Parks and Recreation: Patton Oswalt on Predicting "Book of Boba Fett" (2024)

Posted in: Disney+, NBC, Star Wars, TV | Tagged: parks and recreation, patton oswalt, the book of boba fett

Patton Oswalt opens up about how his rant on Parks and Recreation ended up impacting Disney+ Star Wars series The Book of Boba Fett.

Actor and comedian Patton Oswalt never expected one of his infamous rants to play out as predicted, but that's what happened when he reflected on his memorable scene in 2013 on NBC's Parks and Recreation as Garth Blundin in the season five episode "Article Two" on ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live!. The scene in question involved a filibuster as he pitches his idea for a Marvel and Star Wars crossover film, a year after Disney purchased Lucasfilm, foretelling how Boba Fett escaped his fate from Return of the Jedi (1983).

Patton Oswalt on His Parks and Recreation Rant Playing Out on The Book of Boba Fett

"So the scene was supposed to be [that] I announce I'm gonna do this filibuster, and then they cut to Amy [Poehler]'s character, Leslie, just going 'Oh dear God,' and that would be the joke," Oswalt told Jimmy Kimmel. "And then the directors and the writers said, 'Let's not yell cut and just see how long he'll talk.' [Marvel] had not done 'Guardians of the Galaxy.' When I say Time Gem [one of the Infinity Stones], they cut to Chris Pratt. This was way before he did 'Guardians.' Also, Amy has the funniest line in the whole thing when she says the female part's a little underwritten, which was so exactly what those movies were."

Pratt, who also starred in Parks and Recreation, would be cast as Star-Lord in the 2014 James Gunn film reprising his role for the entire trilogy and MCU films Avengers: Infinity War (2018), Avengers: Endgame (2019), and Thor: Love and Thunder (2022). Oswalt, who also had his share of work at Marvel with Hulu's animated M.O.D.O.K. and the live-action Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., then recalled getting a call regarding the 2021 Star Wars series.

Oswalt shared the synched-up rant from Parks and Rec with The Book of Boba Fett premiere episode in a 2021 post on social media that starts with Garth describing the scene, "Hand down from the twin suns of Tatooine, we're now close to the mouth of the Sarlacc pit, after a beat, the gloved hand of Mandalorian armor gauntlet of Boba Fett grabs out on the sand outside the Sarlacc pit and the feared bounty hunter pulls himself from the maw of the sand beast." "When 'The Book of Boba Fett' came on [Disney+], [creator] Jon Favreau confirmed this for me: they cut the opening shot to match my filibuster," he told Kimmel. "You can sync them up time-wise… [it] pans down from the twin suns, the hand comes out of the sand, you can match it up to my filibuster. They did that on purpose."