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Rick Rubin Is Basically Jack Handey Now, Video Suggests

Rick Rubin

Rick Rubin doesn’t often sit down for video interviews, so it’s worth watching luxury brand website Nowness‘ new short film (via TwentyFourBit) starring and narrated by the producer and record executive. Director Alison Chernick captures some visually impressive footage of the famously bearded studio guru and the gorgeous cliffs outside his Malibu home. Rubin serenely whispers observations about meditation and the relationship between music and nature, and his comments sound at once sincere and potentially resonant, if you’re of a new-agier persuasion. Nor are we ones who would ever scoff at meditation, whose benefits have been proclaimed by all from George Harrison and David Lynch to, just recently, Jerry Seinfeld. But somewhere between the Def Jam co-founder comparing his musical goals to those of a rainstorm and instructing us, “Let’s listen to the silence,” we found it difficult not to think of Jack Handey’s “Deep Thoughts” Saturday Night Live segments (also, was Rubin really delivered by his pediatrician? That’d be unusual, considering obstetricians usually do that, but we’ll have to ask his mother). Enjoy the silence.