A lot of people say, “What’s that?” It’s Pat!
A lot of people ask, “Who’s he? Or she?”
A ma’am or a sir, accept him or her
or whatever it might be.
It’s time for androgyny.
Here comes Pat!– Lyrics to for Saturday Night Live sketch “It’s Pat.”
Saturday Night Live just wrapped its 50th season and it’s fairly easy to say that their influence is widespread. Though each season has its favorites and most audiences will proclaim “it’s never been as funny as it was [a period when that individual was part of the target audience],” there’s no arguing about the singular characters that have developed longevity regardless of origination. Land shark, Roseanne Roseannadanna, Gumby, The Church Lady, The Coneheads, Wayne and Garth, Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer, Stefan, Debbie Downer, and so many others remain a part of the cultural lexicon. But should they remain? Is there a point at which the humor that they incorporate is passé or, perhaps, have never been hip to begin with? This is the crux of filmmaker Rowan Haber’s We Are Pat, a documentary having its world premiere in the Spotlight+ section of Tribeca Film Festival 2025 and which examines the influence and reach of Julia Sweeney’s own original character, pondering whether or not what was could be reborn without the gender panic.
December 1st, 1990, Julia Sweeney debuted Pat, an androgynous figure whom would perplex their fellow scene partners as endless jokes tried to nail down whether Pat was a man or a woman. Inspired partially by a former coworker Sweeney found weird, Pat would be the center of every sketch they appeared in, everyone always making Pat’s gender their business while Pat would, for the most part, go about their life oblivious to everyone’s rising frustrations. As We Are Pat points out, the internal uncertainty struck one character (portrayed by guest host Christopher Walken) so hard that they committed suicide in order to be relieved of their all-consuming terror of unknowing. One interpretation of things is that Pat is so possessed of self-confidence that they are unaware of on-lookers’ insecurities and mounting obsession with what’s between their legs, therefore, we laugh at everyone elses’ anxieties. Another, though, is that Pat themselves is the butt of the jokes, poked, prodded, and placed into repeated situations in which their gender is all that people care about and want to know about, despite the fact that Pat’s gender should only matter to themselves and their prospective partners. As a self-professed fan of Pat, Haber seeks to interrogate the thing they love, bringing in several trans and non-binary individuals to inspect, explore, and debate the merits of the character, the sketches, the 1994 feature-length film, and the character’s legacy. What Haber offers the audience is a story of self-love that acknowledges multiple truths can co-exist, even if they seem at odds with one another.
A still from WE ARE PAT. Photo courtesy of Museum & Crane/Tribeca Film Festival 2025.
Haber does a couple of fascinating things that keep their preoccupation with Pat at the center of the story while also widening the focus toward other perspectives, historical and anecdotal. To accomplish this, Haber utilizes a mixture of standard talking head interviews which are then cross-cut either with performance footage from one of the Pat properties or of the interviewee on stage (most are artists of some kind) or of a select few who gather as part of a writers’ room to reconfigure Pat for today. With comedy as their tool, the collection of individuals working with Haber dissect Pat and the surrounding sketches. They open up several sequences to ask why they were perceived as funny, sometimes comparing their own experiences of gender panic to highlight just why one sequence may work as is, but another may actually be a nightmare scenario. They take out lines of dialogue, hold them up to the light, and see whether they transcend time or should be left in the ‘90s. They scrutinize the costume and the physical performance which create Pat, calling into question whether the character is merely a revised individual that Sweeney once knew or if Pat could be viewed as autistic-coded and what this new information might mean now relative to how those traits were perceived back then. Each time that something is celebrated, there’s another thing that raises caution (Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994) being a prime example), which might lead one to think that Pat is a relic that should be left alone, except that the perspective of the storyteller vastly impacts the reception of the jokes. What this means is that, in listening to the writers’ room and interviewees, audiences find themselves looking beyond Sweeney and into Pat as a separate construct, wondering whether it could represent something good, especially if reclaimed by the LGBTQIA+ community.
A still from WE ARE PAT. Photo courtesy of Museum & Crane/Tribeca Film Festival 2025.
