Coulter Jacobs: A Worthy Film of Joy and Art By Josh Roossin
To pull from some abstract musing nothingness and bestow upon the world and thyself a piece of art is the most joyful form of neuroses.
Something we know well; something we’ve seen in others; something we see in Coulter.
Coulter Jacobs, a new documentary created, shot, and directed by Josh Roossin tracking the artistic processes and everyday life of renowned LA multi-medium artist Coulter Jacobs is premiering at Braindead Studios tomorrow night (Thursday, March 7th, 2024). The aptly-named documentary is an excellently-measured, sincere, interesting but unpretentious look into the daily life and creative process of Jacobs, from tattooing to brush on canvas to repairing Los Angeles’ vital infrastructure.
With guest appearances and interviews with other talents like Nathan Kostechko, Sofia Heftersmith, and many others all narrating Jacobs’ moves from the tattoo community to the Long Beach Museum of Art, Coulter Jacobs is a necessary watch for the LA tattoo community and the average art fan. Unfortunately for you, the premier has been sold out for some time. Fortunately for you, we interviewed Josh Roossin a month ago in preparation.
How’d this begin?
This started as just a passion project. There was no editorial piece, no interviews with Coulter at that time. I started this at such an early stage in my career, it’s kind of insane that it worked out. I just reached out to one of my favorite artists and was like, ‘hey can I do a small five minute video on you?’ I had a couple of friends that knew Jake so I had something of an in with him, but I wasn’t confident he’d be interested.
How does one begin to just make a documentary? It seems a bit more daunting than you’re letting on.
I think it’s just about baby steps. I never went into this being like, ‘I’m going to make a documentary and have a premier…’ For this project, it was more about starting really small and working my way up, filming more things, forming a story over time. In regards to making a documentary I never really saw that in the cards for myself. I just started really small and followed whims and went from there.
You’re a bit of a one man army. How’d you start in on the documentary directing/shooting/editing/creating from a technical stand point?
I’m still so early in my career and have so much to learn but I’ve come from the DIY mentality of making skate videos with my friends. I’ll point the camera, edit it, and we will upload it sort of thing. I interned at What Youth in the video department in 2016 where I learned a little about editing videos with dialogue and that’s where I met Michael Cukr who really changed the trajectory of my life in the video world. He’s given me guidance ever since and I still annoy him everyday with questions. He’s also one of my favorite filmmakers and an amazing person so I feel super lucky to consider him a friend.
I was making these day in the life videos with my friends for fun around 2021 and they were inspiring me a lot. They were super amateur, shot on my dad’s dslr camera and an iPhone lavalier mic, but I was just so stoked to tell my friends’ stories and capture a moment in time.
I kept doing that for a year or so and when I got a slightly nicer camera Michael Cukr was like “Hey you’re getting better I’ll refer you to do some work I’m too busy to take on” or something along those lines. A couple weeks later he’s showing me how to use wireless lav mics in his living room the day before I fly out to meet up with Louie Barletta to film these day in the life videos on the Enjoi ams for Jenkem mag. I guess Louie liked the videos I made for the series and invited me to come on a 16 day skate trip with the Enjoi team. He said to just “make whatever”. I was tripping. I didn't really know how to organize or document something at that scale but ended up making profiles on each skater and the meaning behind the trip and kind of a reflective look on the company's history. It was a little over 30 minutes long and I was like “I guess this is a documentary?”.
That counts as a doc.
It’s funny though because before even filming that enjoi project, I already started filming for the Coulter Jacobs project. Some footage in this is from me holding my new camera for the first time like freaking out if i'm even getting the shot or if it’s shaking like crazy. Just panicking like “I hope I'm not blowing this interview with my favorite artist.” I guess making that enjoi documentary gave me the confidence that I could make something that’s a little longer and expansive than a day in the life video.
How long have you been working on this? What’s your turnaround time like?
This project has been a slow burn the past two years but I got to apply technical things I learned from working on other projects over the past years to this piece, making it exciting and emotionally taxing because I’d learn something on one project and be like, ‘shit I need to now tweak this section on the coulter project.’
What drew you to Coulter’s Work?
My old roommate and friend, Johnny Ness (who is also interviewed in the documentary) was friends with him and I remember him bringing a book of Coulter’s poems to our house in 2021. It was a self published book of poems with a panther on the front and I was like “who made this?” That’s I think where I saw the name Coulter Jacobs first, and when I looked him up on Instagram I was blown away by his artwork. It spoke to me a lot. His paintings felt timeless and honest and had a lot of influence and imagery of things I like; traditional tattoo imagery, old Hollywood / film noir detective stuff, abstract influence. Also his captions on his posts were very vulnerable and personal and I admired that a lot. When I saw that he worked for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power I thought it was rad he lived this life most of the time that was so opposite of painting and writing poetry.
There are a lot of legendary names involved. How did you bring in the rest of the cast?
When it started, Jake was like, ‘how far do you want to take this? I have friends that might want to be involved if you want to meet up with them,’ and it was people like Nathan Kostechko and Chad Koeplinger, and I’ve admired their work for so long. It was unbelievable getting to tell Coulter’s story while incorporating some of my other favorite artists. It was great. Jake was like, ‘we have no deadline so we can do whatever you want, I’ll reach out to them, use them as you want to,’ so I just went for all of them and tried to see how far I could take it.
What would you want someone to take away from this documentary?
Everyone will interpret things differently, that’s just the way it works... but Jake is my favorite artist and I feel lucky to just tell his story. I wanted to show the world the way I got to know him; a hardworking artist with a deep passion for his craft and a giant heart. He really doesn't try to sell people on anything he isn’t . He just makes the work because he’s in love with the process, no real other agenda.
