TICKETS $15

Doors 7 p.m.; Event 7:30 p.m.
Select Showtime to Purchase Tickets

Click here to learn more about accessibility at the Tomorrow Theater. 

THE EXPERIENCE

The latest film from acclaimed director Alex Ross Perry (Her Smell) is a documentary that may or may not be entirely true, may or may not be totally sincere, and may or may not be more about the idea of the band—or any band—than a history of the short-lived, passionately loved, commercially marginal Nineties American alternative group, Pavement. This unconventional film about a highly unconventional band incorporates a stage musical, rock biopic, gallery exhibition, archival footage, and contemporary observational footage to create a film as irreducible, uncharacterizable, and entertaining as the band and its music. Anchored by Pavement’s slacker-sage-sphinx, Stephen Malkmus, the film features performances by Joe Keery, Jason Schwartzman, Tim Heidecker, Kathryn Gallagher, Michael Esper, and Zoe Lister-Jones, and editing by nonfiction innovator, Robert Greene (Procession).

ON SCREEN: Pavements

2025. Directed by Alex Ross Perry. Runtime: 2 hours 8 minutes. 

1999: The world’s most important and influential band Pavement breaks up. And it’s not a big deal.

2022: The world’s most important and influential band Pavement reunites. And it’s a huge deal.

With these two curious declarations, so begins an unconventional film about a highly unconventional band. Pavements is a documentary that may or may not be entirely true, may or may not be totally sincere, and may or may not be more about the idea of the band—or any band—than a history of the short-lived, passionately loved, commercially marginal American alternative outfit, Pavement. Also it’s a documentary that is sometimes a stage musical, and sometimes a biopic, and sometimes an excuse to put together a star-studded museum opening. This is not your standard rock doc. Since it’s Pavement we’re talking about, it never could be.

Director/producer Alex Ross Perry (Her Smell, Listen Up Philip), along with editor/producer Robert Greene (Procession, Bisbee ’17), construct a film that shuffles between distinctive storytelling modes while also tracking the narrative and artistic progressions of the band and its five members—singer-songwriter Stephen Malkmus, guitarist Scott “Spiral Stairs” Kannberg, bassist Mark Ibold, drummer Steve West, and percussionist/everyman Bob Nastanovich, as well as original drummer Gary Young. Contemporary action picks up during preparations for the 2022 reunion tour (which also saw sixth band member Rebecca Clay Cole added)—the second reunion tour since the band broke up in 1999—which dovetails with newfound interest thanks to a viral Tik-Tok meme centered on “Harness Your Hopes”—previously an obscure B-side song but now their best-known song. Meanwhile, a trove of archival footage casts back to Malkmus and Kannberg’s nascent college bands, through the early, mid, and late 1990s (aka the beginning, middle, and ending of Pavement’s recording days), to charmingly shambling music videos for “Cut Your Hair” and others, often uncomfortably shambling live shows, and candid backstage scenes, press interviews, and more.

Perry separately conceived, wrote, and fully realized three stand-alone extra-documentary projects that would ultimately nestle inside of the film—three distinct and disparate, yet uncannily illuminating takes on parts and whole of the group.