything he can to not admit it. But he's also saying to Matador, yeah, we can make a movie. Just don't make it like one of those cookie cutter movies.

• 1:24:01Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:24:01Speaker 07

  And then in the end he looks cool because he signed off on it, but it's anything but what everything else is. And also. It just is its own thing and every, of course, every part of the movie with these three kind of fabricated set pieces. To me, they are about the very industrial complex of myth making and enshrining and monetizing legacies. And the movie is both doing that literally, but also doing it ironically, which is to say, we're hopefully doing exactly the pavement version of it.

• 1:24:36Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, actually, that's funny you say that. This morning I was walking my dog, listening to this interview with you, and you said something so interesting, I wanted to ask you about it. You said that in modern times, there's no difference between irony and sincerity anymore.

• 1:24:51Speaker 07

  Yeah, I guess I probably meant that when I said it. I don't remember that, but it's just, I just don't think that that contradiction plays out, or that it seems as real as it did to you and I at a time where it's like, I don't really think you could have a credible debate about that. Because even the artists who I know or I'm aware of through label stuff of other, you know, artists that don't want to play the game quite as hard, maybe don't want to do all the, all the, like, it doesn't seem to matter anymore because any attention is coveted.

• 1:25:26Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:26Speaker 07

  But I don't know, I mean, I just think it's one of those things that's lost to time. Because like, as, as your, you know, friend of the ringer Chuck Klosterman often says or said in, in his nineties book, that this was the last moment where cultural, where political engagement and ideological belief was optional.

• 1:25:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. It's so true. It's such a profound statement, honestly.

• 1:25:53Speaker 07

  Yeah, and I remember he was saying that when he was putting that book out and it's, and I read the book and it's such an interesting argument that at this time, choosing to engage was, was a choice, it wasn't a given. And those are the sort of contradictions that are certainly lost and that this band sits kind of at the top of the mountain of.

• 1:26:13Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's really interesting to me because, well, I feel like. You, I mean, you're a big music fan, right? So.

• 1:26:21Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:26:22Yasi Salek?

  Maybe much like myself, you take it personally when music biopics keep coming out and they're bad.

• 1:26:31Speaker 07

  I do, of course, that was a big, a big moment of coming, coming to your, uh, your teachings was your big picture Bob Dylan episode, which, which is worth listening to.

• 1:26:41Yasi Salek?

  Oh, right. When I say that, that all my ex-boyfriends also learned to play the guitar and sing and they don't deserve Oscars.

• 1:26:46Speaker 07

  Yeah, which is a great criticism of, of a movie.

• 1:26:50Yasi Salek?

  I, I mean, I didn't mind, uh, A Complete Unknown. That's not to say I think it was good, but I wonder, like, do you think, I mean, Pavement is obviously like a hybrid. I mean, you, you did it all. You were like, well, I'm just gonna do everything. Do you think it's possible to make a good music biopic? Like, do you think that's actually possible?

• 1:27:14Speaker 07

  I do. Um, not like a straightforward one.

• 1:27:17Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:27:18Speaker 07

  Uh, do you? Like, and if so, like, what's the, because I think, like, people, you know, I get asked this because of promoting the movie.

• 1:27:26Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:27:27Speaker 07

  And of course I end up listing things I like and they're often, you know, left of center films or sort of thinly, you know, like, Velvet Goldmine is probably the best David Bowie movie you could make because it deconstructs him into a series of identities and personas, but also removes the totemic nature of who this guy actually was from the story, which is something he did constantly in his public personas.

• 1:27:54Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:27:54Speaker 07

  And therefore that's a great film and it's a great story, well told. It's probably the best Bowie movie. A literal Bowie movie would be a failure because this is not a literal career. A, a fabulous movie that sort of plays out as a rock fantasia. To me, it's a great biopic because it has absolutely nothing to do with the subject, but you can watch that movie and absorb via osmosis. Twenty factual story beats from his career.

• 1:28:22Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:28:22Speaker 07

  But none of it is literal and therefore it's correct. So I, I think it's possible. I'd be curious if it is possible or what you think if, if there are any.

• 1:28:31Yasi Salek?

  I like those ones like Val the Goldmine or, um, and you talked about it a lot, which is, I'm not there. Which is great, but it's, that's like heady, right? Like we're talking like high art on, on these kinds of ones. But then there's like 24 hour party people, right? Which I always return to. But it's pretty straightforward, right? Like it is, you know, it's artistic. But I think most importantly, it's funny. I think you have to have a sense of humor. Like the one I always bring up that I hate is Control.

• 1:29:00Speaker 07

  Right. I was about to say though, you mentioned 24 hour party people. What would you rather watch that or an Ian Curtis biopic? And the answer is obviously the irreverent one about the guy who's not the tortured artist.

• 1:29:12Yasi Salek?

  Right. Which again, it's smart because they used him as the lens to tell these stories, but I, I just like, I have to believe. Maybe it's a magic trick, but I have to believe it's possible that you could do a semi straightforward biopic that is still good. This, I don't think was excellent and Sean absolutely disagreed with me, but I really liked Better Man.

• 1:29:31Speaker 07

  Yeah, I never saw it.

• 1:29:33Yasi Salek?

  I can't believe you haven't seen it with everything of your interests, weird biopics, musical, it's got it all.

• 1:29:39Speaker 07

  I know.

• 1:29:40Yasi Salek?

  Chimpanzee.

• 1:29:41Speaker 07

  My time for things I'm like four out of 10 interested in is, is limited.

• 1:29:46Yasi Salek?

  Okay. I see what you're saying.

