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Fest Phanatic Review
04/14/08
Fest Phanatic
Sailor Jerry
Philadelphia Weekly writer Matt Prigge blogs about the Philadelphia Film Festival and includes Hori Smoku Sailor Jerry as one of his top picks!
The Good
Thanks to Spellbound (which, like many evil trendsetters before it, is actually quite terrific), niche documentaries have adopted an increasingly tiresome template: meet the participants in the first half, watch them in some ultimately irrelevant competition in the second. So my hat is off to Erich Weiss’ Hori Smoku Sailor Jerry, a doc on the art of tattooing that’s strictly old school. Weiss explores the artform - all while making a strong case that it is an artform - through the tale of pioneer Norman “Sailor Jerry” Collins. The film’s gallery of aging tattoo icons - among them gravel-voiced Philadelphian Eddie Funk - relate a walking contradiction: On one hand Collins was a right-wing blowhard and bigot; on the other he was a man of culture and high artistic principles who helped bring elaborate Japanese designs to the States. It’s a transcendently salty experience and, more important, it only screens once. (9:30pm, Prince Music Theater)
