Pulp Reunion Film Premieres: Cocker Reflects on Fame — SkimNews
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- Pulp released new film "What Do You Do for an Encore?" directed by Garth Jennings — a hybrid concert-documentary blending live performance with archival VHS footage, animation, and interviews drawn partly from Cocker's 2023 book Good Pop Bad Pop
- The film was shot at London's O2 Arena in summer 2025 on the night the band's eighth studio album More — their first in 24 years — hit No. 1 on the British album charts, with Cocker visibly waving the trophy on stage
- Jarvis Cocker (about to turn 63) reflected on expecting fame to be "a magic wand that makes everything in your life work" and described going "down a dark tunnel" around the divisive 1998 album This Is Hardcore, saying he later had to "go back into real life"
- The film includes a tribute to bassist Steve Mackey, who died in 2023 aged 56; Cocker said the band showed it to Mackey's family before sign-off and that "I think you did a very good job there, Garth"
- Both Cocker and Jennings cite Abba Voyage — which they've seen together and apart — as a direct inspiration for blending live music with narrative storytelling, and the band plans to see it again together in October
- Cocker had considered the 2011-2013 reunion tour a final "happy ending" and initially feared a second reunion would "spoil" it; asked about new music, he likened it to a tree that grows when "the intellectual weather is right"
Why it matters: Pulp's 24-year-gap album More hitting No. 1 and pulling in fans not born when the band first split — captured in a film that also serves as Cocker's reckoning with fame. The documentary reframes a band Cocker thought he'd already given a happy ending, made more poignant by bassist Steve Mackey's 2023 death.
Ask SkimNews
