Stranger Things star Joe Keery plays Stephen Malkmus is Alex Ross Perry’s upcoming film about the alt-rock greats, Range Life
Stranger Things star Joe Keery makes his hilariously melodramatic debut as indie rock great and leader of the “slacktivism” movement, Stephen Malkmus, in the new trailer for Alex Ross Perry’s Pavement movie, Range Life: A Pavement Story.
The film is kind of a mix of, well, everything — rock doc, biopic, jukebox musical, museum exhibit, performance art piece — all of it treated with the irreverent suspicion one would expect from a Pavement film. Case in point: The new trailer is a perfect send-up of overwrought, self-serious biopic trailers, set to Pavement’s Slanted and Enchanted track “Here” — though, of course, it’s been slowed down and given a maudlin string arrangement to emphasize how profound the whole endeavor is.
The teaser further features a collage of Keery, as Malkmus, spouting laidback koans like, “This is music — if it’s fun, it’s fun, if it’s work, it’s work, and that’s not fun”; and, “Progress is predictable and predictability involves science. I want nothing to do with science.” (The latter is actually something Malkmus wrote when Pavement released their misunderstood masterpiece Wowee Zowee.)
Along with Keery, Range Life stars Fred Hechinger as Bob Nastanovich, Logan Miller as Mark Ibold, Griffin Newman as Steve West, and Nat Wolff as Scott Kannberg (a.k.a. Spiral Stairs). Jason Schwartzman and Tim Heidecker (both of whom appear in the trailer) will play Matador Records heads Chris Lombardi and Gerard Cosloy. Additionally, all the actual members of Pavement will appear in Range Life, along with Kim Gordon, Snail Mail’s Lindsey Jordan, and Soccer Mommy.
Range Life debuted last year at the Venice Film Festival. A wide release date has yet to be announced.
