Film about tattoo artist Jonathan Shaw goes beyond ‘relationships with celebrities’, says director

The 25th edition of Rio Festival started on October 5th and ends next Sunday, the 15th. Films like Priscilla It is Poor Creatures are included in the event program. Now with the Brazilian flag, My Name Is Gal is part of the festival’s highlights, alongside Jonathan Saw: Tattoo Becomes Art.

Mariana Thome It is Lucas de Barros were responsible for telling part of the life of Jonathan Shaw, an important North American tattoo artist who shares stories with New York, Rio de Janeiro (where he lives) and several celebrities. The skins of JohnnyDepp, Iggy Pop It is Kate Mossfor example, are part of your resume.

The artist founded the oldest tattoo shop in the place where he was born — New York —, Fun City Tattoo. Furthermore, Shaw created the International Tattoo Artthe first magazine dedicated exclusively to tattoos, and had the help of Depp, Iggy Pop It is Jim Jarmusch to organize the Death Is Certain Club. After he retired, he still wrote books like Narcissa: Our Lady of Ashes (2008) and Scab Vendor: Confessions of a Tattoo Artist (2017).

Read the documentary’s synopsis:

Born with a silver spoon, son of a jazz musician Artie Shaw and the Hollywood star Doris Dowling, Jonathan Shaw His adolescence was marked by a revolt against his parents’ glamorous life and his mother’s extreme aversion to his alcoholism. After almost dying from a heroin overdose, hitchhiking from Los Angeles to Rio de Janeiro and learning from the best old school tattoo artists in America, Jonathan became the most sought after tattoo artist in New York. His Fun City Tattoo Studio opened in 1993, four years before tattooing was legal in Manhattan.

Who is Mariana Thomé

After developing projects for producers such as Conspiracy Movies, Amazon, Cine Latina Studio It is Anonymous Content, Thome currently working on a teen horror series alongside Jotagá Cremascreenwriter of 3%.

“In the world of documentaries, I was called to co-direct with the director Diogo Marques a feature-length documentary about the great Brazilian rock’n’roll photographer, Rui Mendes, which is in pre-production. Not to mention the independent projects that I develop with my company here in Santa Catarina,” he said. Mariana in a note sent to the press.

The doors of cinema were opened to the director after she gave up on a degree in History. She even produced the filming of the summer show Gerard Wayof My Chemical Romanceand won a competition to create a commercial for NASAin addition to recording video clips.

The idea of ​​making the documentary came as soon as Thome met his character when he intended to make a video about the launch of the new edition of Narcissa:Our Lady of Ashes: “When I arrived at the art deco building in Hollywood, where Jonathan lives in a penthouse, I came across a man with translucent blue glasses, dressed in torn clothes, with 20 silver chains around his neck, covered in tattoos and smoking a vape nonstop,” he said.

“If you think this image is already weird – peculiar – imagine my reaction when he looked at my face and started speaking in perfect Portuguese, full of slang? That’s how I knew there was a character definitely beyond the ‘photos with celebrities’ that you find when you type their name into Google.”

Jonathan Saw: Tattoo Becomes Art began filming in 2016, survived the pandemic and will be shown this Wednesday, 11th, on the program Rio Festival. The session will be attended by the Jonathan Shaw. The film will arrive as VOD (video on demand) in the United States in the first half of 2024.

In an interview with Rolling Stone Brazil, MarianaThome told how the documentary about Jonathan Shaw It was made based on his relationship with the tattoo artist. Check out:

Rolling Stone Brazil: Do you believe you made the documentary “more Brazilian” by including Rio de Janeiro in the narrative? Why?
Mariana Thomé: Of course! Rio de Janeiro is a key part of the documentary to understand the character Jonathan Shawand seeing a film about an American, no matter how much it explains the character’s connection with the country, seeing him in his house in Santa Teresa, surrounded by São Jorge, with his pirate flag flying on the roof, makes everything feel good more Brazilian.

Rolling Stone Brazil: How does your relationship with Jonathan Shaw became so close to the point where he shared his life in a documentary?
Mariana Thomé: The Jonathan is a character. When I met him, through the co-director Lucashe was releasing the second edition of the book NarcissaIt is Lucas He told me that he thought there was a story in that author. Right away I knew we had to make a documentary happen about the Jonathanbut something that went beyond his relationships with celebrities and a thousand anecdotes and found a key theme that makes him who he is — and in the research process, facilitated by the thousands of archive chests of Jonathan — we found it.

Rolling Stone Brazil: You talked about some difficulties you faced along the way in producing the documentary — such as the pandemic and authorization to use some songs. Were there personal limits that were difficult to overcome, conflicts of ideas, or any other obstacle of the sort?
Mariana Thomé: Certainly, making a biographical documentary about a person who is still alive is extremely difficult, at the same time as you have to remain firm with your authorial work, you have to learn to deal with the character you work with, your own life and work. Furthermore, there is anxiety in seeing a product that is constantly being changed, especially in the editing room, with “work-in-progress”, in moments where we, filmmakers, know how raw the work is, but, often , people are not able to understand that it is just a draft that is being created.

Rolling Stone Brazil: Do you feel that there were changes over the years in which the documentary was made that altered the direction of production?
Mariana Thomé: Certainly getting a producer attached to the film was something that increased our production budget and consequently opened up a range of creative opportunities for the film. The possibility of incorporating animation and motion graphics into the documentary was something that expanded the narrative, giving us the chance to play with moments in Jonathan’s life that are not captured in archive images, and create an aesthetic language for the film beyond the archives.

Rolling Stone Brazil: What was the process of organizing so much material like?
Mariana Thomé: Hard months of research at the house Jonathan in Los Angeles, where I spent at least three hours a day, three times a week, opening trunks that he left in the living room for me. This process lasted around six months. It was about opening, distinguishing what was mere accumulation (plumbers’ cards, scribbles notebook) with real archival jewels, like letters that his father exchanged with his mother, written on notebooks at the Savoy Hotel, in London. I first selected it, recorded it in high-quality photos and cataloged it in spreadsheets, demarcating what that archival piece was. In total, there were more than 2 thousand files cataloged by me.

Gala session tomorrow at @festivaldorio with the documentary @scabvendor that me and @MarianaThome we spent the last 8 years doing it. If you can, go there to watch and exchange ideas. pic.twitter.com/wKVGNyH3p3

— Lucas de Barros (@Che_Lucon) October 10, 2023

Rolling Stone Brazil: Was the theme of the documentary familiar to you in any way?
Mariana Thomé: I always joke that it feels like I spent my adolescence preparing for this documentary. Many parts of life Jonathan — such as his relationship with the counterculture of the 60s, his fascination with the case of Charles Manson, and his friendship with underground comic artists in San Francisco — these were always topics that interested me a lot. I even had fun scares when I discovered that, for example, your great friend Joe Coleman is the writer and illustrator of the pocket comic Bad blood, which I had on my bookshelf when I was 16. So this fascination with the time that Jonathan being part of so close was always something present in me.

Rolling Stone Brazil: How did you feel dealing with such big celebrities?
Mariana Thomé: Look, I was very nervous at first. Imagine that the first interview I recorded for the documentary and in my life was with the Iggy Pop in Cannes! At the same time, I felt very prepared, as I really made a point of carrying out intense research both with the Jonathan, as well as myself, tracing the character’s relationship with such celebrities through files and conversations. That’s how I managed to hear stories that even Jonathan I had already forgotten, and that I believe I managed to establish a good relationship as director and interviewer with them.