Speaker 1: Oh is it show die?
Speaker 2: People say good money to see this movie.
Speaker 3: When they go out to a theater, they want cold sodas,
Speaker 3: hot popcorn, and no monsters in the protection booth.
Speaker 2: Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.
Speaker 1: Got it off.
Speaker 4: I think if I had told my ten year old
Speaker 4: self that thirty years later I'd been making a movie
Speaker 4: about Pat, I wouldn't have believed it. That's really good,
Speaker 4: but well, here I am surrounded by Pats. My obsession
Speaker 4: with Pat began in the early nineties on SNL. Pat
Speaker 4: was nerdy, chunky, wore a Western shirt, and was indecipherable
Speaker 4: as a man or a woman.
Speaker 3: Pat.
Speaker 1: Did you hear about our Halloween party?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, the guys are bringing liquor and the women will
Speaker 3: be bringing or durs, So you'll be bringing pep don'ts mall?
Speaker 4: And everyone was always trying to find out Pat's gender.
Speaker 4: That was the sketch, the whole sketch, and it lasted
Speaker 4: for over four years on Saturday Night Live and through
Speaker 4: one major motion picture, a draft of which was even
Speaker 4: written by Quentin Tarantino. My middle school friend and I
Speaker 4: used to watch It's Pat the movie over and over
Speaker 4: and over again. It was hilarious.
Speaker 1: I love to stroke your pussy cat.
Speaker 4: I know Maty likes it too. I'm flopped. Pat was
Speaker 4: left to rot in the annals of history, but not
Speaker 4: for me. Pat lingered somewhere in the back of my mind,
Speaker 4: dormant until twenty years an agender journey later, when I
Speaker 4: was out one night with friends, I went home and
Speaker 4: rewatched It's Pat in the movie. I still left my
Speaker 4: ass off, but this time I saw something totally different.
Speaker 4: I saw me.
Speaker 2: Hey, folks, welcome to a special episode of the Projection Booth.
Speaker 2: I'm your host, Mike White. On this episode, I'm talking
Speaker 2: with Rowan Haber. They are the director of the twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five documentary We Are Pat. Do you remember Pat?
Speaker 2: Remember that character from SNL kind of Questionable? Remember the
Speaker 2: movie with a screenplay pass by Quentin Tarantino. Yeah, we're
Speaker 2: talking about that, and we're talking about Roe's amazing documentary.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I had a great time with this film.
Speaker 2: I had a great time talking with Roe, and I
Speaker 2: hope you enjoyed this interview. Can you tell me kind
Speaker 2: of how you got your start.
Speaker 4: I went to NYU for film school quite some time ago,
Speaker 4: and immediately after film school I just started making documentaries
Speaker 4: because it was sort of like an easy way, like
Speaker 4: barrier of entry. Kind of it's not easy, but it was,
Speaker 4: you know, you can just get started, you can grab
Speaker 4: a camera, you can go make a film. So I
Speaker 4: met a very good friend of mine, Lauren Chaffey, who
Speaker 4: is now a big doc producer, and we made our
Speaker 4: first series called New Deep South, which is about queer
Speaker 4: life in Mississippi, and that was kind of like, really
Speaker 4: how I got started in the doc space, So pretty
Speaker 4: traditional beginning, but then have continued to do documentary and
Speaker 4: narrative work and commercial work since then.
Speaker 2: When it comes to documentaries, how do you choose your subjects?
Speaker 2: Or do your subjects choose you?
Speaker 4: They definitely choose me. I definitely. Pat was not something
Speaker 4: that I had on my mind to make a film about.
Speaker 4: But in order to make a good doc you kind
Speaker 4: of have to have a It's you know, it's like
Speaker 4: having like a thesis statement in an essay. You just
Speaker 4: have to have sort of like a sticky question that
Speaker 4: you feel like you can actually unpack and explore, like
Speaker 4: in a meaningful way. And I felt like Pat was
Speaker 4: a really good entry point in to like a lot
Speaker 4: of larger questions, like sort of philosophical questions about art,
Speaker 4: about how our ages, about gender, about like historical contexts.
Speaker 4: So it felt like be a lot there.
Speaker 2: You remember that moment when you said to yourself, Okay,
Speaker 2: I do need to make this documentary, There was enough
Speaker 2: to kind of tip those scales for you.
