This Queer Filmmaker Wants to Figure Out Just How ‘Problematic’ ‘Chasing Amy’ Is

In the spring of 1997, Chasing Amy hit theaters, serving as a comeback for writer-director Kevin Smith. Earlier in the decade, the New Jersey filmmaker had launched onto the scene with Clerks, a low-budget comedy about some foul-mouthed buddies who worked at a convenience store, earning rave reviews and announcing Smith as a promising new indie talent. But he tarnished that reputation with his follow-up, Mallrats, which was a commercial bomb and critically derided. It’s no exaggeration to say that Smith’s career was hanging in the balance when he released Chasing Amy, a bittersweet love story about a comic-book artist, Holden (Ben Affleck), who falls in love with a fellow artist, Alyssa (Joey Lauren Adams). They seem to click, but there’s a problem: She’s gay, thinking of him only as a friend. But the more time they spend together, the more she starts to develop romantic feelings for him.

The film was hailed as a sign of Smith’s creative maturation. The raunchy jokes and pop-culture references from his previous work were still in evidence, but they were supplemented by a sensitive look at modern love and sexual fluidity. Based partly on Smith’s real-life romance with Adams — who is straight — and his observations about his friend (and producer) Scott Mosier, a straight man who was very close to gay filmmaker Guinevere Turner, Chasing Amy was a sincere heteronormative examination of the LGBTQ+ community. The film felt frank, risky and empathetic at a time when mainstream indie films were barely touching stories about gay characters. It seemed groundbreaking.

I remember really enjoying Chasing Amy, but like many 1990s films, I’ve feared revisiting it, my assumption being that what was once “groundbreaking” would seem, from a 2024 perspective, incredibly cringey and tone-deaf. Times change and society evolves, and besides, Smith’s post-Chasing Amy output has been so negligible that it was hard to have much faith that the film had held up. And, really, where did Smith get off telling a story about a gay woman who’s mostly there to help the straight male character learn to be a better person through his relationship with her? 

As I suspected when I recently rewatched Chasing Amy, it was far less successful than I remembered. To be sure, the chemistry between Affleck and Adams remains palpable, and their characters’ fraught romance is touching, full of the insecurities and confusion common for young people figuring out love. But no matter how well-intentioned, much of the film’s genuine curiosity about LGBTQ+ lives is so awkwardly executed that it comes across as painfully clueless. 

That said, many people are fans of Chasing Amy, although few have as complicated a connection to it as Sav Rodgers. Growing up, this trans filmmaker, who turns 30 later this month, stumbled upon Chasing Amy simply because he had watched a bunch of other Ben Affleck flicks. But Chasing Amy hit differently for Rodgers, exposing him to gay characters for the first time. As Rodgers has said, the movie saved his life at a crucial, desperate moment when he was trying to understand himself and his sexuality. He would go on to watch Chasing Amy numerous times, eventually dating his now-wife Riley and later deciding to transition. 

Rodgers first made a name for himself in 2018 by doing a TED Talk about his infatuation with the movie, and the video soon went viral, with many of those involved with Chasing Amy taking note — including Smith. Emboldened, he has now made a documentary about his relationship with Chasing Amy — and the debates that have swirled around the film since its release, especially among LGBTQ+ viewers, several of whom can’t fathom what he gets out of the movie. 

Chasing Chasing Amy is a very personal film, with Rodgers serving as our guide through his journey of self-discovery, one that involves him occasionally talking to Riley about their relationship and what the documentary has taught him. Along the way, he interviews Smith and Adams, as well as Guinevere Turner, scholars, lesbian writers and gay filmmakers, collecting their different, clashing perspectives on a movie some dismiss as homophobic. (Those critics have a point: The F-slur is thrown around a lot by Chasing Amy’s straight characters, while others object to the film’s creaky thesis that Holden’s best friend, Jason Lee’s misanthropic Banky, is so weirded out about the relationship because, clearly, he’s closeted and can’t admit it. And, of course, Chasing Amy is built around the old trope that any lesbian just needs to find the right straight dude to “cure” her.) 

