There’s a moment about halfway through Alex Ross Perry’s new Pavement movie Pavements where Joe Keery realizes he may have made a career-hindering mistake: He can’t stop talking like Stephen Malkmus. Poor Keery, a 33-year-old onetime Netflix darling from Massachusetts, can’t help but blur his syllables together in an aloof California drawl, a heavy vocal fry emanating through static lips. “I don’t really think I want to be Stephen anymore,” he suddenly tells his dialect coach, who’s still befuddled by the photo of Malkmus’ tongue that Keery presented to her. For research purposes.