• 1:29:47Speaker 07

  And you can only, you know, if it was like an important movie to the culture that I felt like I needed to see to do press on this movie, like the Bob Dylan movie, I couldn't make time for it, but. I'm sure it's, I'm sure it's highly watchable. I respect the, um, the, the, the wonkery of what I, what I understand it to be. And I'm intrigued that Weezer seemed to be making some like quasi fictional movie.

• 1:30:10Speaker 07

  Or something. I just, I'm just glad for anything that's not the same. I just saw the other day that there is a Scorpions biopic that is currently being made.

• 1:30:18Yasi Salek?

  Incredible. Who, who asked? Oh, is it based, wasn't there like a, a podcast that was about?

• 1:30:25Speaker 07

  That was about, that was like their sort of-

• 1:30:27Yasi Salek?

  Crime was like-

• 1:30:28Speaker 07

  It was like, not MKUltra, but it was the idea of them as like a sort of Cold War conspiracy.

• 1:30:34Yasi Salek?

  But that's not what this, because I would watch that film.

• 1:30:36Speaker 07

  Yeah, I would too. I think this is a straightforward movie about their music's role in bringing about the end of communism, which I guess the podcast might have been about as well, but-

• 1:30:46Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 1:30:46Speaker 07

  It's just, it's just interesting to me that like, this is a hugely successful band. They've probably sold tens of millions of albums. No one's really asking for this, but I'm intrigued because I feel like the stakes are very low for a Scorpions movie.

• 1:31:00Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. So it could be actually weird and cool because it's not being held to like a Bob Dylan-esque standard.

• 1:31:05Speaker 07

  Exactly. Yeah. Even though they're maybe have even outsold him worldwide.

• 1:31:09Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. But if the, all four of them could be, or five of them could be standing in front of me right now and I would not know who they were.

• 1:31:14Speaker 07

  That's right. And that's what's interesting. But I feel like another movie I like, if I recall correctly, along with Control, you lump in as bad, which is last days, which I feel like you may have shit all over.

• 1:31:25Yasi Salek?

  I didn't, I almost walked out of that. That's one of the only movies in life I've almost walked out of.

• 1:31:30Speaker 07

  That's outrageous to me. I've seen that movie 10 times.

• 1:31:34Yasi Salek?

  You know, I probably have to revisit it. I saw it in the theater. When did it come out?

• 1:31:39Speaker 07

  I believe it's 2004 or five.

• 1:31:42Yasi Salek?

  I think it was too close to the time of the subject matter for me personally, where like Kurt Cobain was like my John Lennon, you know? And I think I, and also I maybe wasn't in the headspace to like take in cinema because it's, it's a difficult film to watch. There's just like 10 minutes where this man is nodding out, making fucking macaroni and cheese.

• 1:32:07Speaker 07

  That's right.

• 1:32:07Yasi Salek?

  That's the thing I remember the most with like in silence. I don't think there's a score over it as I remember it. And you just have to sit there and be like, okay.

• 1:32:16Speaker 07

  Yeah. You have to live with, I mean, that's what I love about it is that- I mean, you would never, you would not want to watch the Bob Dylan recent movie version of Kurt Cobain.

• 1:32:26Yasi Salek?

  Like, no, my God.

• 1:32:29Speaker 07

  It would be like, you know, cringe inducing beyond belief and like painful and awkward. So I feel like also you can't ignore him as a figure worthy of a story to tell. But so I feel like that movie is kind of credible in that way. In that like it both is and is not literal, but it's also not hard to imagine that this is what it would feel like to just kind of hang out with someone who's like slowly dying of addiction.

• 1:32:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:53Speaker 07

  And

• 1:32:53Yasi Salek?

  Wouldn't it be kind of amazing, though, if they did sort of apply the like Bohemian Rhapsody and they just molded that to Kurt Cobain, like in a way that was so ridiculous, like I almost would want to watch that because it would be kind of making an interesting statement.

• 1:33:12Speaker 07

  I feel like that's, of course, I mean, that that's a horrifying thing to imagine the world having to grapple with, but that is obviously what we're satirizing with the biopic in Pavements. Which is like, you wouldn't do it for Pavement because their story is not that interesting and not that many people know who they are. You wouldn't do it for Kurt Cobain.

• 1:33:30Yasi Salek?

  And it's not tragic, like you point, yeah.

• 1:33:32Speaker 07

  Exactly. There's no, you know, it would be ghoulish to do it. But that doesn't mean it, I'm sure someone has tried to do that at some point. I'm sure that

• 1:33:40Yasi Salek?

  Oh, there's been probably so many scripts that have been just shot down or like gotten a few stages forward and been destroyed.

• 1:33:50Speaker 07

  But I like this sort of, so I do think, I do think it's possible to succeed because music is cinematic and and you can do these things. I just, to me, as a, someone who I knew would spend years on this. I just wanted something that was cool, like just something that wasn't years spent in pursuit of the first draft idea.

• 1:34:14Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 1:34:14Speaker 07

  Which I feel like a lot of these are. So I end up talking. Uh, you know, a lot about Tina Turner with this movie.

• 1:34:22Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:34:22Speaker 07

  Because the Tina Turner HBO doc, which shows her at her Broadway premiere was kind of inspirational. And it's a very good movie because she had an insane career that stretched like forty, fifty years almost.

• 1:34:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:35Speaker 07

  Right? Like, her story is incredibly compelling and has many, many ups and downs. But I also would watch the Tina Turner movie that edits that documentary into the Angela Bassett film with the musical as a sound, you know, as a sort of Greek chorus.

• 1:34:53Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:34:53Speaker 07

  Like, I think her, her, her identity as a performer is multifaceted enough that she would actually withstand like a, a mosaic-esque presentation. But she, you know, she, instead she just has several somewhat traditional presentations. But I just love the idea of these things. Like, did you ever see the, um, the HBO Phil Spector, Al Pacino?