A couple weeks ago, I talked over Zoom with Rodgers, who currently lives in Las Vegas. Enthusiastic and boyish, bearded and wearing a ball cap while rocking a black “Birds of Prey: Best Picture” T-shirt, he reflected back on a film project that started five years ago. Identifying as “bisexual, pansexual, it’s all the same to me at this point in my life,” he is the founder and executive director of the Transgender Film Center, which is described as “a nonprofit aiming to help trans creators bring finished films to audiences around the world.” Today, his documentary comes to theaters, offering a thoughtful overview of Chasing Amy’s legacy, not to mention Rodgers’ shifting feelings about a movie that meant so much to his younger self — despite the elements about it that now don’t sit so well with him. 

Rodgers and I chatted about rom-com happy endings, the challenges trans filmmakers face in the industry (and the world at large) and whether he thinks Chasing Amy is actually problematic. 

You’ve said that Chasing Amy saved your life when you were young, and that you watched it over and over again. But the movie doesn’t have what I’d call a traditional happy ending. Didn’t that bother you?

As a person who tries to be optimistic and is a romantic and always wants things to work out — seldom do things ever work out the way we planned — the ending struck me as remarkably honest. There’s a part of me that was always rooting for (Holden and Alyssa) to get together, but what they got in the end was so much more than if they had just gotten together. What they were able to learn from each other, those characters were able to move forward in their lives in a much more meaningful, intentional way. 

Watching them not get (a happy ending) did greatly inform my life. What I learned about love and loss and relationships and how you treat a partner, it was a foundational text. And if you want to look beyond Chasing Amy and look at Jay and Silent Bob Reboot, when we see Holden and Alyssa again, their happy endings were different — Alyssa and her partner at the end of Chasing Amy, they’re still together in that movie, and (they and Holden) get to co-parent this kid named Amy. It’s this lovely thing. It is romantic that you can be friends with somebody after all of that — that you can have these relationships work out in a different way than what you initially thought. 

As a kid, were you really into romantic comedies in general? 

I devoured rom-coms, which very much fed into my romanticism. One of my favorites was 13 Going on 30 — I watched that movie endlessly as a kid. I feel like I grew up during this heyday of romantic comedies in the early 2000s. Watching Sandra Bullock or Julia Roberts or Jennifer Lopez find their happy ending and find lots of love was very aspirational for me as a kid — this idea that everything can work out. One of my favorites was Music and Lyrics — I love a musical, I love music, I love romance. 

But those rom-coms were very heteronormative. Some of your interview subjects discuss the disconnect LGBTQ+ individuals feel when they see love stories like that. 

The dissonance that people speak about in Chasing Chasing Amy is one that I felt my whole life. You can see yourself in a part of one of these stories — and you can relate to it on this very human level — and yet nothing ever quite fits right. You never quite see yourself — you never quite understand what it might feel to be seen in that way.

It’s interesting now with Chasing Chasing Amy where people will come up to Riley and me after screenings and say, “Wow, I’ve never seen a love story like that. I’ve never seen a movie where a trans person ends up fine at the end and their partner doesn’t leave them.” Some people were like, “Oh, I was on the edge of my seat — I was hoping you two weren’t going to break up by the end!” And I’m like, “What a sad state of affairs that that’s the current landscape.” What I hear in that statement is there’s a huge dearth of stories that have not included queer people — or, specifically, trans people — for such a long time. It shouldn’t be such a novel thing to see something like that work out. 

This has been a banner year for trans cinema thanks to movies like I Saw the TV Glow. But not many of those breakthrough films are romantic comedies. I wonder if that’s a frustration for you that trans rom-coms haven’t made their way into the marketplace yet. 

