In 2018, queer American teenager Sav Rodgers gave the TED Talk “The rom-com that saved my life,” telling how Kevin Smith’s ‘Chasing Amy’ (1997) was the lifeline that helped him navigate the turmoil of being a bullied LGBTQIA+ youngster in Kansas.
However, the talk wasn’t enough for Rodgers as he premiered last year at Tribeca Film Festival, the acclaimed documentary ‘Chasing Chasing Amy’ (2023), in which he performs a deep examination of ‘Chasing Amy’s legacy considering the reasons that make it so controversial among LGBTQIA+ people and the life-saving effect in his very life showcasing how some products perdure in people’s emotional memories despite their flaws.
‘Chasing Amy’ tells the story of comic book artists Holden (Ben Affleck) and Banky (Jason Lee). The former diligently tries to win the affection of debonair lesbian Alyssa (Joey Lauren Adams), while his homophobe friend tries to derail their romance.
One of the reasons that make the picture polemical for the queer community is that Alyssa and Holden become a couple, which can be not only interpreted as Alyssa being, in fact, bisexual or fluid but as a trope of “the right guy saving a girl from lesbianism.”
Another controversy is the character Banky, a homophobe who uses hateful speech to hide his own homoerotic urges; thus, ‘Chasing Amy’ blames homophobia in the very community that dies from hate crimes, endures lower access to health care, and has their careers blocked by thick glass ceilings.
On the other hand, ‘Chasing Amy’ brought a layered supporting character in Hooper (Mustafa Obafemi), a Black and queer comic book artist who lives as a minority inside a minority, and it has a scene in the rain with solid dialogue between Holden and Alyssa that also highlights the acting range of Adams
A “lovely and heartful” complicated staple of the 90s indie scene
The picture isn’t an outright full queer movie but a story about a white man who falls for a lesbian written, directed, and produced by other white men, Smith and producer Scott Mosier, and the former kingpin of indie cinema, the infamous Harvey Weinstein who was the patron of Smith’s career.
Nevertheless, ‘Chasing Amy’ is one of the few 90s movies that brought queer characters to mainstream audiences, and Rodgers found a VHS copy at their parents’ home and watched it over and over while building his personality and surviving harassment which helps to understand the emotional impact it holds with the upcoming director.
During the interviews, Smith thanks Rodgers for getting the original picture “back” to him, as although it received praise during its release, it has been bashed for decades and had been relegated to a quiet limbo in the queer film canon.
In the documentary, Rodgers displays fluency as an interviewer, researcher, and storyteller, which is even more impressive considering his age and that it is his first feature, in which he outgrows the teenage fandom to see the flaws of the movie.
‘Chasing Chasing Amy’ is also a beautiful queer coming-of-age narrative with Rodgers blossoming in his identity, developing his love life with girlfriend Riley, his family dealing with his queerness, his intellectual growth during the movie, and the endearing support of Smith. This story should be turned into a feature film somewhere down the line.
The house that ‘Chasing Amy’ built on the backs of the Amies
Kevin Smith is known in the entertainment world for his movies that appeal to 90s nerd teenagers and young adults, his public persona with quick-wit and self-deprecating humour, and his kidult lifestyle. Once the director opens his house to Sav Rodgers and the viewer, it can be interpreted as an extension of his personality, which dialogues with the current zeitgeist of adults who can’t stay too far away from their idealized teenage bedrooms.
Rodgers wins the interviewees with his admiration and sincerity. He doesn’t feel threatened or crossing lines, and this skill favours him because journalists and documentarists need to know how to enter the lives and houses of others and how to leave them, too. “Welcome to the house that Amy built,” exclaims Smith when opening his household. However, it is figuratively lacking the two women who inspired Amy and Smith’s oeuvre owe a great deal to them: Joey Lauren Adams and Guinevere Turner.
Like many women in Hollywood, Adams and Turner have to put three times the effort of their male counterparts to have less in an industry that is fuelled by egos, sexism, pettiness, racism, homophobia, and harassment.
The Vices of Harvey Weinstein gives another scope on the 90s indie scene and what the duo had to endure in a “universe” ruled by the silver screen indie Caligula. The documentary shows a flaw when it doesn’t go hard on Smith’s relationship with Weinstein, and Adams defines the latter by saying, “We all knew who he was.”
At the time that Adams was dating Smith, Turner, a bold lesbian activist, had a “romantic friendship” with producer Scott Mosier, and Smith is very indiscreet and infantile when describing said relationship.
Turner linked with Smith and Mosier during Sundance 1994 when she was promoting her lesbian rom-com ‘Go Fish’ (1994) alongside director Rose Troche while the budding duo was there with their comedy ‘Clerks’ (1994). Both pictures felt like siblings as they had a limited budget, were very conversational, and were shot in Black and White. Still, the Turner-Troche rom-com is more experimental, aged better, and feels more like a true-to-life lesbian depiction than ‘Chasing Amy,’ which was inspired by a scene from ‘Go Fish.’
The lingering pain of the Amys
Rodgers first interviews Adams together with Smith, and she is pretty amicable. Still, later, the director has a tense round with just Adams where the actress describes that she would tell the movie story in another way, how damaging it is to go back to that era with all the hurt she had put through and the immaturity of Smith dealing with their relationship, supporting her professional outings after the picture and the harassment she faced in the industry.
Adams was expecting “another bullshit” ‘Chasing Amy’ interview, but Rodgers, with his naïve persistence, got one of the best interviews out of the actress. “I don’t love looking back at that time,” says Adams with a sombreness that gives gravitas to the moment.
‘American Psycho’ (2000) screenwriter Turner talks about how for years she felt enraged but now has made peace with the “lovely and heartfelt” rom-com, and while Smith is always respectful about the influence of Turner on the character and the story, Turner saw herself struggling to advance in her career and back then expressed to her friend Smith that he built a following after ‘Chasing Amy’ while nobody was watching ‘Go Fish’ and in response Turner heard that she was ‘jealous.’
There is a line from Turner’s lips that lingers and expresses how privilege works in Hollywood and in the world as a whole: “Kevin got an empire, and we were just some dykes.” It becomes even harsher after reading her powerful memoir When the World Didn’t End (2023) and knowing that she still struggles after her troubled coming-of-age.
The fanboys talking about their love for Smith’s work aren’t memorable; therefore, Rodgers could have gone deeper with Adams and Turner, who are the strongest interviewees of the piece, because ‘Chasing Amy’ is a small sample of the power dynamics in Hollywood, and Adams and Turner deserve to be acknowledged and have better opportunities.
Nevertheless, Rodgers dismounts a picture with high emotional value to him by a director that plays an enormous influence on his creative process without being offensive neither to ‘Chasing Amy,’ Smith nor Adams, Turner, and the queer community.
‘Chasing Chasing Amy’ also has a fluid editing process that avoids the stale images that plague many documentaries. In the end, it is a great emotional experience that reevaluates a picture that deserves to be remembered for its good and bad aspects, the representation of queer lives in mainstream media, and how other and better depictions came after it.