Of the more thought-provoking concepts in We Are Pat, and there are several elements worth chewing on, is the idea of gender expression and why it’s become such a volatile thing. In the world of Pat, people become obsessed with knowing what the androgynous character is packing, but why does it matter? The first thought that comes to mind is “whose business is it beyond Pat’s?,” but then a larger one comes into view which is the social reaction to anything that *appears* non-conforming. Here, “appears” is the keyword because even cishet individuals who present in a fashion that seems contrary to the norm will receive pushback from people. Gender expression should be individually-defined, yet social elements always creep in from the presumption that pink is a girl’s color (modern convention), that long hair denotes femininity (the men of various cultures throughout time would like a word), and makeup or dresses are strictly for female use (as if men don’t deserve the ability to look pretty or feel a breeze). Yet, despite historical records depicting men and women either in opposing or shared gender expressions in the past, if someone steps out of line now, things can escalate from a harsh word to jail time or worse. As Haber shares their own story and we listen to each of the interviewees, one acknowledges the poignancy of some arguments that personal privacy regarding bodily autonomy shouldn’t cease once one leaves the safety of a home. Who cares if someone looks different than you think they should? Unless you have permission from said individual to review their genitalia, why the obsession with ensuring that all genitalia are attached to the supposed “correct” gender presentation? How exhausting that seems; which is why there’s some merit to the view that it’s Pat’s scene partners who are the ridiculous ones for the manner in which they obsess over something that’s truly none of their business. The interviewees give a variety of fascinating answers to complicated questions and, admittedly, they have their own precise bias, but it gives their opinion far more validity through lived experience than this cishet reviewer could possibly know. But the point each one is able to hammer home is that all people deserve to be comfortable in their own skin regardless of race, color, sexual orientation, gender expression, or gender identity.
A still from WE ARE PAT. Photo courtesy of Museum & Crane.
Haber is also able to get Sweeney involved in the documentary enabling them to go straight to the source for answers aiding in making We Are Pat both more specific and significantly more open,. They sit down to discuss not only Sweeney’s background, but the creation of Pat, and how the character took off. Context is often critical, an aspect missing in a great deal of media literacy, so while the meaning of art is often lost to the artist once handed off to the public, hearing from Sweeney is paramount to understanding the foundation of who Pat is. Speaking about the character in every way but gender, Sweeney educates the audience on her own fascination with gender representation through art; how being one of three women cast members often left the comedian struggling to get on the air as either women-written jokes didn’t resonate with the mostly-male staff, women characters were dumbed down to caricatures, or the male cast played women themselves; and how her own past and interest in gender representation combined to create Pat. There are many figures in popular culture who have been claimed or reclaimed, and not all of them have honest origins, which is why Sweeney’s openness to discussing the impetus for Pat, as well as her own views on the characters, not only lends credence to what the writers’ room portion infers, it does so without an ounce of judgement or discard for personal experience. Whether sitting for a standard talking head interview, walking the audience through some of her art, or sitting with Haber, Sweeney is more than gracious with her time and not as delicate with her creation as one might expect. As wonderful as the scenes are with the members of the trans and non-binary community in recontextualizing things which some (this reviewer included) may have found funny upon the original airing of the Pat sketches, Haber’s inclusion of Sweeney elevates We Are Pat beyond the realm of fan film and into a truly meaningful artistic evaluation.
A still from WE ARE PAT. Photo courtesy of Museum & Crane/Tribeca Film Festival 2025.
Despite what the current White House administration would have individuals believe, members of the trans and non-binary community have been around for a long time. But, the same people who think that musicians Rage Against the Machine “suddenly” become woke and political, also seem to forget gender-bending musicians and actors like David Bowie, Prince, Grace Jones, and K.D. Lang, as well as the age of hair metal and glam rock. They forget or are totally ignorant of the long history of vaudeville and traveling actors or that the first Pride started with a brick. This all leads to a manufactured reality in which the pervasive though is “because I didn’t know someone was part of the LGBTQIA+ community, that means that no one I know was part of the community,” implying a sudden emergence of the LGBTQIA+ community. It’s a perception likely due to the closeting of individuals because there was widespread acceptable homophobic and transphobic humor utilized throughout pop culture in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Speaking in relation to Pat, the humor of Pat can be read as either hilarious due to the fools it makes the scene-partners appear to be *or* as a repeated humiliation of Pat by individuals who are owed no amount of gender information. The gender panic is real and it not only impacts members of the trans community as the policing of genitalia impacts the cis community, and now, as of this writing, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is openly seeking tips for those who, “ … mutilate them under the guise of gender-affirming care.” They’re not looking for breast enlargement or augmentation or e.d. pills when utilized by cishet people, but these and other treatments only when they’re utilized by those looking to transition. The LGBTQIA+ community is one with a deep and rich history and Haber’s We Are Pat, for all its jokiness (“Friends of Pat” hats, stickers, and more for their writers’ room), is a profoundly funny and generously warm story that never forgets the voices clamoring to be heard and who deserve the space and time to be listened to.
Screening during Tribeca Film Festival 2025.
For more information, head to the official Tribeca Film Festival We Are Pat webpage.
Final Score: 4 out of 5.
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Categories: Films To Watch, In Theaters, Recommendation, Reviews
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