• 1:35:16Yasi Salek?

  Oh, God.

• 1:35:18Speaker 07

  I might want to check that out. I don't, I don't know how you feel about, about him or that era, but there's something in it. It's just, it's just about the trial. It's like old man, old man Spector.

• 1:35:28Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. For his, for his murder trial.

• 1:35:31Speaker 07

  That's right. Yeah. It's his, his murder one trial.

• 1:35:35Yasi Salek?

  Famously, famously went to trial for murder.

• 1:35:38Speaker 07

  Yeah, and then died of COVID.

• 1:35:39Yasi Salek?

  Add that to, I mean, God works in mysterious ways.

• 1:35:42Speaker 07

  I think the movie's like eighty-five minutes long, but it's like, you know, there's no point in, I mean, what would be better? What, what has been more proven by Scorsese time and time again that Phil Spector music makes for great movies? So like, of course, there couldn't be a movie of his because the end of it would be, goes to jail for murder and dies of COVID in prison, but it's not really satisfying. But if we're getting a two-part Michael Jackson movie that's being reshot to avoid uh, credible allegations of molestation, then, then who knows what, what's possible?

• 1:36:13Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Well, let me ask you two questions. One is, do you hope that people, that there's people in the future that apply your rubric of, of how to take on making a, a, a biopic documentary, um, with these multi-facets?

• 1:36:34Speaker 07

  I I wish someone the best if they intend to try. I think it's it's fairly, you know, it's sort of designed to be inimitable.

• 1:36:45Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:36:45Speaker 07

  Because even just on a logistic or legal or film production level, it was really, really hard to essentially make four different movies and then stitch them all together with the same paperwork, with the same credited producers on all, you know, it's really challenging. And I don't think most people would bother to figure it out because as soon as you ran into complications, people would say, this is not a compelling or worthwhile way to tell this story.

• 1:37:14Yasi Salek?

  We're cutting the musical then.

• 1:37:16Speaker 07

  Yeah, like, we should just do less work because this feels intra, you know, it's like anything in the in the industry, film, music, whatever. It's like, this is a great idea. Unfortunately, it's just going to be very difficult. So we're not going to do it. I but the thing is, I would watch anything like that. If someone, as I said, if someone's like, we're editing fourteen of Turner movies into one, or five David Bowie movies into one, I would say, that sounds great. But the whole point of this movie was imagining that pavement were so important that they actually had all these other things that we could just option and edit into our movie. But of course, we had to make them all like. But the whole challenge to myself, and I'm curious if you, what else you would add to

• 1:37:57Speaker 07

  the pile, like, who else would it make sense for? Because if you did that with Tina Turner, people would say, like, what a strange take on telling her story. That's so odd that they like, told it fictionally and documenting her as an old lady and then showing her, like, what an odd approach to a fairly traditional and very juicy, real story that she lived. I don't know who else it would make sense for. And that was my whole conception was, these movies are never bespoke to the artist, in a way that I feel that Todd Haynes, Bob Dylan movie is bespoke to him. And I feel, to me, the Gus Van Sant fictionalized Cobain movie is kind of bespoke to a a version of Cobain. It's not

• 1:38:40Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:38:40Speaker 07

  the definitive take on what he was for every year of his life. But to me, what is the version of something that you're like? This is what you always want. This is the correct meeting of subject matter and style and format.

• 1:38:56Yasi Salek?

  I, I think the difference for me between what you did and what the Gus Van Sant film is, and again, I haven't seen it in 20 years. Is that I think you did something really cool, which is using all those formats, you were able to like, show multiple sides of this band that isn't just like the cool slacker band of your dreams or whatever. I mean, like watching Mark Ibold's face light up at the musical was like one of my favorite parts. And I was also thinking, I'm like, did, is he the only one that attended? He is, huh?

• 1:39:28Speaker 07

  He is, yeah, because he's the only one who lives in New York and he's the only one we had regular access to. And just because of our timing and the way we were financed, we kind of just went right into that from the museum and it occurred, I think just a few weeks after their, that part of their tour ended. And I think they'd been on tour at that point for like four or five months and everyone just immediately scattered, rightfully so. But yeah, we had no, we had no access to anyone else.

• 1:39:56Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, but like when someone was putting on a musical of my career, I would fly in.

• 1:40:02Speaker 07

  I can't tell you how many people have said that.

• 1:40:04Yasi Salek?

  Me personally, I mean, also obviously I love attention, um, which is

• 1:40:08Speaker 07

  But that's the thing, I mean, Malcolm's doesn't.

• 1:40:10Yasi Salek?

  Doesn't, yeah.

• 1:40:11Speaker 07

  It would make him uncomfortable to be in that room.

• 1:40:13Yasi Salek?

  But Spiral, maybe I just know.

• 1:40:15Speaker 07

  Yeah, he was in Australia, so he's not like.

• 1:40:17Yasi Salek?

  It's a bit of a, it's a bit of a trek.

• 1:40:18Speaker 07

  He's not accessible.

• 1:40:20Yasi Salek?

  I just, my thing with Control and Last Days is like, I, I just like, maybe because I have such a personal relationship with some of these artists in my mind, a parasocial one, where I'm like, oh, it's so flattening. Like I, nobody was just sad drug guy. You know, nobody was just epileptic misery. Like people have so many facets and that, again, that's why the I'm Not There works, I think, in this beautiful way is like, you don't know, no one knows Bob Dylan, you, so you come at him from all these different angles and try to catch something. And it's like, Kurt Cobain was funny, you know, like, Nino Curtis was funny. Like, none of that is there. And I know it's not definitive, but it's like, you only ever usually get one. So.

