Pavements, the surreal high-concept hybrid-genre Pavement movie, is coming to New York's Film Forum this Friday, continuing a month-plus of nationwide screenings leading up to the film's wide release on June 6. To remind you of this fact, team Pavements has shared behind-the-scenes footage of Slanted! Enchanted!, the seemingly tongue-in-cheek but wink-free Pavement jukebox musical that was staged in New York in 2022 to be spliced into the movie.
In the three-minute-clip shared today, there are insights from director Alex Ross Perry, choreographer and musical co-director Angela Trimbur, and actors Michael Esper, Kathryn Gallagher, and Zoe Lister-Jones. Perry's comments basically boil down to: The musical theater format doesn't really work for Pavement's music. The play might have really happened, but the straight-faced documentary style of this vignette play like pure parody. It's farce, but it's such an elaborate farce, delivered entirely deadpan. I have to give them credit for mirroring the battle between ironic detachment and sincerity at the heart of Pavement's music. Watch below.
Pavements opens nationwide on 6/6. Here's the itinerary for upcoming screenings before then:
