Rick Rubin’s ‘Shangri-La’ showcased
If your musical playlist ran to The Beastie Boys, Black Sabbath, Kanye West, Smashing Pumpkins, Adele and Johnny Cash, you could call your tastes eclectic. Or merely a fan of the musicians who have worked with guru producer Rick Rubin at California’s fabled Shangri-La studios.
Created by documentary filmmaker Morgan Neville (“Won’t You Be My Neighbor?,” “20 Feet From Stardom”), the four-part series “Shangri-La” (9 p.m., Showtime, TV-MA) is not easy to describe or categorize.
Is it a documentary miniseries about a music producer who meditates? Or a film about meditation that happens to include a famous music-maker?
Or is it a profile of a place, a “vibe,” a spirit that comes from a place that has seen so much music and creative energy?
The place has history. And history within the history. And this being Malibu, much of it is movie-related. It’s first seen in a clip from Martin Scorsese’s 1978 concert film “The Last Waltz.” The Band had used the place to produce their own albums as well as those of other artists. Elvis is said to have recorded there. TV’s “Mister Ed,” the talking horse, was stabled there.
Shangri-La got its name from the single-named actress Margo, who had appeared in the 1937 movie adaptation of James Hilton’s “Lost Horizon” and was so taken with the film’s mystic message that she named her property after its mythical Himalayan paradise.
Rubin appears here, along with a number of contemporary and emerging artists from various genres. All are taken by the studio’s blank walls and white floors. Like the decor, Rubin likes to think of himself as more of an absence than a presence, a listener more than a mentor. Balding, bearded and built like a Buddha, he lolls about on the floor or walks barefoot, rooted in the vibrations he can feel emerging from the Earth.
Rubin’s mystical side emerges in conversations with filmmaker David
Lynch (“Blue Velvet,” “Twin Peaks”), a longtime champion of transcendental meditation.
To call this film “hypnotic” is a bit of an understatement. It’s fun to watch one musician after another react to Rubin’s minimalism with either nervous laughter or reverence. And it’s inspiring to watch songs of every kind get “built” before our eyes.
The narrative trick of depicting Rubin in flashback played by a young child sporting a beard and thinning hair is a tad too cute and distracting for my tastes. Otherwise, “Shangri-La” is a mesmerizing depiction of a creative place, a peculiar process and a unique person.
› Creativity of a different sort emerges on “Blown Away,” streaming on Netflix today, a competition reality series dedicated to glass blowing, a unique blend of chemistry, heat, vision and creativity. A group of 10 acclaimed artists will participate on this series, made in cooperation with the Corning Glass museum, a cultural gem located in Central New York.