• 1:41:01Speaker 07

  And this is a problem. I mean, this is, this is a huge problem for me that I aimed to get around in some way with this movie is like. Not only does do you have to assume or know for a fact that any artist you love, much like any person you know, contains multitudes.

• 1:41:17Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:18Speaker 07

  You have to assume it's your responsibility as the storyteller to represent all sides of that person. And do so in a way that is true to the spirit of what their output means to you. If listening to Joy Division only makes you sad, then I guess your take on the material is like, this is just sad, sad, sad, and then he dies.

• 1:41:38Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:41:39Speaker 07

  And if listening to it makes you joyful and makes you feel alive with the possibility of like a time and place that you weren't in, then you could find joy in the movie, which 24 Hour Party People does.

• 1:41:51Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:52Speaker 07

  But some takes on the material don't. And I'm always just so, like you say, like the, of course, the Todd Haynes movie approaches this character from six different perspectives. And the recent one is just one strand of that movie writ large, which to me is unwatchable. Like that, that was a good 25 minutes of a two and a half hour movie, but where Cate Blanchett played this guy. So even within the most literal part of that film, there's this extra layer of thought put into what we are doing to tell this story.

• 1:42:24Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:25Speaker 07

  That to me is the only version of anything I would want. And this goes for, you know, kind of ridiculous. You know, I, I would, I would welcome the Kiss version of something like that. And we kind of have it over the years with, you know, Phantom of the Park and whatnot and other things they tried to make, but like, I just like how different careers look when you zoom out from them. And when you're making a movie about a band that, yes, they reunited, but you know, largely inactive for 20 years, at least in terms of their creative partnership. I just wanted to find some version of that. And to me, Malcolm is is. Such a bizarre contradiction and enigma, and the only thing I had no interest in doing

• 1:43:06Speaker 07

  was solving, even attempting to be like, so I want to get to the bottom of this. I was more like, I just want to kind of show how bizarrely contradictory this guy has always been and celebrate it while also showing the effect it has on these other people who have been right there for this whole time.

• 1:43:24Yasi Salek?

  One of the most brilliant things about your film to me is the musical part because I think what it did was slyly show, or maybe not sly, maybe like overtly, show how emotionally moving Pavement's music is despite the fact that this is an unsolvable person who refuses to give you anything that might seem sincere or earnest. But putting it into this sincere, earnest bucket, it's like so obvious. And also the choice, I wanted to actually ask you, was it your choice or Robert's to make it all converge with Grounded, the song Grounded? Because that's obviously one of their most powerful, you know, emotional songs.

• 1:44:06Speaker 07

  An easy answer for the number one best song. I mean, the sort of approach with the musical was a couple of things. One, it was my attempt to show that I find this music earnest and sincere and emotional. Not every song, not every, even some of the songs we put in the musical are not entirely sincere or emotional to me, but I find more than, I'm not a musician, I don't have the technical appreciation of their music that many of their fans do. It's completely lost on me. I understand it to be next level complexity that continues to blow guitar players' minds, but that doesn't exist for me.

• 1:44:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:47Speaker 07

  It's just, it's storytelling, it's lyrics, it's melodies, it's songs, and it's the personalities. It's not a technical thing. And I think that by putting the music In an emotional context, it was just a stress test. And again, I'm in the movie as the director of the musical. Saying like, you couldn't do this with Sonic Youth or Nirvana. That's not saying I think every Pavement song is better than every Nirvana song. It's saying that I really just think this would, this is credible. As an exercise with this, these forty five songs that we put into the musical. And I think there are not forty five Nirvana songs that would work. Out of context.

• 1:45:23Yasi Salek?

  Rape me, maybe.

• 1:45:24Speaker 07

  Maybe. I also just wanted, I mean, you know, I feel like Nirvana songs get like slowed down in movie trailers a lot now.

• 1:45:30Yasi Salek?

  All the time with a, with a breathy female vocal.

• 1:45:33Speaker 07

  Yeah, that's right. That's how it was meant to be. It's just the, the sort of like, the exercise of that extraction. Was one important part of the movie's project, which is a thing I know you like, because you are a chronicler of narratives. Which is what does the music mean if you take Malcolmus out of it?

• 1:45:51Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:45:52Speaker 07

  And that is a very strange. Prompt that doesn't necessarily make sense.

• 1:45:57Yasi Salek?

  No, but it's the most important prompt because that is how, that is how you. People should engage with a, with music. Like, that's how I engage with Pavement. I don't know that man. I don't know what he's on about. I don't know what goes on in his head and I don't care. My relationship is with his art, you know, and it starts and ends there.

• 1:46:16Speaker 07

  Yeah, and I, that was kind of where I wanted it to start and end. So the question of just doing a musical is, can you treat these pop songs? Like they're the great American songbook and they can just be reinterpreted and restaged and sung by people. Who come to this music with zero awareness. Of what it sounds like on the album, who he is, what he's like, or what his voice is like. And they're just looking at it as lyrics and melodies. And this isn't me saying. That's how it should be. It's me saying this happens all the time, whether we like it or not. And the question is just, what does it mean when you remove the artist? Like, you know, people say, separate the art from the artist, but they say that about people who are

• 1:47:01Speaker 07

  bad, who make good things. To me, it's more like, well, what does the art mean without the artist? Not because of their personality, but just because if you have a strong, forceful personality, why, why do buskers sing Wonderwall? Because you can just separate it from who wrote it, and it's still a song that you want to listen to.

• 1:47:18Yasi Salek?

  So true.

