Chasing amy
After box-office bomb Mallrats, everyone thought Kevin Smith was done. Then he made comeback classic Chasing Amy. The motor-mouthed filmmaker sits down with Total Film to celebrate the 20th anniversary of his career-saving comedy-drama…
Kevin Smith recalls his career-saving classic.
Before starting Chasing Amy, I was in the same place I’d find myself in for the rest of my career,” recalls writer, director, podcaster and all-round chatty man Kevin Smith. “You make something people like - ‘Hurray!’ Make something people don’t like? ‘You’re finished!’”
Such was the situation back in ’96 when a 27-year-old Smith started work on his third film, a romcom love triangle between comic-book men Holden (Ben Affleck) and Banky (Jason Lee) and lesbian Alyssa (Joey Lauren Adams). “We were flavour of the month indiekids with Clerks, then Mallrats died a thousand deaths at the box office and we were ground zero,” he admits. “We were kind of considered done.”
Well, not quite. It was at this point that Smith surprised people with a sharp left turn. While his first foray into Universal’s big studio world proved to be Kryptonite to punters and critics alike, the New Jersey filmmaker regarded this stumble as a makeor-break opportunity rather than a Hulk-sized failure. He’d recently inked a deal with Weinstein hitmachine Miramax (note: news of Harvey Weinstein’s alleged sexual harrassment broke after Smith did this interview; Smith has since tweeted, “He financed the first 14 years of my career – it makes me feel ashamed”) and was ready to embark on his most personal work yet.
“My friend and producer Scott Mosier was very tight with Gwen Turner, writer of the movie Go Fish, which played at Sundance the same year as Clerks,” Smith tells Total Film. “Their movie was about lesbians, our movie was about two dudes who love each other, would never fuck, but probably should, so they were very much in the same spirit,” he says. “I was like ‘Dude, you’re in love with this girl! You should write a movie about this. Write a movie about a straight guy who falls in love with a lesbian.’”
When Mosier didn’t bite, Smith forged ahead with the screenplay himself, and first bounced the concept off Mallrats’ producer Jim Jacks. “I told Jim and he goes, ‘Do it like Clueless.
Set it in high school. That’s the movie to model after, they’re breaking through!’” explains Smith. “So I started writing and had about 12 pages of Chasing Amy set in a high school.”
Ultimately, the school idea was ditched for a more mature approach. “If you look at Chasing Amy, there’s this subplot of Holden and Banky torn between commercial and artistic instincts,” says Smith. “Believe me, I’m no Aronofsky. I can’t say it as beautifully as mother! but there was an allegorical attempt at expressing, ‘Who do I be for the rest of my life?’ This studio guy who makes stuff everyone loves, or do I stay true to my artistic voice that got us here?’”
As per usual with Smith’s work, personal inspirations began creeping in. “Back in ’96, I was still the same guy I was in high school relationships – the motherfucker who’s jealous,” he admits. “It was, ‘Who’d you date before me? How big’s his dick?’ All that stupid immature shit. I’d never seen a flick address male sexual self-esteem or the guy who doesn’t think he’s good enough so I started writing Chasing Amy as a therapeutic exercise and damn it if at the end of writing that script I hadn’t changed.” he chuckles. “By the time I’d finished the movie, I didn’t even recognise that version of myself.”
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Progressing with a shoestring budget, Smith, Mosier and their cast experienced few hiccups bar a minor film stock issue (“That footage you see during the ‘we all got to sleep together’ scene? That’s the only footage that exists, there are no alternate takes”). And now, as Justice League looms on the horizon, the writer-director’s keen to point out that it was on Chasing Amy that he introduced Affleck to a key text: “That’s where he first read The Dark Knight Returns,” he beams.
Twenty years on, he’s still grinning, for Chasing Amy did exactly what he set out to do – return with a statement, twang viewers’ heartstrings and solidify his position as a fan favourite.
“Even if you weren’t gay or a guy who fell in love with a gay woman, everybody understands relationships,” he shrugs. “It was a new variation on an old theme, and the time to do that was in my twenties – that’s when you make your grand statement. I fear the next time I make something like Chasing Amy, because it’ll come from some fucking sad place.” He takes a rare pause. “Chasing Amy saved my film career, and I probably won’t make a movie that gets a reaction like that for the rest of my life. And that’s fine. You know how many people don’t get any? I’m happy with the fucking one.”
CHASING AMY IS AVAILABLE ON DVD AND BD.