Watch Joe Keery As Stephen Malkmus And Jason Schwartzman & Tim Heidecker As Matador Records Execs In A Clip From Pavements

Alex Ross Perry’s new Pavement movie Pavements is premiering today at Venice Film Festival, and the first clip from the film has emerged online. We’ve been hearing for a while that the movie is an unconventional hybrid documentary/biopic and that it involves some elements like a pop-up museum featuring real and fake artifacts (which actually did briefly open in New York), a musical featuring the band’s songs (which also was staged in New York for real), and a big-budget Hollywood biopic. This scene goes a long way toward explaining how the movie is going to work, as do new comments from Perry.

“You’re only going to get to make one Pavement movie,” Perry tells Vanity Fair. “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.” In today’s scene, we get footage of a young Pavement hanging out with a voiceover from Malkmus talking about how the band used to be prideful little fucks, followed by a dramatic reenactment in which Joe Keery, in character as Malkmus, takes a call from Matador Records bosses Chris Lombardi and Gerard Cosloy, played by Jason Schwartzman and Tim Heidecker respectively. The Matador guys are excited to tell Malkmus that Pavement have been offered to perform on an episode of Saturday Night Live hosted by Quentin Tarantino, but Malkmus is nonplussed.

Did this actually happen? Perry says no, it is an invented scenario that represents lots of similar real-life situations. “Every music biopic is blending the relationship between history and fiction,” he told VF. “If you think the scenes in these movies happened, you’re a fool. 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.” It certainly feels true to the spirit of the band, and Keery especially nails Malkmus’ personal affect.

The video is not embeddable, so if you want to see it you’ll have to go to Vanity Fair.