St. Vincent and Carrie Brownstein Fight Over a Rockstar’s Reality in “The Nowhere Inn” Clip

The Bill Benz–directed film is available September 17 through IFC Films.
Film + TV
St. Vincent and Carrie Brownstein Fight Over a Rockstar’s Reality in “The Nowhere Inn” Clip

The Bill Benz–directed film is available September 17 through IFC Films.

Words: Margaret Farrell

August 12, 2021

St. Vincent’s Annie Clark and Sleater Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein have made a movie together called The Nowhere Inn. We got a glimpse of it with a teaser a couple months ago, and now there’s another trailer with even more bizarre scenes promising a documentary-turned-mockumentary-turned-pointed-Lynchian-mayhem.

“It was supposed to be a music documentary—concert footage, interviews,” Clark sighs in the clip when asked why the supposed film about her music career wasn’t finished. “I wanted people to know who I really am.” The trailer reveals that Clark asked her best friend Carrie Brownstein to make a documentary about her life as St. Vincent. When things post-show aren’t as exciting as expected—the biggest rush at the beginning is a late night game of Scrabble—the two discuss what it means for a subversive rock star to be just a normal human when she’s not wearing plastic or spandex.

As soon as Clark states, “I can be St. Vincent all the time so I can be a little bit more interesting,” the truth and all sense of reality gets muddled. Candid scenes turn into trippy wormholes. In turn, there’s a kinky scene with Dakota Johnson, and Clark only wishes to sell black bobbed wigs at her concerts. “Then let’s only document things I can control,” St. Vincent declares at one point, which doesn’t seem far from the media portrait painted of her during her recent album cycle.

Watch it all unfold below. The Nowhere Inn is out on September 17.