THE STORY – Charting the Sheffield band’s extraordinary journey from obscurity to cultural touchstone, this concert doc fuses footage from Pulp’s biggest ever arena show – part of the global tour for “More,” the band’s first album in 24 years – with four decades of colorful, never-seen-before archival material.
THE CAST – Jarvis Cocker, Candida Doyle, Nick Banks & Mark Webber
THE TEAM – Garth Jennings (Director)
THE RUNNING TIME – 99 Minutes
Among the leading bands in the 1990’s Britpop movement, Pulp was the one that seemed most determined to follow its own path. Though regularly grouped by the British press as one of “the big four” – the others being Oasis, Blur, and Suede – Pulp had its own set of priorities. When other bands were celebrating British identity in their music, Pulp took a different tack, creating songs that instead focused on the country’s outcasts, spotlighting the many who had little to no voice in British life.
Yet, despite a rabidly devoted fanbase, the band never achieved the chart heights of a band like Oasis. It may be that the advocacy elements of their music might have limited its appeal to a mass audience, but more likely was the band’s instability. It was difficult to see them perform live because they kept breaking up. The first split was in 2002, in what was planned as a pause so the band members could lead real lives. That pause lasted 9 years, before a 2011 reunion tour which lasted until 2013, when Pulp took another break which lasted a full decade. But to support their album “More,” the group reunited for another limited tour, culminating in a triumphant 2025 concert at the Glastonbury Festival. That success led to a sold out concert at London’s O2 Arena later that summer, and it is that performance that has been captured for this film by longtime Pulp collaborator Garth Jennings.
The band, led by founder and frontman Jarvis Cocker, clearly cuts a compelling presence on stage, and Jennings’ judicious use of close-ups captures the expressiveness of Cocker’s face while performing. For audiences that love Pulp, Jennings delivers genuine fan service in the concert scenes, including a dozen of the film’s 20 songs performed in full, an allowance not always granted in more heavily edited pro-shot concerts. The distinctive staging is imaginatively presented and well-captured in wide shots by Jennings’ camera. If the film was simply a record of the event, it would certainly be considered a solid concert. But it’s the content placed in-between the songs that’s unexpected and gives “What Do You Do for an Encore?” its own distinctive personality, raising the film up to another level.
Instead of relying on a dry, Wikipedia-like history of the band, which so many other concert films use as a time-filler, Jennings shifts the film’s perspective to that of Cocker, through whose eyes we learn of the group’s origins. In the role of narrator, he recalls his youth, always feeling like the outsider and living at times in a fantasy world – the only place where he found real happiness. When the time came for Cocker to live out his fantasy and form a band, he sought out only the biggest misfits in his Sheffield school to join. It was that same spirit of embracing the outsider that became a recurring theme throughout the band’s discography.
How the film conveys that spirit is through Cocker’s manner of narration: While hitting all of the important milestones of the band, he adds unexpected personal touches to the text, as if he just thought of an anecdote and wants to share it with all of us right now (longtime band members Candida Doyle, Nick Banks, and Mark Webber share their perspectives at times, but we see the band largely through Cocker’s eyes). The spontaneity that Cocker brings to his narration extends to Jennings’ visual style as well, relying on home movies, VHS tapes, raw camcorder footage, and backstage tours to create a crazy quilt of images that reflects much of the spirit of the band.
As Cocker’s narration reveals his disdain for the upper classes and his dedication to promoting the underdog, the songs in the back half of the concert begin to hit a little differently, particularly “This is Hardcore,” which takes on the dark side of fame, aging, and voyeurism, as well as the band’s breakthrough smash, 1995’s “Common People,” a sharp critique of the wealthy who appropriate the struggle of the working class as their own. Just as the meaning the songs have for the band becomes clearer, so they do for us as well.
Though the desire to give fans the full concert experience by performing songs in their entirety does deliver fan service, for those casual viewers who don’t care for a particular song or even the band’s entire style, “What Do You Do for an Encore?” could be a bit of a slog indeed, especially in the film’s early sections before the meaningful context of those songs falls into place. However, for those of us who were unfamiliar with the band and are taken by its music, “What Do You Do for an Encore?” proves to be a welcome introduction. It’s no “Stop Making Sense,” which its loosey-goosey style often resembles, but it splendidly showcases a legendary band and does it on its own terms.