• 1:47:19Speaker 07

  And the, the musical was just this attempt at examining the question of like, what is this? What are these, these things if they have nothing to do with the band, but everything to do with emotion and storytelling? And of course, it appeared kind of concurrently. Maybe we were like a year before the Sufjan Stevens show, which I never saw.

• 1:47:40Yasi Salek?

  Me neither.

• 1:47:41Speaker 07

  Um, but seemed exactly like one to one. All of our like little fake promotional bits we made of the musical for the Blu-ray and for Instagram, just are mimicking the promotional videos they put out of that show. Except they seem to work really hard on it and we did ours in eight weeks, like for fun. But it was just, it's more just a fascination of, you know, again, like why your show is chronicling narratives is like, you can separate this from the tuning that the nerds care about, and it can become this other object of fascination that on the one hand focuses on the personalities, on the other hand focuses on the end result, on the other hand focuses on the legacy of what this work could continue to mean.

• 1:48:25Speaker 07

  As I like, have yet to finish your elastic episode, but you're correctly like, I'm fixating on this woman because I'm obsessed with her.

• 1:48:32Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:33Speaker 07

  But also like, this is another example of like, by giving us nothing but 20 years of absence, this is now a legendary band, or really just a legendary album, essentially.

• 1:48:45Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:45Speaker 07

  And five crappy albums and just continuing to tour would not mean the same thing with that particular band who crossed over with Pavement at Lollapalooza.

• 1:48:55Yasi Salek?

  Imagine if this, if Smashing Pumpkins had stopped after a door.

• 1:48:59Speaker 07

  And this is the best, this is the best thought exercise for any, for anything that we care about.

• 1:49:04Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's just like, wow, um.

• 1:49:07Speaker 07

  You asked some other question after the musical that I feel like I. Oh, the grounded thing.

• 1:49:11Yasi Salek?

  Oh, yeah, yeah. But you just decided because it's the best and most powerful song that makes the most sense.

• 1:49:16Speaker 07

  So basically, a lot of the process of making the movie, at least outlining the movie, was interviewing everybody. And I spoke to everyone once or twice, and I spoke to Malcolm as a couple of times. Um, you know, not for like 20 minutes, but for hours. And I was just asking him for visuals, ideas, story moments that he might have ever thought would be compelling, or moments he lived through, that he was, you know, I like, you'd be remiss not to mention this to me. I want to find it, and I want to try to read it, um, verbatim, because his exact words inspired that moment, and I think is really important, where he said something that I knew would be unfilmable.

• 1:50:01Speaker 07

  So he says, "I did an interview about our reunion, parentheses, playing for Festival Rando's, there to see Hip-Hop and Take Molly. And I said, 'The opening notes of this one tune, Grounded, would be like the Pied Piper. People would incoherently sense the power of the music. It's entirely impressionistic, all set at dusk.'" And I was like, okay, so that, we're not going to have this moment where Malcolm is as like a Pied Piper leads people over a field while Grounded plays. But his conjuring up that image of using that song. What'd you say?

• 1:50:41Yasi Salek?

  I just got the chills.

• 1:50:42Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's a perfectly, it's a perfectly valid image. And the idea that he singled that out while saying that he felt like that song could cut through a festival crowd who doesn't want to listen to his band. I was just right there. I put a pin in like, we need to do something. That isn't that exact image. God willing, we could, you know, film Malcolm is leading people over the horizon while he plays grounded, but that feels a little beyond our means. So I always was just looking for, this is your earlier question, like, what are the limitations? Like, what can we do? And I just knew, okay, so put a big pin in Grounded and try to build something around it that conjures this feeling that he is describing. And when you watch in the movie,

• 1:51:24Speaker 07

  they, the band playing it in rehearsal, the band playing it at the Fonda Theater.

• 1:51:30Yasi Salek?

  And it was the first, I was there at that show, is the first, they started, which was really unexpected.

• 1:51:35Speaker 07

  I think they started with Our Singer, which I think is why we start the movie with it.

• 1:51:38Yasi Salek?

  No, I think they started with Grounded. I was, I'm almost positive because it was like-

• 1:51:42Speaker 07

  Well, that's how we played in the movie. So if you're almost positive-

• 1:51:44Yasi Salek?

  Oh, maybe, did you replace my memory? Jesus Christ.

• 1:51:47Speaker 07

  It's entirely likely, Pavement at the Fonda Theater, yeah, they started with Our Singer.

• 1:51:51Yasi Salek?

  God damn it.

• 1:51:52Speaker 07

  But you see, we-

• 1:51:54Yasi Salek?

  You've shaped my, you've reshaped my memory.

• 1:51:57Speaker 07

  I know, we, but that's okay. And we felt like that was allowed. But because they started a lot of shows on this tour with it.

• 1:52:03Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:52:04Speaker 07

  And in the movie, we go from rehearsal, rehearsal, rehearsal, Pavement's first show, and then we play it. And I think at at least one or two of the Kings Theatre shows here in New York, they did start with it.

• 1:52:13Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:15Speaker 07

  But we just felt like it was a correct moment to sort of change, you know, anyone who's at the Fonda show will either say, I remember them starting with that, because that's how movies change your memory, or they'll say, they started with Our Singer, but then so did the movie, so now I'm confused. So we just, we, we have that, we have archival of them playing it. And I knew, like, Joe, Keary, and the guys have to play this song. Joe has to learn this song on guitar. We, of course, have the whole song of Joe performing it, but we only use snippets and we kind of mix his voice way, way, way down. So it's just deep in the background behind Malcolm X. Obviously, we had Grounded in the musical.