I would say the operative word in that statement is “yet,” because I think that there are definitely trans people that want to tell these stories. I want to tell these stories, but there are so many forces at bay that can keep a film from happening, especially through the studio system or trying to get financing attached. We still deal with this idea that our stories are too niche — us being who we are makes it too niche. And it’s like, “Well, I’m trying to tell a love story” — there are very few people on the planet who cannot identify with this idea of wanting to be loved. 

There’s this false idea that loving a trans person is somehow exceptional. I don’t think Riley would agree with that notion that her staying with me after I transitioned was exceptional — she was just like, “Oh, my partner is happier now, that’s better for everybody.” And so we’re still having these really odd conversations, actively fighting disinformation and misinformation. I think that makes people more hesitant to green-light stories about us or to provide financing for stories about us. 

But that doesn’t mean that they’re impossible — it doesn’t mean that they’re not out there, that they’re not being made. But I’d say there’s a big dearth of queer and trans love stories — specifically, trans love stories — that I’m hoping can be remedied. Because when I hear that there’s a lack of anything, all I hear is that there’s an opportunity to tell stories that haven’t been done a thousand times before. And that’s very exciting, both as a storyteller and a producer.

Of course, though, we’re in the midst of a presidential election in which one candidate puts out flagrantly anti-trans ads in order to scare voters. 

It’s despicable, that’s what it is. But then you look at a film like Will & Harper and you see the genuine reactions to Harper Steele’s story, to Josh Greenbaum’s sensitive filmmaking, to Will Ferrell’s allyship — you see that people can learn and can grow. But when trans people are treated as the political football and they are scapegoated and demonized, it’s hard to navigate the world when the world isn’t safe for you. 

When I see very heartwarming reactions to Chasing Chasing Amy or Will & Harper, where people who didn’t think that they knew a trans person before going to see the movie, or it’s the first time that they’re feeling like they’re connecting with this type of story or been presented the opportunity to learn about a trans person’s life — and not specifically just through the lens of being trans, but to see who they are in a very full sense — there are really beautiful things that can happen. What I would like to challenge people to think about is: If you don’t feel like us, seek out a film. Look at Disclosure. Look at Changing the Game. Look at Framing Agnes. Look at Will & Harper. Look at Chasing Chasing Amy. There are real opportunities here for you to meet a trans person and to see that we shouldn’t be the political football — we’re just people trying to get through the day.

Chasing Amy came out in the 1990s, which was a ripe period for comedy that mocked homosexuality. It was all over sitcoms and in films. That humor reflects an era when LGBTQ+ individuals weren’t nearly as accepted — except as punchlines.

Matt Baume has some really great video essays about this on his YouTube channel — he has talked at length about the way that gay panic would manifest in sitcoms. But keep in mind Chasing Amy premieres at Sundance 1997 (in January and then) premieres in theaters in April. A couple of weeks after, Ellen DeGeneres comes out as gay on her show, and it’s a landmark thing that blacklists her from working in TV for a while. That very much informs the context in which Chasing Amy is received — the ways that (queer) characters were treated on sitcoms very much informs queer audiences’ rightful suspicions about a film that claims to represent anybody from the community. It’s hard to feel safe in a world that’s constantly picking on you, messing with you, dehumanizing you, devaluing you, telling you that you’re just a punchline. 

Look, I love queer comedy as much as anybody — (but) if you tell a bad joke, it can be a damaging thing. I did a lot of research, but I also grew up on a lot of these sitcoms where I’m like, “Okay, so there was Will & Grace, which was groundbreaking but still some people critiqued it for not being gay enough.” It’s just this period of time where, no matter what you do, you can’t really win. 

I think Chasing Amy stands out in that it’s exactly what Kevin wanted to say, which is one of the reasons it feels so honest, but also can feel so shocking to people who watch it. It doesn’t pull any punches.