Speaker 4: I was at a dinner, I think in the film,
Speaker 4: I don't say it quite as specifically, but I was
Speaker 4: at a sundance dinner. I was at this like funny
Speaker 4: steakhouse in Burbank, and we're all joking about nineties movies
Speaker 4: that should never be remade, and suddenly like Pat popped
Speaker 4: into my mind and I was like, I want to
Speaker 4: remake its Pat. So then I went home and rewatched
Speaker 4: It's Pat the movie with like my middle school best
Speaker 4: friend who I had originally watched Pat with. And I
Speaker 4: honestly think it was in the rewatching of It's Pat
Speaker 4: in the movie that I felt, yeah, like that a
Speaker 4: documentary has to be made on this, because It's Pat
Speaker 4: in the movie is so it's kind of like so
Speaker 4: screwball and so wild and so good in certain ways
Speaker 4: that I just felt like Julia was so prescient about
Speaker 4: these conversations about gender that we were going to be having.
Speaker 4: It's just that she didn't really know that that's what
Speaker 4: she was getting at. So I kind of felt like, yeah,
Speaker 4: like when you find a piece of art in a
Speaker 4: way that is weirdly ahead of its time, you know,
Speaker 4: despite being kind of also behind in certain ways, Like
Speaker 4: it's just it's a unique piece, you know, And I
Speaker 4: felt in that moment that there was a lot to explore.
Speaker 2: I can tell me a little bit about your process
Speaker 2: as far as deciding who you're going to talk to,
Speaker 2: or making a list maybe of who you want to
Speaker 2: talk to, and just like setting up the logistics of this,
Speaker 2: because it seems like this was a massive project.
Speaker 4: I knew that I wanted to talk to Julie, so
Speaker 4: she was sort of number one, But early on I
Speaker 4: also knew that I wanted to speak with sort of
Speaker 4: cultural figures and comments, so I started with people that
Speaker 4: I knew. Joey Solloway was a sort of early interview
Speaker 4: because I knew Joey. James Tom was early on my
Speaker 4: list because I've known James for a long time. I
Speaker 4: pre interviewed Lyndon Crawford, who is not in the film
Speaker 4: so much but was like a really formative in the
Speaker 4: way that I thought about the film. So I just
Speaker 4: kind of at first reached out to people that I
Speaker 4: was familiar with, and then honestly with the comics. It
Speaker 4: was really fun because how I found them was that
Speaker 4: I just went to a whole bunch of comedy shows.
Speaker 4: So I was in New York and like, there's a
Speaker 4: show called Tea for Tea, which is just a trans
Speaker 4: comedy show, and I went there and was like kind
Speaker 4: of was scouting who I thought was funny. And after that,
Speaker 4: those were the comics that I hit up to discuss
Speaker 4: the film.
Speaker 2: How did you approach Julia Sweeney yourself?
Speaker 4: I reached out, like I think I just sent her
Speaker 4: like a cold email, because I think on her website
Speaker 4: there was like a contact me thing, so and then
Speaker 4: the second she didn't get back to me, and then
Speaker 4: I knew someone who was like in the same book
Speaker 4: club as she was, so I was like, oh this
Speaker 4: is I was like, I'll go through the book club,
Speaker 4: but that person wasn't really comfortable like approaching her, so
Speaker 4: then we just sort of went the traditional route and
Speaker 4: went through her reps and then that's how she responded.
Speaker 2: Feels like this is a real kind of reckoning for
Speaker 2: her as well, just like how this character I created,
Speaker 2: how do they play now? How was it conceived? You know,
Speaker 2: just even some of that was like a reaction to
Speaker 2: all the boys have characters, but I don't have a character.
Speaker 4: Juliae and I like to joke that this was like
Speaker 4: the most expensive couple years of therapy that's ever existed,
Speaker 4: you know, so for both of us, because I think
Speaker 4: it's for her, it was sort of like unpacking this
Speaker 4: character that has kind of come to represent her legacy,
Speaker 4: at least in the comedy space. And for me it
Speaker 4: was just about, yeah, like a childhood obsession that sort
Speaker 4: of became indicative of a lot of other things that
Speaker 4: I was thinking about in my life.
Speaker 2: Did your opinions and perceptions change as you were making this?
