We Are Pat

Many iconic Saturday Night Live characters made the leap to the big screen in the 1990s: Mary Katherine Gallagher, the Roxbury Guys, Wayne and Garth, and, of course, Pat. These films are unmistakably products of their time, but We Are Pat confronts the aging of comedy head-on.

We Are Pat explores the evolution of gender identity and comedy from the ’90s to the present day through the lens of the iconic Saturday Night Live sketch, It’s Pat. The film examines Pat’s origins as a joke rooted in the cultural anxiety of the ’90s while drawing striking parallels to today’s culture wars. To work through its findings, trans and non-binary comedians and culture-makers reimagine the original Pat sketches, using camp and humour in an attempt to reclaim the iconic character. Through these reinterpretations, alongside interviews with Julia Sweeney herself, the film ultimately asks: is Pat worth saving?