• 1:52:53Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:52:54Speaker 07

  Which is not, and the musical was chronological. So even in the movie, where you finally get to opening night of the musical, and it starts with Grounded, Grounded is like 45 minutes into the show. But we moved it. And then at the museum tribute with Soccer Mommy, Snail Mail, Bully, and Speedy Ortiz, I was like, I need all four of you to collaborate on Grounded, which of, you know, so like when, when you cut between these five things in the movie. You're looking at the result of three years of planning. All unified around a song that we're like, that has to be the moment that all the fuckery we're doing with this movie coalesces into just one moment of just writing on a song.

• 1:53:38Speaker 07

  And of course, the song is five minutes. We can't, you can't just have a five minute song in a movie, even that one, even that song, but it has to stand for something. So that was sort of just a lot of planning to get us to that point and a lot of fakery, like a lot of just moving songs around to make it make sense. That was the end of the museum. All the individual bands played their sets and then we did grounded. But it's another thing where we, for some reason in editing, make it seem like every one of these events started with grounded, which also would have been good.

• 1:54:09Yasi Salek?

  It's so good. It really like brings the, you know, brings the whole thing home. Um, that's a really, that's a really critical way to say it. Um, I'm really mad I didn't go to the museum. I was in New York that day and I think I was hungover and I was like, well.

• 1:54:27Speaker 07

  Were you there for the King's Theater shows?

• 1:54:29Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I was.

• 1:54:31Speaker 07

  Okay, you're everywhere. Sean was at the museum, you know?

• 1:54:33Yasi Salek?

  I know. And I honestly, I should have been in the movie, but we can talk about that for your next one.

• 1:54:39Speaker 07

  In what capacity? Because originally, when I wanted him to come, we were going to interview people at the museum.

• 1:54:44Yasi Salek?

  See, I feel like I could have been that lady who was doing the interview.

• 1:54:47Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 1:54:48Yasi Salek?

  You know what I mean? Because known, it's a little winky, like, look at that lady. She did a five hour podcast about pavement.

• 1:54:54Speaker 07

  That's true. And if I'd known you then, you very likely could have been.

• 1:54:58Yasi Salek?

  I'll wait for my next casting call for the next Alex Ross Perry project.

• 1:55:02Speaker 07

  The Elastica movie?

• 1:55:03Yasi Salek?

  The Elastica movie, exactly. Um, actually, would honestly, Elastica movie would be like, I think about, this is the great segue into my second to last question, which is, who would you, like, pie in the sky, given the opportunity? Who do you think would make for a good subject for a good biopic that you would like to make?

• 1:55:27Speaker 07

  Well, that implies that there's like, that I have, and that implies so many things. I can't even get my words straight.

• 1:55:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:33Speaker 07

  So there's, so in this scenario, in this scenario, there's like, I've cracked a good movie that fits into some framework.

• 1:55:41Yasi Salek?

  And you have the budget.

• 1:55:43Speaker 07

  I just don't think I'd want to work that hard. Like, I simply don't dream of labor. That's your answer? I don't want to, actually don't want to do this. That's just, I mean, I can't even, like, the greatest Malcolm's lesson, of which there are thousands of just listening to him or having people tell stories about him, is I asked, uh, matadors Chris Lombardi at some point, the same question I asked everybody, which is, could they have ever turned left instead of right? Could they have done the unthinkable, perfect album with the perfect videos that launched them to the level that they were at in the hearts of many? And everybody said, yes, absolutely, they could have done that. But it never would have happened. And then everyone had a different answer for why.

• 1:56:29Speaker 07

  And I asked Chris at some point, and he said, you know, Steve's whole thing is, he'd rather put out an album that's too long and that is not diamond cut and have it be okay than work forever on something and have it be perfect. And he said, Steve always kind of has this attitude of, I didn't even have to work very hard on it, and it turned out pretty good. And ever since I heard that, that's been like, and that was obvious as soon as he said it. I was like, that is exactly what he's like. But ever since I heard that, I kind of try to live my life that way, where it's like, do exactly enough that I'm like, I did all that I can. But I'm okay with it turning out pretty good. I don't want to

• 1:57:12Speaker 07

  work that hard on something and then try to make it great. Um, I feel like a lot of those movies just take so much work, just like filming musical performances takes forever. Yeah. I mean, there's things that I like cartoonishly would like, you know? But I don't know. I mean, I just, if someone was just like, full on, do whatever you want. You know, blank chat. I just don't think of anything that I'm like, that would be cool.

• 1:57:41Speaker 07

  I don't know. I just don't have an answer to that.

• 1:57:44Yasi Salek?

  You might be a little tired from four years of making a pavement film. We might have to revisit.

• 1:57:48Speaker 07

  I mean, I don't know.

• 1:57:49Yasi Salek?

  We'll revisit this question in two years when you recover.

• 1:57:53Speaker 07

  I just don't know like what I mean. Yeah, there's bands that I love like a lot, but I just don't.

• 1:57:57Yasi Salek?

  I'll tell you my answer.

• 1:57:58Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:57:59Yasi Salek?

  The Slits.

• 1:58:00Speaker 07

  Okay. I mean, I would, I would, that's your answer for you. You're like, I could.

• 1:58:04Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I feel like I could make a, I feel like I could make a really good Slits movie.

• 1:58:08Speaker 07

  Yeah, I would. I think there could be a good Slits movie. I just, I would watch that. I would, I would watch the hell out of that.

• 1:58:14Yasi Salek?

  I just feel like they, that's a, that's a good, they're not famous enough to be on Candy Valley, which I think is a problem with biopics. Like you did it so smart in your film where you do the split screen between Malcolm's and Joe Keery, where it's like really showing the thing. It was like, the whole thing is they never look enough like the person for anyone to be satisfied. And so, and like, I mean, Keery looks sort of, you know, but.

