Copyright Screen Rant
Quentin Tarantino had a hand in one of the worst Saturday Night Live movies ever made. This is shocking, since Tarantino is widely considered one of Hollywood's best directors and is even a better screenwriter. Tarantino has seven Oscar nominations over his career, and the two that he won were both for his screenwriting. However, Tarantino worked on a Saturday Night Live movie based on a sketch he professed a great love for. This was after he had released Reservoir Dogs, but before he broke out with Pulp Fiction. While Tarantino has an excellent record with the movies he directed, this film flopped, earning a 0% Rotten Tomatoes score. Quentin Tarantino Did A Rewrite Of The SNL Movie, It's Pat Quentin Tarantino has had incredible success with the movies he directed. However, he also has several screenwriting credits to his name. Tarantino did an uncredited rewrite of Tony Scott's Crimson Tide, and many of the pop culture references came from him. He also wrote the scripts for True Romance and From Dusk till Dawn. There were two other scripts he is likely less proud of. First, he wrote the script that would become Natural Born Killers, but Tarantino disowned that movie completely. He doesn't share the same hatred for the other film that was a blemish on his record, the SNL spinoff movie, It's Pat. It's Pat is based on the classic Julia Sweeney Saturday Night Live sketch in which she plays the plaid-shirt-wearing, androgynous Pat. The joke from the sketches was that people wanted to know Pat's gender, but every time it was time to reveal it, the sketch ended unanswered. It doesn't hold up today, but at the time, Tarantino was a fan. The movie underwent several rewrites before it finally landed in Quentin Tarantino's hands in 1993. Variety revealed at the time that Tarantino turned in his rewrite of the script, and that is what the producers took to the studios to try to get the movie launched. Tarantino introduced the plot device of a stalker relentlessly pursuing Pat. Pat Ended Up As Saturday Night Live's Worst Movie Adam Bernstein ended up directing It's Pat, with a script that credits Julia Sweeney, Jim Emerson, and Stephen Hibbert. Tarantino's work on the rewrite was similar to that of Crimson Tide, where his work went uncredited, which may have been a blessing in disguise. The film flopped hard and has a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. With an $8 million budget, almost no one saw the SNL comedy, which had a rock-bottom box office take of $60,822. The big problem was that Fox had no faith in the movie and released it in only 33 theaters in Seattle, Washington; Spokane, Washington; and Houston, Texas. It then went to home video seven months later. With the box-office bomb and the rock-bottom Rotten Tomatoes score, critics savaged the movie. Variety called it "unfunny" while the Los Angeles Times said the film had a great message, but the problem is that "its telling is truly terrible." Not even Quentin Tarantino could save It's Pat. Quentin Tarantino Explains His Love Of Pat The really disappointing part is that Quentin Tarantino had a lot of love for the It's Pat sketch from Saturday Night Live. He came on to work on the rewrite with the intention of helping the movie tell its story better and show how great the character was. Tarrantino said as much in a Playboy interview in 1994. "The androgyny aspect is only a part of Pat's appeal. What I love about the character is that Pat is so fu---ng obnoxious." Tarantino said he has no idea what gender Pat is, but he wanted Pat to be "a girl." He then demonstrated his knowledge of the character by pointing out a sketch Pat did with guest host Harvey Keitel, in which the two kissed. "Pat didn't kiss like a guy," Tarantino said. "Pat kissed like a girl." The movie kept up the sketch's desire to keep this a secret and went so far as to have Dave Floey play Chris, someone else who was sexually mysterious, and that was who Pat ended up marrying at the end. There was even a point where each of them had their genitalia exposed, but the viewers never saw it. That might be the problem. Quentin Tarantino said he loved the fact that Pat is "obnoxious," but that was never supposed to be the point of the movie or the sketches. This was a story about how unimportant gender is, and all that matters is that a person is comfortable in their own skin. Quentin Tarantino Has Still Never Made A Comedy Movie Seeing how bad the movie was, and how even the audience score is a very low 30%, it is no surprise that Quentin Tarantino has mostly avoided the comedy genre. Looking at the humor in Tarantino's movies, it is always risque and pushes buttons, which works in crime dramas, but not in broad comedies. There are biting moments of dark humor in movies like Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, The Hateful Eight, and Django Unchained. However, that humor is there to help ease tension, and not to make an audience laugh.
