1 of 5 | A group of performers dress as Pat in “We Are Pat,” on Peacock now. Photo courtesy of We Are Pat, LLC
LOS ANGELES, Aug. 21 (UPI) — Julia Sweeney said participating in the documentary We Are Pat, now streaming on Peacock, made her feel closer to the character she created on Saturday Night Live. Rowan Haber’s documentary explores the LGBTQ community’s reaction to her character.
“It’s Pat” was a recurring SNL sketch in which Sweeney played a character whose gender others could not determine. Haber’s documentary features interviews with gay, trans and nonbinary people discussing Pat’s impact in the ’90s and later.
In a recent Zoom interview with UPI, Sweeney said learning more about contemporary gender discussions only deepened her love of Pat. Pat was referred to as androgynous in the sketches from 1990 – 1993.
“I feel like I have a much deeper understanding of it, which makes me actually feel closer to Pat,” Sweeney said. “I didn’t include the nonbinary world that much in my thinking about playing a character that was going to be a comic character.”
The opportunity to connect with the LGBTQ community decades later made Sweeney both proud of the early representation she created, but aware that entertainment needs to make room for more LGBTQ voices.
“If it were now, I wouldn’t come up with a character like Pat,” she said. “I would think that’s not for me to come up with.”
Interview subjects discussed being called Pat by bullies, such as Abby McEnany with whom Sweeney costarred on the show Work in Progress. LGBTQ comedians also reclaim Pat with new sketches, for which Sweeney joins the writers’ room.
For Haber, learning how to discuss potentially controversial subjects cooperatively was a major achievement of We Are Pat.
“There are holistic lessons about how to talk about things even when you have different opinions, how to hear each other out and how to create meaning together,” Haber said. “We’re excavating this thing, this cultural phenomenon of the ’90s, and we’re looking at it and examining it together in current times and trying to reassign a meaning to it together.”
Haber says those sketches, portions of which are shown in the film, are included in the physical release from Video StoreAge. We Are Pat is also available for rent or purchase on digital video-on-demand retailers.
Still, the original SNL sketches were not mocking androgynous or nonbinary characters. The butts of the jokes were always the people obsessed with and uncomfortable about finding out Pat’s gender.
“My husband said, ‘If the world was enlightened, Pat wouldn’t be funny at all,'” Sweeney said.
In the film, Sweeney explains how she based the character on an office coworker she had before working full-time in the entertainment industry. The joke about Pat’s gender only came at the end of the first sketch.
“I just thought he had some mannerisms that were fun to copy,” Sweeney said of the colleague whom she does not know if he recognized himself in Pat. “He’s now passed away.”
The last Pat sketches with guest host Harvey Keitel and Pat singing “The Crying Game” were followed by It’s Pat: The Movie. Distributor Touchstone Pictures, a Walt Disney subsidiary, buried the film in only 33 theaters.
“Somebody new took over at Disney who didn’t like it,” Sweeney explained.
The studio released a 77-minute cut of the film which is the only version available. Sweeney recalls editing a different cut with co-writer Jim Emerson which was rejected.
“Harvey Keitel was in it,” Sweeney said. “He was actually really upset about getting cut out of it. It was really running into all kinds of problems.”
Unfortunately, Sweeney no longer has access to any of the material. Even if Pat fans demand an extended cut of the film, the material from 1994 may be lost.
“We kind of knew by then we were doing our cut that hardly anyone was going to see,” Sweeney said.
Sweeney donned the Pat costume again for We Are Pat. She thanks Haber for what has become a healing opportunity.
“It really brings me back to that whole time of my life when that was such a big part of my life,” Sweeney said. “Even though I loved Pat and was proud of it, because it was universally understood to be a bomb, I just felt like moving on.”
Haber discovered new things about Pat, too, and not just from Sweeney.
“I learned that Kurt Cobain loved Pat which is so fun,” he said. “K.D. Lang loves Pat, and Prince. I found out that Kate Berlant loves Pat. We didn’t get to interview her but she thinks Pat is hot so that’s cool.”
We Are Pat also allowed Sweeney to pass the torch to new Pats. The documentary shows other performers wear Pat costumes for their sketches. Haber hopes the Pat movement continues.
“I need to see people dressed up at Pat every day, otherwise it’s not successful to me,” Haber said. “We’re bringing it back. I’m going to start making thongs that say Pat on them and hopefully people will wear them.”
Sweeney said she was happy that to explore Pat today requires adaptation because society is more enlightened about gender fluidity. It gives her hope that anti-trans, anti-nonbinary sentiment will fade too.
“I guess you could say now we’re in the middle of a horrible backlash but that’s how it always is,” Sweeney said. “I really look forward to 10 years from now when I believe people will be like, ‘Yeah, that’s not even a big deal.'”
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