Plot

The year in the life story of Jamie Peebles, who transitions in real time. We filmed her confirmation surgery. She shares her suffering and her joys in personal and revelatory video diaries, inter-cut with Roger's cinema verite filming.

The Second Life of Jamie P is the story of Jamie Peebles, who always thought she was a man. At age 63 she realized "like a bolt of lightning" she's a woman. We follow her excruciating and wonderful transition for a year. This feature documentary is Jamie's personal, revelatory, hilarious, sometimes joyful, and always poignant story told through video diaries and intimate, cinema verité confessions to Roger, her friend of 40 years.—Roger Sherman

Until the moment Jamie Peebles, 63, a divorced father of two daughters, realized, "like a bolt of lightning," that she is a woman, she had completely blocked her misgendering. Only when she went into therapy did suppressed memories return. I followed Jamie's transition: emotional, dramatic, and sometimes hilarious for a year.

My camera is there at important milestones, such as her confirmation surgery. And, Jamie, a television engineer, records self-reflective video diaries, often wrenching, sometimes funny, "I've discovered a new problem, incontinence. You have to focus on keeping your bladder empty all time. I have one pad between me and sheer humiliation. I'll be standing in line somewhere and I'll go "Oopsie." Or Monty Python says, "I wet 'em."

At first it was all shock: Elaine, Jamie's ex-wife tells us, mystified: "The man I was married to for thirty years is a now a woman... I had to rethink my entire marriage." Her daughter Tina, mourns: "I lost my father... My children will never have a grandfather... I'm grieving." Angie, her older daughter, calls her father out for delivering this news via text. Later, she explains why her sister is so devastated. "Tina was always a daddy's girl and now she's lost her daddy." Jamie's brother Doug, once so close they were mistaken for twins, hasn't spoken to her for two years. My film is tightly focused on Jamie's life with her family and friends, doctors, and others who reveal their complex feelings.

Jamie's dysphoria is devastating: she can't look in the mirror without seeing a bald man from The Twilight Zone staring back at her. She suffers through dozens of hours of electrolysis treatments where "each zap feels like the electric chair." Then, as she lathers her face with numbing cream and covers it with Saran Wrap, laughing, she declares: "I think I look better like this. It's the ultimate moisturizer, it covers all my wrinkles."

This film shows the world a transition in real-time: heartfelt, emotional, revelatory, funny.