Speaker 4: I think one of the big takeaways in the film
Speaker 4: that I think is so meaningful was just kind of like,
Speaker 4: you know, how Julia was influenced to make pat because
Speaker 4: of the way that her the sort of gender pressure
Speaker 4: that she experienced from her mom, And that was like,
Speaker 4: that was definitely a piece of information that I was
Speaker 4: not I didn't go in expecting that, you know, I
Speaker 4: definitely expecting, like, oh, we get all this fun Pat lore,
Speaker 4: you know, but the fact that Pat in a way,
Speaker 4: like you know, the fixation with gender around Pat, I
Speaker 4: think also came from like a gendered oppression that she
Speaker 4: was facing. And then the whole thing about like the
Speaker 4: SNL writer's room being so male dominated and kind of
Speaker 4: her just trying to like get this character on that
Speaker 4: weirdly like couldn't even be female because that wasn't even
Speaker 4: going to work in that space. So I think those
Speaker 4: were those were definitely some interesting two bits of information
Speaker 4: that I wasn't expecting when I came in. But in
Speaker 4: terms of my my affinity for Pat didn't really change.
Speaker 4: Maybe it grew, you know, kind of came in like
Speaker 4: having an affinity for Pat and came out with like
Speaker 4: a more nuanced perspective on that, but still loving that.
Speaker 2: I have to admit that I was never a big
Speaker 2: Pat fan when I was watching the show, just because
Speaker 2: of the drooling and hand thing just creep me the
Speaker 2: fuck out. It wasn't the gender. And yeah, obviously I'm
Speaker 2: not nearly as enlightened as you know, I'm more enlightened
Speaker 2: now than I wanted all those years ago when I
Speaker 2: was watching about it was just the hand thing, and
Speaker 2: I'm so glad that you actually addressed that in the film.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean that's something that I actually wish we
Speaker 4: had time to go into more. And that's you know,
Speaker 4: if I had more time, I would have loved to
Speaker 4: because I think, yeah, like I think, look, the nineties
Speaker 4: were a different time. We were not talking about neurodivergence
Speaker 4: and and that and disability in the same way, which
Speaker 4: is I'm not saying that we're we've become very enlightened
Speaker 4: on it now, but I think we have more language
Speaker 4: around that. So I think, you know, Pat is not
Speaker 4: only like sort of patten Away was like Julia just
Speaker 4: trying to do weird, right, And what does weird mean.
Speaker 4: Weird means like gender nonconforming, weird means, neurodivergent, Weird means
Speaker 4: you know, like being chunky, Weird means you know, like
Speaker 4: all of these different things. So I think she just
Speaker 4: sort of put together these ideas of what undesirable meant.
Speaker 4: And so a piece of that was this like neurodivergent piece,
Speaker 4: you know, and we also talk about size ism, you know,
Speaker 4: in the film. It's like, so I think she was
Speaker 4: just sort of playing in those waters. And that's not
Speaker 4: to excuse her, but I do think that, like I
Speaker 4: don't know, like when I look back on all the
Speaker 4: sketches that were on SNL at the time, they were
Speaker 4: all really offensive, you know, and pretty much all of them.
Speaker 4: Like I had to, like, NBC is taking down a
Speaker 4: lot of the original Pat sketches, probably because they were offensive.
Speaker 4: So I had to go on the way back machine
Speaker 4: to like pull the full episodes of SNL, you know,
Speaker 4: down from the Internet. And as I was like looking
Speaker 4: for just the Pat sketches, I would watch the other sketches.
Speaker 4: And so there was a sketch that came before the
Speaker 4: Pat sketches that literally was called stock Talk, and it
Speaker 4: was like like male stalkers like exchanging tips about how
Speaker 4: to stock women. And I was like, this is so
Speaker 4: much more offensive than the PAT sketches, you know what
Speaker 4: I mean. We're not even talking about race, like I mean,
Speaker 4: it's just like they're all offensive. So it's like it
Speaker 4: is it was important for me to unlock, you know,
Speaker 4: to discuss like the pieces of Pat that made Pat problematic,
Speaker 4: and I think, like I said, I feel like we
Speaker 4: could have gone into that even more. But yes, it's
Speaker 4: definitely like the nerd diversion piece is like a big
Speaker 4: part of pat that that I think we would reconsider
Speaker 4: if we were making Fat. Now.
Speaker 2: I see you in the documentary a lot. I mean,
Speaker 2: not just as a talking hand, but like participating with
Speaker 2: group discussions and stuff. Can you tell me about your crew,
Speaker 2: Like how many people are there shooting and recording all this?
