When the director Garth Jennings first moved to Paris, Jarvis Cocker, who was living there, dropped in on his old friend. It was bonfire night, and Cocker had taken some welcoming fireworks over to Jennings’ place. The best welcome to Paris.” “It was lovely,” adds Jennings, fondly.
Now, almost 30 years later, they are working together again, on Pulp: What Do You Do for an Encore? This joyful, funny, celebratory film is a hybrid beast: part concert movie and part documentary on the long history of the band. The live show was filmed at London’s O2 Arena in the summer of 2025, on the night that Pulp were told that More, their eighth studio album and first album in 24 years, had gone to No 1 in the British album charts.
You can see Cocker waving around the trophy on stage. Jennings, director of Son of Rambow and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, has lived in Paris for the past 13 years, where the animation for Sing, his wildly successful kids’ musical film franchise, is made. He is working on a short Christmas special, and the third and final film in the series.
It will be Pulp’s last show for a while. You can blame Instagram and Abba Voyage for the existence of What Do You Do for an Encore? Pulp, formed by Cocker in Sheffield in 1978, split up in 2002.
They got back together for a reunion tour between 2011 and 2013, the final date of which was captured for another idiosyncratic documentary, Florian Habicht’s Pulp: A Film About Life, Death & Supermarkets. Cocker had considered those shows to be a fitting – and final – farewell. You know, I don’t go to shows any more.
I’m an old bloke.” (Cocker is about to turn 63.) “I just said: ‘All right, I hope you’re right, let’s do it.’ But I wanted to make sure that it would be a good thing for us to do as well.” Cocker teased the news of a second Pulp reunion on Instagram in 2022. Jennings messaged him to tell him how excited he was, and to offer his help. It is obvious, when chatting to Jennings, that as well as being Cocker’s friend, he is a huge Pulp fan.
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