An ‘SNL’ box office bomb: the awful movie Quentin Tarantino helped to write
While Quentin Tarantino is celebrated as one of the greatest filmmakers of modern cinema, perhaps a more appropriate accolade should be given to his efforts in the screenplay department. Writing every movie he’s ever directed, the quick-witted wordsmith has penned some truly delectable scripts, giving Jules Winnfield his sharp style in Pulp Fiction and Hans Landa a cruel tongue in Inglourious Basterds.
But there are also movies that Tarantino has written that he’s had no part in directing, penning such scripts as True Romance and Natural Born Killers that were hastily sold off after the success of Reservoir Dogs in 1992. But this wasn’t all, with the director starring in and writing the vampire flick From Dusk Till Dawn in 1996, the same year as he helped ghostwrite Michael Bay’s 1996 film The Rock.
Despite it being a hit with the majority of fans, Tarantino ended up wildly despising Oliver Stone’s adaptation of his Natural Born Killers script, urging his own fans to stay away from the film at all costs. “I hated that f**king movie. If you like my stuff, don’t watch that movie,” he has stated since the release of the film, repeatedly voicing his dislike every opportunity he gets to do so.
But, despite urging fans to stay away, many Tarantino lovers are fond of the film, with few considering it to be as awful as the director suggests. Indeed, there is one other movie that Tarantino co-wrote but is un-credited as objectively awful writing, being quite an offensive piece of cinema that hasn’t stood the test of time at all. The fateful comedy flick was 1994’s It’s Pat.
Based on the androgynous Saturday Night Live character Pat, created by and played by Julia Sweeney, the film follows the misadventures of the individual, with the question as to what gender they are the central plot of the outdated film. The source character was based on a real person, too, with Sweeney sharing: “I’d been an accountant for like five years, and there was one person I worked with in particular who had a lot of mannerisms like Pat. This person sort of drooled and had the kind of body language of Pat. I started trying to do him.”
The movie took on the role of the sketches and kept questioning Pat’s gender as pretty much the only plotline in the entire production. Released only in 33 cinemas across the USA, with almost no box-office takings at all, It’s Pat was considered a massive misfire upon its release, with critics and fans both agreeing on its poor quality.
Shockingly, Tarantino has admitted to being an uncredited writer on the screenplay, despite none of his iconic style being visible in the film at all. Speaking to Playboy in 1994 about the film and the character, the director stated: “The androgyny aspect is only a part of Pat’s appeal. What I love about the character is that Pat is so f**king obnoxious.”
Despite Tarantino claiming his love for the character and their wonderfully “obnoxious” behaviour, it’s unlikely that Pat will be making an appearance in the director’s final film, The Movie Critic, in the near future.
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