Speaker 4: I don't know how many people? I think it really
Speaker 4: It definitely varied, like we had a smaller crew for
Speaker 4: sort of just the interview parts, and then a larger
Speaker 4: crew obviously for the for the recreations because we had
Speaker 4: to like make the sets and you know, that was
Speaker 4: like a sort of bigger couple days on the stage.
Speaker 4: But generally I would say, you know, maybe like a
Speaker 4: twelve person crew or something like for interviews and stuff,
Speaker 4: still a bit of a crew because we you know,
Speaker 4: we have to set up the backdrops and light it
Speaker 4: and you know all that. But we had, honestly, we
Speaker 4: had such a great crew, and we tried to get
Speaker 4: I think naturally, I just tend to work with like
Speaker 4: a lot of like queer people and people of color
Speaker 4: and women, and I always hire female dps and you know,
Speaker 4: it's that was no different like for this set, and
Speaker 4: it was a really special set.
Speaker 2: How long did it take you to actually put this together?
Speaker 4: The entire process sort of from idiation to like premiering
Speaker 4: was about five years.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 4: And the reason that it sort of took that long
Speaker 4: really I think a because I started during the pandemic,
Speaker 4: so that was kind of like a rough time for
Speaker 4: production anyway. But be it was really the financing, Like
Speaker 4: financing was what takes the longest to put together, I think,
Speaker 4: or at least it did for us. So the filming
Speaker 4: was not it's that that didn't take like a particularly
Speaker 4: long time because we were you know, it was like
Speaker 4: a lot of interviews and then there was some verite
Speaker 4: but mostly and a lot of ar chibal. So it's
Speaker 4: really the filming I think probably was over like two
Speaker 4: years maybe or something. And the edit, of course, you know,
Speaker 4: took like about a year.
Speaker 2: So, well, what were you able to accomplish during the pandemic?
Speaker 4: We shot the initial sizzle during the pandemic, so we
Speaker 4: shot sort of like a sizzle reel that we used
Speaker 4: to then go get funding. We shot a lot of
Speaker 4: the initial interviews, we shot some of the people dressing
Speaker 4: up as Pat and like running around stuff like the beach,
Speaker 4: you know, people dressing him his Pat and running around
Speaker 4: the beach, running through the streets of la Which is
Speaker 4: actually really funny because when we recently like dropped our trailer,
Speaker 4: someone commented in the comments action they were like, you know,
Speaker 4: a couple years ago, I saw like a whole bunch
Speaker 4: of Pats running around the streets, and I was like, yeah,
Speaker 4: that was us. That was definitely us, Like it was
Speaker 4: not anyone else. So you know, it's we did. We
Speaker 4: did kind of quite a bit during the pandemic, but
Speaker 4: then we went into sort of like principal photography more like,
Speaker 4: you know, past the pandemic.
Speaker 2: And obviously so much work on documentaries is done during
Speaker 2: that post process, during the editing phase. Can you tell
Speaker 2: me a little bit about how that was and who
Speaker 2: you worked with for that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, definitely. So I was really lucky to work with
Speaker 4: like two incredible editors. Our main editor is Hannah Buck,
Speaker 4: who does a lot of she does a lot of
Speaker 4: pop culture docs. She works with Penny Lane, who is
Speaker 4: another documentary director who does comedy. She's like Hail Satan
Speaker 4: and she's very funny. So Hannah is kind of like
Speaker 4: a structure queen. You know, she's very very good at structure,
Speaker 4: which was important for this because we're putting together a
Speaker 4: lot of elements. Hannah is based in Australia, so we
Speaker 4: would work remotely, which was you know, interesting in itself.
Speaker 4: With her, we really worked on dialing in kind of
Speaker 4: the form of the film and how we were gonna
Speaker 4: put together the elements of like you know, interviews, writers room,
Speaker 4: the sketches, archival. You know, there was just a lot
Speaker 4: to put together. And then our finishing editor was Alex Bose,
Speaker 4: who is based in la and he's just so wonderful,
Speaker 4: has so much heart, has like an amazing aesthetic eye,
Speaker 4: and so with him we really we did some a
Speaker 4: little bit of restructuring, and then we also really dialed in,
Speaker 4: i would say, the aesthetics with them. They were both amazing.
