Pavements, the new movie about indie rock icons Pavement made by director Alex Ross Perry, has its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival today (9/3) and while most of us will have to wait a while (TBA, probably next year) to see it, Vanity Fair scored a clip from the film you can watch now.
“You’re only going to get to make one Pavement movie. This isn’t Scorsese getting to make his fourth and fifth Dylan film. So why don’t I just make every Pavement movie that I, as a fan, would ever want to watch—or hate-watch,” Perry told Vanity Fair. One of those Pavement movies is a biopic, and the clip in question features Stephen Malkmus (Stranger Things‘ Joe Keery) turning down an offer to play Saturday Night Live with host Quentin Tarantino. Jason Schwartzman and Tim Heidecker play Matador Records bigwigs Chris Lombardi and Gerard Cosloy, respectively, who try to get S.M. to reconsider.
There’s a lot of questionably true lore around supposed Pavement TV appearances — one popular one is they were supposed to play Beverly Hills 90210 but got in a fight with Luke Perry on the day of shooting — but did this one really happen? “If you think the scenes in these movies happened, you’re a fool,” Perry told Vanity Fair. “This is a composite scene. We don’t need to show the seven things he turned down, so we just combine them all into turning down the biggest thing that never got offered.”
Quentin Tarantino did actually host an episode of SNL, though, on November 11, 1995, and the actual musical guest was The Smashing Pumpkins.
Watch the clip at Vanity Fair.
Alex Ross Perry also described Pavements thusly: “It’s a musical. It’s a museum. It’s a movie. It’s a mosaic. What if the music documentary can actually be a film? I asked this question in June of 2020 when I began talking about this project. I dunno, it’s a weird movie and I’ve never seen anything like it.”
The movie will get its US premiere at the New York Film Festival a little later this fall.
In other news, Stephen Malkmus’ new band The Hard Quartet will release their debut album on October 4 via Matador.