THOM DEVITA: Malone said you should tattoo with a Singer
sewing machine if you know how to tattoo.
So I tell that to Nick--
you probably don't even remember this--
and Nick said, but they're so heavy.
Do you remember that?
NICK BUBASH: I don't remember anything.
I can remember the little things, but
that's in that article.
She wrote that in that article.
THOM DEVITA: Oh, is that the one?
Oh, it was that girl?
NICK BUBASH: She called you up and interviewed you.
THOM DEVITA: No, she didn't interview me.
NICK BUBASH: On the phone?
THOM DEVITA: No, it was an intervisit.
NICK BUBASH: Did she come up here?
THOM DEVITA: It was an intervisit.
NICK BUBASH: OK, an intervisit.
THOM DEVITA: Because I don't give interviews.
NICK BUBASH: This is not an interview.
JOHN WYATT: When they meet Thom, they will realize
they've never met anybody like him before.
He's probably the most different person, without
trying to be different, of anybody I've ever met.
ROBERT RYAN: I was a deVita devotee from the beginning.
It just unlocked this whole world that I was already
totally into of the lower-East Side of New York.
There was just this creative energy there that I think
Thom's work definitely emanates.
SCOTT HARRISON: He does what he's inspired
to do at the moment.
He observes and he thinks carefully about what he sees
and he develops his own take on it.
-He wasn't just a tattoo artist, he was
an artist who tattooed.
-You know, it was all one big ball of wax with him.
Everything he did was art--
the way he lived, the way he talked, the way he thought,
what he did, where he went.
The tattoos were just as important as the floor.
THOM DEVITA: If I said I was an artist, then
I'd be shaming artists.
[INAUDIBLE].
Want to see 100 of them?
-Sure.
THOM DEVITA: When you see color in my work, that means
it didn't work in black and I had to color it.
ED HARDY: Just his perceptions are so completely unique.
And all these years we've been trying to get the high art
world to recognize him.
And he's just so out there they just didn't know
where to place it.
They didn't know what to do with it.
CLAYTON PATTERSON: deVita's actually extremely important.
Nobody gets it.
But that's the mistake, because if you don't save that
person's history it doesn't exist.
THOM DEVITA: And I stopped going to tattoo
shops after a year.
Every shop I went in, I'd tell them I'm deVita.
And they never heard of deVita.
You walk out like you're an idiot, you know?
Who the hell is deVita?
-And now they're honored to have you.
THOM DEVITA: No, let me finish.
You'll have to go in with the camera.
CLAYTON PATTERSON: Yeah, I know.
THOM DEVITA: I like photography.
-You hate filmmakers?
-Who is the cameraman representing?
THOM DEVITA: I don't know.
He just walked in.
No, he's doing something on me.
-We're doing a documentary about Thom.
-Who is the video-- the documentary?
-It's for Vice.
-So are you a part of Vice, Thom?
THOM DEVITA: Vice squad?
-Yeah.
THOM DEVITA: No, in New York City the vice squad were the
police who arrested prostitutes and [INAUDIBLE] of
vice.
-Oh, that goes way back.
I see what you're saying.
Not vice.
All right, yeah.