Speaker 2: Did you work with folks to get feedback on things
Speaker 2: and kind of help shape it that last little bit.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we did do a couple of feedback screenings with
Speaker 4: some like trusted friends, and that was really helpful because originally,
Speaker 4: like in one of the earlier screens, we had the
Speaker 4: full sketches in and we just felt like it was
Speaker 4: running too long based on the feedback that we got,
Speaker 4: so then we we cut them up, so it's you know, yeah,
Speaker 4: we definitely took me back into consideration.
Speaker 2: I was also curious about you yourself as you're going
Speaker 2: through this whole process, like what were some of the
Speaker 2: more surprising things that you found while you're doing your
Speaker 2: research and putting this together.
Speaker 4: One funny bit of trivia that I think is like
Speaker 4: interesting is that in Its Pat the movie, like the
Speaker 4: band that plays is Ween, which is, you know, a
Speaker 4: band that I really liked when I was a kid.
Speaker 4: That's actually how I found Pat was that I really
Speaker 4: was obsessed with Ween and then so I saw It's
Speaker 4: Pat the movie because it was like Ween is in
Speaker 4: this movie, and then I became obsessed with Pat. But
Speaker 4: the band that was originally supposed to play was Nirvana.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And because Julia had met Nirvana because Kurt Cobain
Speaker 4: actually loved Pat, which is kind of crazy, like Julia
Speaker 4: met Kurt Cobain and Nirvana like on SNL because they
Speaker 4: were playing they were the musical act in one of
Speaker 4: the shows. So they were supposed to be in Its
Speaker 4: Pat in the movie, and then I think they like
Speaker 4: had to tour or something happens and then they got
Speaker 4: Ween instead, which I thought was like a really funny
Speaker 4: piece of trivia. So definitely found that out. Yeah, I
Speaker 4: would say, that's like a funny piece of trivia. Oh
Speaker 4: so there's like a really funny interview with Quentin Tarantino
Speaker 4: and up like this nineteen ninety three Playboy about Pat
Speaker 4: that I thought was like a very funny like piece
Speaker 4: of ephemera that I thought that I really enjoyed finding.
Speaker 2: So yeah, And it's so fascinating to me that you
Speaker 2: found Pat through the movie rather than television, because I
Speaker 2: think you're probably younger than I am. So I was
Speaker 2: watching those snls while they're playing how old were you
Speaker 2: when you saw It's Pat the movie for the first time?
Speaker 4: I think I was maybe like twelve, So yeah, I was.
Speaker 4: I wasn't watching, I wasn't watching sketches in real time.
Speaker 4: I was watching the movie. Really was what I found,
Speaker 4: And maybe that's even why I liked Pat so much,
Speaker 4: was that I think Pat in the movie has like
Speaker 4: more of a character arc, you know. So really I
Speaker 4: became obsessed with the film, and then I didn't see
Speaker 4: the sketches until later.
Speaker 2: It's amazing to me because I were remember I don't
Speaker 2: know maybe two three of the sketches I remember I
Speaker 2: think Dana Carvey played at significant other Chris, I want
Speaker 2: to say, yes, I didn't know the breath of those
Speaker 2: and just all of the do you go in this room?
Speaker 2: Or this was like how often can you stretch out
Speaker 2: this joke?
Speaker 4: It's crazy to me because if you look at how
Speaker 4: long the sketches last on SML, pat was a very
Speaker 4: you know, successful sketch, like it lasted for four years,
Speaker 4: so that's pretty wild. And then it had like a
Speaker 4: film spinoff, which was the model back then, but like nonetheless,
Speaker 4: it obviously had to do extremely well to then be
Speaker 4: spun off into a movie. So yeah, it's amazing how
Speaker 4: how far that joke went.
Speaker 2: As we are talking, have you had your premiere yet?
Speaker 4: So we premiered at Tribeca a year ago, and then
Speaker 4: we did the festival circuit for about a year, and
Speaker 4: then we did we're doing a theatrical run right now.
Speaker 4: So we just had a week long run in New
Speaker 4: York at DCTV. We're going to to be at Vidiots
Speaker 4: in Los Angeles on June twenty eighth, which will be
Speaker 4: really like a big, wonderful screening. And we're also in
Speaker 4: like a bunch of different places, so I folks want
Speaker 4: to go on to our website. We are pat dot com.
Speaker 2: Fantastic bro. Thank you so much for your time. This
Speaker 2: is such a pleasure talking about Oh.
Speaker 4: It's my pleasure. I think so much, Mike.
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