• 1:58:36Speaker 07

  He looks enough like him that you would cast him if you were making this movie. The funny thing is like, no two people look that much alike. There's obviously funny doppelgangers, but you know, as Joe says in his in-character interview in the movie, he's like, people said I could kind of sort of look like him. And that's, that's really all most of these movies do. It's like.

• 1:58:57Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:57Speaker 07

  But I feel like a Slits movie.

• 1:58:58Yasi Salek?

  Nobody, nobody like has such an, they're, they're pre, they're pre-image. Like it's like, you know, so it's like, they're not so famous that people are like, oh, that doesn't look like Ari up, you know, like.

• 1:59:10Speaker 07

  No, no, Ari up has that great book.

• 1:59:13Yasi Salek?

  No, Viv Albertine, Viv Albertine. She wrote two books. I think someone's probably already optioned it. If not, bang, bang our line, you guys.

• 1:59:20Speaker 07

  You know, I feel like the Slits movie that I would be excited by is if someone was like, the movie is as though Mike Lee made a film in 1980 with these.

• 1:59:29Yasi Salek?

  I just watched Career Girls the other night and I really feel like that was really driving home to me where I was like, this should be in that.

• 1:59:36Speaker 07

  Yeah. Like if that was the tone of it, which I feel like is a credible tone of like the artistic culture that they were in, like this kind of weird, humorous, somewhat tragic, just circumstantially to the culture of where they lived. Like I think that there's, but that's not traditional. I would love that. Uh, you know, if someone says an answer and I'm like, that sounds.

• 1:59:55Yasi Salek?

  Give me a budget cowards.

• 1:59:58Speaker 07

  For the Slits movie. Yeah. The thing is like, there's just a weird resistance to these things. Like I remember when Carrie Brownstein's memoir came out, there was years of them trying to make it. As like a Hulu show and then I think the same thing happened with with Kim Gordon's memoir. Like the attempts to sort of make these things about iconic, but not millionaire selling artists just never goes anywhere. And I don't think people understand these stories divorced from financial success.

• 2:00:28Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:00:29Speaker 07

  Obviously you can make a control because it's tragic and everyone recognizes the unknown pleasures artwork, but.

• 2:00:36Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:37Speaker 07

  There's just this weird disconnect.

• 2:00:38Yasi Salek?

  I think the slits would work because they're tangential to so many massive bands that everyone knows. So it's kind of a perfect balance where like you could, the Clash and the Sex Pistols would be B and secondary characters that show up in this film. Bob Marley would show up in this film, but like they're not the main characters. And I feel like that's really interesting. It's, it, I guess my, my preoccupation is context. I'm just really fascinated by how every one of these artists lives within the context of, you know, what did Kamala Harris said in the context of the apple of falling, whatever.

• 2:01:11Speaker 07

  Yeah, I don't know. You lost me there, but. I think, but that's exactly it is. And then we pitched this movie for years as saying like, maybe you love Pavement, maybe you don't know them. But the context is that they were formed in late 89 and broke up in late 99. And those 10 years represent a seismic change in cultural understanding of art, music, culture, marketing, publicity. And our story is largely about trying to stay true to yourself during those 10 years where materially, the world of 1999 doesn't resemble 89 at all. It's like more changed in those 10 years than has changed since.

• 2:01:46Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. So I mean, on, in 2009 to 1999, it's like, nothing can replicate 1999.

• 2:01:53Speaker 07

  Yeah. I do want to look around because I have like music books behind me. I just don't have any good answer. I mean, I guess they're making a Kiss movie and I'll, you know, I'll, I'll watch it.

• 2:02:03Yasi Salek?

  You'll watch it. Yeah.

• 2:02:04Speaker 07

  Of course. I mean, I watched the, the official documentary. I'll watch any, I mean, they're, they're, they're top of the food chain for me.

• 2:02:10Yasi Salek?

  Okay. All right. Well, gorge.

• 2:02:13Speaker 07

  But I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't. I mean, I just, it would be too much work, but I would watch it. I just don't have good answers for stuff like this. I can't, I'm bad at hypotheticals.

• 2:02:21Yasi Salek?

  That's interesting because isn't like, isn't like. Imagination and creativity, just hypotheticals?

• 2:02:26Speaker 07

  I guess so. But you know, like, I just, I think-

• 2:02:29Yasi Salek?

  What if? Isn't it just kind of what if?

• 2:02:31Speaker 07

  Yeah, it is, but then whenever someone's like, what would your dream thing be? It's like, I'm just things that are good. And I, I wouldn't have said 10 years ago, my dream thing is making a pavement movie that is fiction, nonfiction, musical documentary. Like, I wouldn't have said that, but I knew it the second I needed to know it.

• 2:02:48Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Okay, that's a good answer.

• 2:02:51Speaker 07

  I mean, I'll say this, this, this is an answer of like, I know this is not possible for me or for like, I would love to make, if I'm, if I have any hypothetical, the thing I always think of is could there ever be a great Misfits movie?

• 2:03:05Yasi Salek?

  Oh, God, that's a good one. That's a really good one. That's such a good one.

• 2:03:11Speaker 07

  If it happens as a documentary, I'm sure Jonas will make it, but like-

• 2:03:16Yasi Salek?

