The latest member of the “weird” music biopic family: Pavement.
Range Life: A Pavement Story is described as “a story about the world’s most important and influential band, Pavement.” The film — which appears to be both a documentary about the indie rock greats and a self-aware parody of the genre — was directed by Alex Ross Perry (Her Smell, very long episodes of the Blank Check podcast) and stars Stranger Things actor Joe “Djo” Keery as Stephen Malkmus. The cast also includes Jason Schwartzman, Fred Hechinger, Tim Heidecker, Logan Miller, Griffin Newman, and Nat Wolff.
“[Range Life: A Pavement Story] is four or five films rolled into one,” Ross Perry said about the movie, “because I wish that all musical biopics and standard-issue documentaries were 30 minutes long. I’d watch more of them that way. There has never been a band like Pavement, and I hope there has never been a film like [Range Life: A Pavement Story]. It both is and is not.”
He added, “It presupposes that an iconic band deserves all the cultural victories typically afforded to much more financially successful artists. But what I learned while making [the film] is that Pavement deserve these tributes. It is time to ask questions about how stories about musicians are told and sold and for us as the audience to demand more innovation in our biographical portraits.
You can watch the teaser trailer above.
Range Life: A Pavement Story comes out later this year.
