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Sup Doc: A Documentary Podcast · Sup Doc

PAVEMENTS / KIM'S VIDEO with Arthur Jones

·55 min·3 clips
Kim's Video stocked his animation DVD and once played it in the store.
Arthur Jones returns as a repeat customer, and George Chen starts where the old sting still is: Feels Good Man hitting the moment when South by Southwest and a run of festivals disappeared under the pandemic. Jones sounds less like someone polishing a success story than someone remembering the places, Greece, Belgium, Germany, that suddenly came off the calendar. Netflix comes into the catch-up too, with The Antisocial Network as the newer project people can stream now. Then the talk slips into Pavements. The film gets plenty of affection. What they like is that it avoids the most obvious version of a Pavement documentary. Still, the praise comes with a wobble. They keep circling the editing, which can feel like montage or trailer cutting, full of sharp pieces that do not always settle into a bigger claim. So the question stays simple. Is there an argument here, or is the argument that Pavement can handle a mess of competing readings? The musical-theater thread joins the pile. So does a film-festival panel with the filmmaker, the band, and editor Robert Green. They talk split screens, reenactment, and original footage, especially around Lollapalooza and the mud thrown at the band. No one expects Pavement to hand over a clean emotional arc, so Lollapalooza becomes the drama: rain, a field, a circle pit, flying mud, and Malkmus walking off. Jones closes on Brain Worms, which sounds like the home for the research scraps, culture writing, technology thoughts, and podcast ideas that documentary work leaves behind.

As heard by us

A conversation about documentary form, festival fallout, and how Pavements turns competing interpretations into structure.

Arthur Jones returns to Sup Doc for a conversation that moves from Feels Good Man and the film's COVID-era festival cancellations to Pavements and the question of what a documentary is trying to argue.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

If you like documentaries that argue by montage, this one’s for you.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →
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