  No, we have to wait for Glenn Danzig. I mean, and God, I don't want this to happen. May he, may he live forever, but yeah, I think you would have to wait for him to pass away because-

• 2:03:23Speaker 07

  But I don't, yeah, I just, that, that's a, that's a band that I think about a lot because similar to a lot of artists, like their influence is undeniable, but I don't think most people, even fans of, you know, the 50 minutes of music that they wrote and recorded could tell you much about them other than that they were like a punk band obsessed with horror movies. And I just feel like there's a story there that would be incredibly true to the spirit of the music, but also it's one of these bands like Kiss where the history has been rewritten by myth by the people so many times that there is, there's no honesty left anymore in like how they remember it, but-

• 2:04:02Yasi Salek?

  You would have to start the movie with Glenn Danzig leaving the Vons carrying the cat litter.

• 2:04:07Speaker 07

  And just flashback?

• 2:04:09Yasi Salek?

  It's just the most, that, that's the some kind of monster moment of Glenn Danzig where you were like, he has a cat?

• 2:04:15Speaker 07

  But even just-

• 2:04:16Yasi Salek?

  He's buying cat litter.

• 2:04:18Speaker 07

  Even just like, you know, a some kind of monster of them. And I don't know if they filmed their reunion in the last like eight or nine years, but just there's so, there's so much there that, and again, like Oasis, it gets into this-

• 2:04:28Yasi Salek?

  Rich text.

• 2:04:29Speaker 07

  Well, it just gets into this, the idea of like families who are in bands together. Of like relations and like brothers and it's just, it's very-

• 2:04:37Yasi Salek?

  You only, you also, if you ever go to like a festival they're playing or something and you're backstage, you'll only ever see Jerry only. Like, he's the only one ever walking around. Like, the rest of them are just like, absolutely not there until the moment that it's time to go on stage and then they leave.

• 2:04:49Speaker 07

  Okay, well, I have a band exactly like that. I'll tell you about when we stop recording.

• 2:04:54Yasi Salek?

  Um, okay, this was so wonderful, Alex. My very last question is something that occurred to me the three times that I watched the movie during the Joe Keery voice coach sessions, which was, how come it's cool for Malcolmus to have vocal fry, but it's not cool when I have it?

• 2:05:12Speaker 07

  I think it's cool. I love vocal. I, I, I've loved this before I knew the name for it. Is this something people accuse you of?

• 2:05:19Yasi Salek?

  Oh, my God. They're so mean about it.

• 2:05:21Speaker 07

  Where are you from?

• 2:05:23Yasi Salek?

  Los Angeles, Torrance. Actually, Torrance, California. Shout out Torrance.

• 2:05:26Speaker 07

  Yeah, I, I didn't know that this was a thing until, I feel like, a generation of, of, uh, women I like listening to, uh, in the last like 10 years, people were like, that's the, that's this word for what their voice is. But I, I think it's cool.

• 2:05:40Yasi Salek?

  Thank you.

• 2:05:40Speaker 07

  I made a, I made a three hour documentary about video stores that Maya Hawke narrates and she's, she's kind of fried.

• 2:05:46Yasi Salek?

  She's a little fried.

• 2:05:47Speaker 07

  Not an Angelino, but, um, people, someone said, oh, I, I have a hard time with vocal fry. Does she talk the whole movie? And I was like, yeah, she talks for three hours, but her voice is incredible. What are you talking about? Yeah, I don't know.

• 2:06:00Yasi Salek?

  It's the patriarchy, babe. The feminism reentering my body. It's actually a lot of women on women crime that don't like my vocal fry.

• 2:06:06Speaker 07

  Yeah, I will say, I don't even quite know what it means or why it's called fry.

• 2:06:10Yasi Salek?

  I don't either. I think, I, I think it's about the elongation of syllables, but I don't know why it's called fry.

• 2:06:18Speaker 07

  Okay. Yeah, I'm for it.

• 2:06:20Yasi Salek?

  Thank you so much, Alex Ross Perry, and thank you for coming on the Band Swing Podcast to talk about Pavements. You guys watch Pavements, uh, streaming now and-

• 2:06:28Speaker 07

  It's a huge honor and I appreciate you taking the movie serious. I didn't even realize I had my mug here from the museum from morning.

• 2:06:34Yasi Salek?

  You were in the headspace.

• 2:06:36Speaker 07

  But I really appreciate it and I, I'm glad to, to have such a thoughtful audience in you and I hope people see it. And I'll be, I'll be back for the Kiss episode.

• 2:06:46Yasi Salek?

  I honestly, do you wanna? One of 10. Do you wanna do the kiss episode? People keep asking me to do that, but um, I'm, I mean. Much like you, I simply do not dream of the labor of doing the kiss. Yeah. There's a couple of bands where they're like, can you do this? And I'm like, with what? With what energy and time? Yeah. It's, it's a band I think about more than any other. Okay, well, we'll, we'll, I'll be in touch about this. Thanks, Alex. Thank you for having me.

• 2:07:23Yasi Salek?

  If you liked what you heard today, subscribe for more episodes of Bandplain. Our guests today were Hua Su and Alex Ross Perry. Hua's book Stay True is available everywhere you buy books, and you can stream the movie Pavements on MUBI Now. This episode was produced and edited by Kevin Poehler with help from Justin Sales. Executive producers for Bandplain are Gina Dalvak and me, Yasi Salek. Our gorgeous and catchy theme song was composed and performed by Bethany Cosentino and Jennifer Clavon, and graciously recorded by Carlos De La Garza in Los Angeles, California. Special thanks to our producer emeritus, producer Dylan, AKA Dylan Tupper Rupert, and also Michael Hardman, Casey Simonsen, Robert Adler, Leah Edwards, David McDonough, Dana Myerson, Jessica Hopper, Sean Fennessy, and my gorgeous little dog, Joey.

• 2:08:06Yasi Salek?

  Come back on Thursdays for a new episode of Bandplain on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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