A Kevin Smith Movie Saved Sav Rodgers’ Life. In ‘Chasing Chasing Amy,’ He Reckons with Its Complicated Legacy

27 years after its initial release, Kevin Smith‘s “Chasing Amy” remains a Rorschach test for questions of representation, authorship, and identity in film.

The 1997 film, which served as a comeback for Smith after his studio flop “Mallrats” threatened to derail the indie wunderkind status that he built with “Clerks,” is a distinct product of its time that offers a Gordian knot of messy questions about sexuality filtered through Smith’s distinctly male gaze. Ben Affleck stars as Holden McNeil, a New Jersey comic book writer who falls in love with Alyssa (Joey Lauren Adams in a career-defining performance), a pansexual woman who primarily identifies with the lesbian community. But their whirlwind romance can’t overcome his insecurities over her promiscuous past and the blatant homophobia of his writing partner Banky (Jason Lee), who lashes out at the relationship as a means of dealing with his own repressed homosexuality.

But while the film was a massive success for Smith and Miramax, its legacy in the queer community is considerably more complicated. “Chasing Amy” was released in a climate when a movie filled with gay people living unapologetically public lives out of the closet felt transgressive and exciting to many tastemakers. Some embraced the film as a win for mainstream representation, while others saw it as a perpetuation of unhelpful stereotypes like “the lesbian who was just waiting for the right guy” and “the homophobe who is only hateful because he’s secretly gay.” There was also resentment over the fact that one of the first high-profile lesbian stories told in the film came from a straight male filmmaker like Smith, who enjoyed Sundance accolades and the patronage of Harvey Weinstein while queer female directors struggled to get their films noticed.

‘Chasing Amy’©Miramax/Courtesy Everett Collection

The counterargument to many of those criticisms is that perhaps “Chasing Amy” should never have been branded as a queer film to begin with. While Adams’ performance is iconic, Affleck’s Holden is the clear dramatic focal point. Smith has openly stated that the film was inspired by a relationship that was derailed by his inability to look past his partner’s sexual history. The film is primarily about a guy who doesn’t realize that his immaturity hurt the people he loved until it’s too late — and nobody has ever accused the “Clerks” director of being unqualified to tell stories about emotionally stunted men.

Is it really fair to punish a movie for inadequately capturing the nuances of communities that it never claimed to speak for? At the same time, can a film like “Chasing Amy” ever be enjoyed on its own terms with the context that it unintentionally sucked the oxygen out of the room for filmmakers looking to tell more authentic lesbian stories?

‘Chasing Amy’©Miramax/Courtesy Everett Collection

But when Sav Rodgers discovered the film as a 12-year-old working his way through every Ben Affleck movie in his mom’s DVD collection, none of those questions crossed his mind. To him, “Chasing Amy” was a lifeline that helped him understand his confusing feelings about his own sexuality. Where more mature viewers saw problematic stereotypes, he saw an ensemble of smart, funny people who spoke openly about their gayness and never questioned their right to live life on their own terms. Where others saw slut shaming and wildly inaccurate descriptions of fisting, he saw pansexuality discussed in terms that he could use to vocalize his own feelings. He watched the film hundreds of times throughout his adolescence, and unequivocally states that it saved him from committing suicide while navigating the endless cruelty of high school.

It wasn’t until he was older that Rodgers began to realize that the film that saved his life was such a divisive topic. He came to understand the criticisms, but his emotional connection to the film never wavered. Those contradictory feelings prompted him to spend six years of his life making “Chasing Chasing Amy,” a new documentary hitting theaters this week that weaves together an exploration of the film’s evolving legacy and his own journey of coming out as a trans man.

When Rodgers embarked on the project, aided by a viral TED Talk that he gave in 2020 about the film’s influence on his life, he thought he was making a video essay about his favorite movie. He interviewed most of the film’s creative team, including Smith, Adams, Lee, and producer Scott Mosier, whose own relationship with a pansexual woman helped inspire it. He didn’t expect to become a character in his own film. However, as the project progressed, he realized not only was his own identity inextricably tied to “Chasing Amy,” but getting closure about its legacy was a key part of his emotional journey of transitioning. After finishing an early cut of the film, he knew he realized that it wouldn’t be complete with one last interview subject: himself.

“I think some people think I’m being overly humble or something when I’m like, ‘I didn’t want to be in the movie.” I genuinely did not want to be in the movie. I didn’t want to expose myself in that way and open a vein out for the world to dissect and judge,” Rodgers told IndieWire. “And so going back on set that day was remarkably challenging. However, it’s the byproduct of years of collaboration that I felt safe enough to say ‘Yeah, this is who I am now, and this is what I’ve learned and here’s where the challenges were,’ and to be able to close that chapter of my life.”

One of the most joyful parts of “Chasing Chasing Amy” is watching Rodgers develop a relationship with Smith himself, who reached out over Twitter after watching the TED Talk. Looking back on “Chasing Amy,” Smith is the first to admit that he was out of depth on complicated questions of queer identity. While he stands by the movie as an artifact of his own experiences, the filmmaker willingly sat for hours of interviews with Rodgers, listening to all of the criticisms and expressing nothing but gratitude that Sav took solace in the film when he needed it most.

“That just means everything because Kevin made the movie that made me want to be a filmmaker,” Rodgers said. “And for him to support the film in the way he has meant everything, even though the film directly critiques a thing that he made, that he made with his full heart.”

At the heart of “Chasing Chasing Amy” lies the question of who actually owns a film. Smith’s original movie is a clear product of his distinct worldview but was embraced and criticized in equal measure by a community that expected more from it. Should we take Smith’s authorial intent at face value and interpret the film as a male coming-of-age story? Or is the fact that society saw it as a queer film reason enough to be disappointed in its shortcomings? It’s a question that will never be definitively answered, as changing social norms ensure that divisive films will be appraised differently in different decades until the end of time. Rodgers has made peace with that ambiguity about “Chasing Amy,” and the experience taught him enough to know that his own story could share the same fate.

“I’m curious what the reaction to this film will be in the same way that I’m curious what the reception to ‘Chasing Amy’ will be like in another 25 years,” he said. “Even though this is my life story, and I directed it, and it’s such a personal story, in some ways, it’s no longer mine. The people who react to it, it will become theirs in so many ways. When we release a film in an audience-based medium, the artistic interpretation is really no longer up to us.”

A Level 33 release, “Chasing Chasing Amy” opens in theaters on Friday, November 1.