Heart of a Patsy is an independent coming-of-age feature film inspired by the true story of my father, Todd Dean Patsy.
Set in Washington State during the 1980s, the film follows Todd, an undersized but fiercely determined high school wrestler chasing a state championship while everything outside the gym begins to change.
His parents are separating. His best friend is suddenly facing a life-threatening illness. He is falling in love for the first time. And the future everyone keeps asking him about is arriving faster than he is ready for.
At its heart, this isn't simply a wrestling movie.
It's about being young and believing that if you work hard enough, love hard enough, and fight hard enough, you can somehow keep everything you care about from changing.
A boy fights for everything he loves.
My father passed away in 2017.
For most of my life, I knew him simply as Dad. As I've gotten older, I've become increasingly interested in who he was before me—before adulthood, marriage, children, responsibilities, and all the things that eventually define us.
Who was my dad when he was just a kid trying to figure out his own life?
Heart of a Patsy grew from that question.
This film is my attempt to preserve a piece of him, but I don't want it to exist only as a personal tribute. I believe there is something universal in his story.
First love. Best friends. Parents who aren't perfect. The pressure to succeed. Discovering what you're good at. Realizing the people you love won't always be beside you.
Those experiences belong to all of us.
I want audiences to leave this film thinking about their own fathers, mothers, friends, first loves, hometowns and the people they used to be.
Heart of a Patsy combines the emotional intimacy of a coming-of-age film with the momentum and stakes of a sports drama.
Todd is small for a wrestler, but extraordinarily driven. His goal is clear: make weight, make it through Regionals, and earn his shot at a Washington State championship.
But wrestling becomes the framework for a much larger journey.
As Todd's home life fractures, his relationship with Julie grows, and his best friend Andy becomes seriously ill, the things Todd once thought he could control begin slipping away.
The mat becomes the one place where effort still seems to produce an answer.
Train harder.
Run farther.
Get stronger.
Keep fighting.
Eventually Todd has to learn that growing up isn't about preventing painful things from happening. It's about deciding who you're going to become when they do.
We believe Heart of a Patsy can reach several audiences at once.
It is a coming-of-age film for anyone who remembers the intensity of being young.
It is a sports film built around wrestling, discipline, competition and an underdog pursuing something seemingly beyond his reach.
It is a family drama about fathers, sons, divorce and learning that our parents are human.
It is a love story about the excitement and awkwardness of falling for someone for the first time.
And it is a period film, designed around the texture, music, clothing, cars, skateboarding, neighborhoods and visual character of 1980s Washington.
Most importantly, it is based on a real person and a real family.
That authenticity is something we intend to protect throughout production.
I want this movie to feel remembered rather than recreated.
Warm. Imperfect. Textured. Intimate.
The visual language of Heart of a Patsy is being developed around the feeling of old photographs, home movies and memories—images that become more valuable as the people inside them grow older.
Our goal is to photograph the film on motion-picture film if financing allows, preserving the organic texture that is fundamental to the story's identity.
Washington itself is also part of the film.
The neighborhoods, schools, wrestling gyms, roads, bridges, forests and small-town environments aren't simply backgrounds. They're part of Todd's world and part of the memory we're trying to preserve.
Heart of a Patsy is being developed as an independently financed feature film.
All funds allocated across cast, crew, equipment, locations, film stock and processing, post-production, marketing, festival launch and contingency.
We are pursuing a financing strategy that can combine crowd equity with additional private investment, strategic partnerships, sponsorship opportunities and other financing sources.
Rather than relying on a single gatekeeper to decide whether this movie gets made, we want to build a community around the film from its earliest stages.
That is why WeFunder is important to us.
This campaign isn't simply about raising capital.
It's about allowing people who believe in independent filmmaking, nostalgic coming-of-age stories and this particular story to become part of the journey with us.
Independent films shouldn't begin marketing after they're finished.
We intend to document and share the process of making Heart of a Patsy throughout development, financing, pre-production, production and post-production.
That includes the story behind the film, our filmmaking process, casting, location scouting, production design, 1980s research, wrestling preparation, behind-the-scenes material and ultimately the journey toward release.
The goal is to build an audience that has been following the movie long before its first screening.
Our crowdfunding and investor community becomes the foundation of that audience.
Our goal is to produce Heart of a Patsy as a professionally executed independent feature designed for both festival and commercial opportunities.
Following completion, we intend to pursue a strategic festival run while seeking distribution opportunities across theatrical, digital and streaming markets.
The film's Washington roots also create opportunities for regional screenings, community partnerships and grassroots audience building alongside the traditional festival and distribution path.
We are intentionally developing the project so that financing, production, marketing and audience development work together rather than operating as separate stages.
Jeremy Patsy — Writer / Director / Producer
I am a Los Angeles-based director and cinematographer with years of experience creating narrative films, music videos, commercial work and visual campaigns.
Heart of a Patsy will be my feature directorial debut and is the culmination of years of filmmaking experience and an even longer personal connection to this story.
Irtaza Qadeer — Award-Winning Cinematographer
Irtaza Qadeer will serve as Cinematographer on Heart of a Patsy, working closely with me to develop and execute the film's intimate, nostalgic visual language.
His experience and visual craftsmanship will be central to creating the textured, cinematic world of 1980s Washington and bringing Todd's story to the screen.
Mayon Denton — Lead Producer
Danny Sauceda — Producer / Physical Production
Eva Onyango — Producer / Development & Partnerships
Ester-Rose Elias — Producer / Campaign & Investor Development
Together, our team combines creative leadership, cinematography, feature-production experience, physical production, partnerships, campaign strategy and investor development—all centered around bringing Heart of a Patsy to the screen at the highest level possible.
Our goal isn't simply to raise money and make a movie.
We want to demonstrate a different path for independent filmmaking.
A filmmaker can develop a story, build an audience around it, invite that audience to participate financially, create the film independently and ultimately bring that film into the marketplace with an existing community already behind it.
If successful, Heart of a Patsy can become more than my first feature.
It can become proof that deeply personal independent films can still be financed and produced by filmmakers willing to build their audience from the ground up.
Film investment carries meaningful risk, and there is never a guarantee that an independent film will generate a financial return.
We're not interested in pretending otherwise.
What we can offer is a project being approached with intention: a defined story, a clear visual identity, an experienced and growing production team, a detailed production budget, an audience-building strategy and a filmmaker with a deeply personal reason to see the movie through.
Investing in Heart of a Patsy means participating in the creation of an independent feature from the beginning.
It means helping us preserve a true story while giving it the opportunity to reach audiences far beyond the family it began with.
And hopefully, years from now, we'll be able to look back at the people who believed in this movie early and say:
We made this together.
My dad never got to see me become the filmmaker I am today.
He never got to see the films I've directed, the sets I've walked onto, or the company and career I've been building.
But in a strange way, everything I've learned has brought me back to him.
I've spent years learning how to tell other people's stories.
Now I'm ready to tell his.
Heart of a Patsy is dedicated to Todd Dean Patsy.
Thank you for considering becoming part of it.
Jeremy Patsy
Writer / Director