Susan Shelley: A Musical Life

Susan Shelley: A Musical Life
Genre	Documentary
Directed by	Rasa Ḑeşéy
Country of origin	Gylias
Original language(s)	English
No. of episodes	30
Release
Original network	GTV3
Original release	4 April – 13 May 2016

Susan Shelley: A Musical Life is a Gylian documentary which aired on GTV3 in 2016. Directed by Rasa Ḑeşéy, it stars Susan Shelley, who discusses her life and career.

Premise

The series features interviews with Susan Shelley, either sit-downs at Château Shelley or in a recording studio. Susan discusses her life, her musical career, and her philosophies on songwriting, arranging, and producing.

Symbolically, the first episode begins by showing Susan doing her beauty routine and getting dressed, representing "the process of becoming Ms. Shelley". The last episode ends with Susan reflecting on her career and describing her love of music and humanity. She concludes the series playfully: "And you, all you lovely people out there, I love you. You're wonderful people and it's been a blessing to be with you all. My sincerest apologies, but I must leave now. See you soon." She then walks off camera with a flourish.

Production

Susan as she appears in an episode of the documentary

Rasa Ḑeşéy had first met Susan Shelley while working on The Beaties Anthology. She was impressed by Susan's candid and elegant personality, and felt that Susan's "legendary reputation" did not do justice to said personality. Their paths crossed again in the future as Rasa interviewed Susan for The Band of 20th Century and Cowboy Bebop: The Documentary. Rasa decided one of her next projects would be a documentary on Susan's life, and resolved that it would take "as long as it needed" in order to cover all its facets.

Rasa began filming new footage with Susan in 2006, shortly after Susan's 80th birthday. The process lasted on and off for years. Usually, Rasa simply visited Susan at home and let her talk at length about the desired topics. Additional footage was filmed in Beat Studios, Palace of Sound, and other studios Susan had worked in, where she would go over the master tapes of projects she'd worked on and discuss them.

Rasa recalled working long hours on the project at times: "At one point, I would wake up early in the morning, go to Ms. Shelley's home at 8, and we'd just spend the whole day chatting. She'd treat us to lunch and tea and dinner and what have you, and then I'd leave about 10 in the evening, and I'd feel exhausted in the best way possible, because I knew that tomorrow, I'd get to do it all over again."

Rasa had decided from the beginning that the documentary would be "Ms. Shelley's life, in her own words." Accordingly, no other participants were interviewed. Susan helped Rasa by providing her collection of photographs and home movies. For completeness, she included footage that had already been used in The Beaties at Work, The Beaties Anthology, and The Band of 20th Century, in a different context. Production lasted so long that Rasa was able to use some of Susan's interview footage for the 2012 documentary Our Clothes.

The project ballooned to 30 episodes, making it Rasa's lengthiest documentary. When she expressed apprehension about its length, Susan reassured her: "Miss Ḑeşéy, we must give the people every last piece of me, for eternity's sake. If they complain it's too much to swallow, it just proves our success."

The documentary proved to be Susan's last on-screen appearance, as she died months after it aired, in December 2016.

Reception

Susan Shelley: A Musical Life was a critical success upon airing, and became one of GTV3's highest-viewed programmes. It was praised for giving prominence to Susan's elegance and serene personality, and for its comprehensiveness.

The series began to be uploaded to Proton TV during its run, and was released on DVD shortly after it finished airing.

The National Record praised the documentary as "a bounteous feast", and wrote: "Its greatest achievement is the effortless way it prompts the greatest producer that ever graced popular music to unload the contents of her mind for the public to pore over at their leisure."

Surface lauded the way the documentary captured Susan's personality: "With her unfaltering serenity, boundless generosity, admirable diplomacy, and undeniable love for music, Ms. Shelley proves one of the most uplifting role models one would hope for in life."

Gylias Review commented that "one of the great joys of the series is the way Ms. Shelley discusses all of her projects with equal solemnity", and further detailed: "Hearing Ms. Shelley talk about the novelty records and obscure film soundtracks she produced in the same breath and tone as her work with the Beaties is surreally amusing, but hearing her talk about scoring My Stepmother Is an Alien and The Magnificent Mademoiselles with the same care and enthusiasm is simply moving. Above all, one leaves with the impression that this is a woman who treats all of her projects as if they're her masterpieces."

Rasa herself would later identify it as one of her documentaries she is most proud of, saying: "It was a chance to spend several years inside Ms. Shelley's mind, which was a warm and lovely place to be." After Susan's death, she initially found the last scene "unbearably poignant", but then grew to marvel at it:

"It's quintessentially Ms. Shelley. She's basically telling us, 'I was a colossus who changed the face of Gylian music, but don't take it too seriously.' It's one of the things I loved about her — her ability to glide through life light as a feather, the way she never took herself too seriously while being utterly solemn about music, and how she managed to be quietly joyous while conducting herself with profound sincerity at all times. I don't know if we'll ever see anyone else build up such immense achievements while making it all seem effortless and graceful."