Trailer for TransFatty Lives which will be screening at the Hot Docs Film Festival.
Patrick O'Brien, aka TransFatty, is a New York City DJ, internet personality and filmmaker who spends his days drinking and making art films about perverts, vulnerable souls and Howard Johnson's restaurants. Until his legs start shaking. Diagnosed with ALS and given two to five years to live, O’Brien takes the news as “enlightenment by shotgun” and decides to document his disease progression. Shot over ten years, O’Brien is a filmmaker first and a subject second. Whether he’s directing a reaction shot to his tracheotomy or editing via eye movements on his computer, he is always the director—in charge of everything we see and how we see it. Without sentimentality, O’Brien captures the emotion, humour and absurdity of real life as he lives it and turns it into art. TransFatty Lives is a bold and sometimes brutal, engrossing and sometimes gross product of a unique freak hell-bent on sharing his truth.