{"id":269641,"date":"2026-06-17T15:27:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T15:27:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/269641\/"},"modified":"2026-06-17T15:27:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T15:27:11","slug":"we-are-pat-interview-with-director-rowan-ro-haber","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/269641\/","title":{"rendered":"We Are Pat: Interview With Director Rowan \u201cRo\u201d Haber"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The Queens Gazette interviewed filmmaker Rowan Haber about their delightful documentary We Are Pat, a hilarious and endearing documentary with Julia Sweeney\u2019s iconic pop culture SNL char\u00adacter \u201cPat\u201d in the 90\u2019s (\u201cPat\u201d became a phenome\u00adnon on SNL) linking the exploration of identity through the lens of the world of comedy. The pro\u00adducing team is really a who\u2019s who of game chang\u00ading creatives in the film industry. Following a critically acclaimed debut at the Tribeca Film Fes\u00adtival in 2025, Rowan Haber\u2019s delightful documen\u00adtary We Are Pat began with an Academy Award-qualifying theatrical run on May 29 at DCTV in New York, with screenings in Los Ange\u00adles, Chicago, Portland, Philadelphia, and much more and nationwide this summer. Tribeca Films, the distribution label from Tribeca Enterprises and Giant Pictures, will release We Are Pat digitally on June 23rd, which times perfectly with Pride month in June and the film\u2019s insightful trans and non-bi\u00adnary themes.<\/p>\n

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Created by Julia Sweeney in the 90s, \u201cPat\u201d be\u00adcame a phenomenon on SNL before facing cultural backlash as conversations around transness and non-binary identity politics evolved. What starts as a pop culture excavation becomes something deeper: a reflection on gender identity, the elasticity of comedy, the ethics of authorship, and what hap\u00adpens when a joke outlives the era it was born in.<\/p>\n

NB: Why is Pat such an icon?<\/p>\n

RH: Ooh, wow, this is such a good question. I think Pat is an icon because they are, they were, very precious in certain ways. The fact that we were gonna sort of be discussing gender nonconformity in such a big way. Obviously, gender nonconform\u00ading and trans people have existed for forever, but I think questions around how to function within so\u00adciety and people\u2019s gender panic is really forecasted in the past sketches in a way that is for me so relat\u00adable, but is so specific and so in a lot of what we\u2019re talking about now in terms of gender nonconfor\u00admity.<\/p>\n

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I also think Pat is kind of iconic because they just own who they are in any circumstance. They\u2019re supremely confident. They let everything roll off their back.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s very unlike a real person in the way that I think real people would actually be very affected by people constantly questioning what gender they are. I think that\u2019s something that actually weighs down on you, but I think that for Pat, it\u2019s kind of one of Pat\u2019s\u2026 their obliviousness is sort of like a superpower, which I think is really special. And of course, their outfit is iconic. So those are some good reasons.<\/p>\n

NB: If you could have done anything differently while filming, what would you have done?<\/p>\n

RH: Oh, such a good question. I think I would have allowed the writers a little bit more time to work on their sketches. Because we have this writer\u2019s room where they\u2019re recreating the Pat sketches and, if you think about SNL, like SNL as a machine, and all these folks do is pitch ideas, write sketches. They\u2019re just so used to that.<\/p>\n

So I think maybe I would have provided a little bit more time with the writers. And in our film, I was like, okay, you have like 45 minutes to create a sketch, and then we were just building the sets and making them. So maybe I would do a little bit more time to refine those.<\/p>\n

NB: What advice do you have for aspiring film\u00admakers and documentarians or any advice about getting producers or funding?<\/p>\n

RH: Pick a topic that you are completely ob\u00adsessed with because you\u2019re going to be working on it for five to ten years. You have to be really in love with the thing that you\u2019re interested in and also pick something that you want to spend time with. I\u2019ve made a lot of queer historical docs that felt really important and were really special to make, but were more serious, and it was so nice making this film because it was comedic, and so I got to spend a ton of time around comedians and around the trans community. And so the process was really special for me as a filmmaker to do that.<\/p>\n

You have to know that you\u2019re running a marathon. You just have to keep going. And shame\u00adlessly, stomp for your own film, which is really how we got it made.<\/p>\n

NB: Did you say stomp? S-T-O-M-P? I\u2019m not familiar with that word.<\/p>\n

RH: Just like go hard for your own film.<\/p>\n

NB: Do you have any positive memories of Queens from your time at NYU Tisch?<\/p>\n

RH: Oh, my god. Well, I mean, such amazing food in Queens. Like a lot of their, I have a lot of food, amazing food memories. Actually, my cine\u00admatographer from the film, Christine Ng, lives in Queens, and does these stunning backyard barbe\u00adcues. I have like a lot of, for whatever reason, maybe I\u2019m just hungry because we\u2019re approaching lunch, but I have a lot. I have a lot of really good food memories, just like highly positive food mem\u00adories. It\u2019s such an iconic borough. Like, do you know what I mean? There\u2019s nothing like it. I\u2019m from the West Coast, so we don\u2019t have places like Queens, obviously, in Portland, Oregon, or in Los Angeles where I normally live.<\/p>\n

NB: Could you describe Queens in three words?<\/p>\n

RH: Oh my gosh, okay. What do you think about this? Delightful. Large. Delicious.<\/p>\n

For the full interview, visit qgazette.com. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a0 The Queens Gazette interviewed filmmaker Rowan Haber about their delightful documentary We Are Pat, a hilarious and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":269642,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-269641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269641\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}