I’m not suggesting that Kevin Smith was disingenuous with you in his interview in Chasing Chasing Amy — he seems very forthright and reflective — but did any part of you worry that he agreed to be in your documentary in order to exonerate himself? “If Sav shows that I’m really a good guy, maybe people in the LGBTQ+ community won’t think I’m a jerk who made an offensive film”?

When I first met Kevin, the first thing I said to him was, “There’s going to be a lot of people who don’t like (your) movie, who don’t like you, and I need you to know that before deciding to participate or not.” And he was like, “Yeah, it would be a really boring movie if that (wasn’t) the case.” So he understood that, and I asked him questions about Harvey Weinstein, about accusations of lesbophobia, homophobia, biphobia — and he wasn’t defensive about any of it, which is really rare. And so the thing that I want to give Kevin props for is that I don’t think a lot of filmmakers would agree to go on the record to talk about some of the things I asked him about.

I hope that he didn’t feel that way (as you suggest) — that it would get him “off the hook.” I tried to hold him accountable as an interviewer so that people would understand the different ways that Chasing Amy has been examined. But, also, he’s a man with the internet — people will tweet that stuff directly at him. I don’t think I told him anything about how people felt about the movie that he didn’t already know. I was very surprised at how not-defensive he was — I think a lot of people would be. It’s a bold ask to come into somebody’s house and be like, “Hey, let’s talk about the ways that people hate your movie.” He was always kind to me in those instances, even when I was asking him hard questions, because there are scenarios in which people tell you to get the hell out. And he never did that.

The Joey Lauren Adams interview is very intense. She’s very open about how Chasing Amy is still hard for her because it didn’t allow her the catharsis it allowed her ex-boyfriend, Kevin Smith, who got to present the film as proof that he had evolved and grown up since their relationship. The movie didn’t grant her that same opportunity, and it seems like there’s still some bad feelings for her about their relationship — and her association with this film. Did she change how you thought of Smith?

What you see in the film is a very small part of the larger conversation that went on for a few hours where Joey trusted me with her story. And I’m forever thankful to Joey for that, because she didn’t have to say any of the things that she said. She didn’t have to be so real with us. She didn’t have to be so honest.

I think every fanboy’s dream (is) you make a movie (about a movie you love), and then the person who made that movie invites you in to do interviews. But after that interview (with Adams), it wasn’t that just (my) movie changed, my life changed.

Joey said some real stuff about this business that I hadn’t experienced yet — perspectives that I hadn’t considered — so it was an awakening for me in so many ways. It very much informed how we approached post-production and the ways in which we wanted to honor our participants who are all telling their respective truths. Joey’s truth is different than Guinevere’s truth. It’s different than Kevin’s truth. All of these things are valid and real, so I just wanted to do right by everybody’s stories. It was like, “We have to do right by these people who trusted us.” And then as the story continued to evolve into becoming my story, there was a lot of uncomfortability to navigate there because I didn’t sign up to necessarily be in the movie the way that I ended up being in the movie. From a director perspective and a participant perspective, it was overwhelming. 

I’ve always seen Kevin as human. I’ve always seen Joey as human. The way that I am with my enthusiasm, it might make me seem a little Pollyanna sometimes, but I know what’s going on. I know people are deeply imperfect. I know that people make mistakes. I know that people grow and change from those mistakes. So in terms of my impression of Kevin, I don’t really think it was much different because these are things that Kevin himself would own up to. 

Chasing Chasing Amy is quick to show that the LGBTQ+ community isn’t a monolith. The experts and filmmakers you interview have a whole range of opinions about Smith’s movie, from positive to negative. 

Five years ago when we were starting that interview process, talking to so many experts, I expected more people to just be like, “I hate this movie.” But we brought in a lot of really smart people who had a nuanced take. It was the first time in my young adult life that I recognized, “Oh, people don’t talk to each other like they do on Twitter.” (laughs) People generally are willing to have a conversation and to engage in ideas that are uncomfortable. I asked Princess Weekes straight up, “Is it okay that Chasing Amy is problematic?” All of the experts that we brought in to talk about Chasing Amy’s place in queer history or film history — Dr. Sarah Jen talking about bisexuality as a media representation — these were all incredibly nuanced, thoughtful takes on the film. 

It gave me hope that we can talk about things that are uncomfortable in a way that moves forward together. It’s something that I think people generally need, especially when you’re in a community with people. I love the range of takes — Princess Weekes saying that Kevin accidentally made this brilliant bisexuality movie. It was just exciting — a lot of them would say positions that I personally held on the movie at the time, or a perspective that I was hoping would be represented. 

Jen points to a memorable sequence in Chasing Amy in which Alyssa informs her gay friends that she’s fallen in love with Holden. The friends feel betrayed: “We lost another one.” That’s something that still strikes a chord in our society: Bisexual celebrities like Stephanie Beatriz marry a man, and a section of the population gets mad, insisting that she was heterosexual all along — or that she “caved” to heteronormative pressures. 

It’s very odd to me, the idea that we’re policing celebrities’ marriages and personal lives — especially queer ones. “You’re not queer enough.” These are people’s private relationships that are none of our business, and we’re not going to participate in bisexual erasure — that’s a bunch of bullshit. What are we doing here, people? Our ancestors didn’t fight for the opportunity for us to be ourselves just to be super-petty on TikTok about this. 

Chasing Chasing Amy digs into this notion of “problematic.” You essentially wonder if it’s acceptable for you to like a movie that you know others would consider problematic, a term that can mean a whole lot of different things depending on the audience. So let me ask: Do you think Chasing Amy is problematic?

You’re touching on something I talk about a lot with my filmmaker friends. The word “problematic” is incredibly imprecise — it covers a range of things from maybe something isn’t inclusive enough or maybe it’s downright dangerous, and those two are very different ends of the “problematic” spectrum. 

Everybody has their own line in the sand to draw — I don’t begrudge anybody for where they draw their line. There are filmmakers who I will not watch because they have caused immense harm, even if I could potentially learn from their movies. And there are some people that I’m like, “Okay, I’ll buy their movie from the half-price bookstore and they won’t see a dime from this.” 

My personal opinion of Chasing Amy is moot at this point because my relationship to it is that it’s a movie that saved my life when I needed it. It was the movie that kept me alive — that is a fact. I completely understand why somebody would not like Chasing Amy, would find it to be shitty toward lesbians or bisexual people, or they take umbrage with the use of the F-slur — these are all reasons to not like this movie. There are plenty of valid reasons to not like Chasing Amy. But for me, it was the first time I saw somebody that could be called bisexual or pansexual. It was the first time I saw people depicted in a way that really opened my eyes, really made me feel like maybe there was a future for me in the world after all — that maybe I did exist. There’s a long roadmap between me watching Chasing Amy and me coming out as trans, but (that movie) is a pretty key step in helping figure out my own sexual orientation. 

I don’t feel the need to defend any part of (the movie). I feel like Chasing Chasing Amy says everything that I want to say on the subject, and I’m so grateful that it exists. This film is a Rorschach test culturally. However you feel about sexual orientation, love and relationships, the way that women are treated, how you feel about the trope of the gay-bashing friend who’s actually secretly gay — there’s so many opinions that you can take into Chasing Amy and come out of it having your opinion either validated or you’re just enraged. That’s the mark of a good movie — it makes us talk about it. It makes us feel, it makes us explore these things. 

I love that everybody has their own reaction to it. I’ve never met anybody who didn’t have a strong opinion on it. These are films that we need to talk about where we’ve been but also where we’re going. One of the big marks of progress is that when you watch Chasing Amy, you can see how far we’ve come in the last 25 years since that movie came out. There are lots more lesbian stories, though I wish more of them had electricity in them. (laughs) Chasing Amy has influenced the culture, and we who have been influenced by that are now influencing culture right back and making our own stories and our own movies. That’s a really positive, beautiful thing.