Is there a film that saved your life?
Chasing Chasing Amy is one of the most personal essays about a piece of media that I have ever seen. Directed by Sav Rodgers, the film explores how Kevin Smith’s critically-lauded Chasing Amy has a complicated relationship with queer and transgender people, and, as time progresses, how that gap becomes wider and wider. Rodgers, a transgender man, connected with Smith’s 1997 comedy immediately, and he even explains that he used to watch it every day. Producer Alex Schmider, who also serves as GLAAD’s Director of Transgender Representation, worked closely with Rodgers throughout Chasing Chasing‘s development and production, and the film is eye-opening and unbelievably rewarding.
Since Rodgers has such a personal connection with Smith’s film, I immediately wondered what Schmider’s connection to original film was. He cites another film from the late ’90s that he has a fraught relationship with, and it really illuminates how our minds can personally gravitate towards something and not really know why.
“My relationship with Chasing Amy was all but none before I got involved with the project,” Schmider explains at the top of our conversation. “I remember seeing the cover in Blockbusters growing up. I was never checking it out, though. What compelled me to be a part of this movie is that, in many ways, it’s a tribute and commentary to the movies that change and save our lives. I have that with Boys Don’t Cry growing up. It’s a complicated relationship that I have, because it was an intense relief that I wasn’t the only one experiencing my gender as a transgender man but I was simultaneously terrified. It delayed my own self-acceptance for about a decade. My relationship with Chasing Amy is relatively low, but my relationship to a movie that changed and saved my life is one-to-one with Sav [Rodgers]’s relationship with Kevin Smith’s film. His relationship with it is also very different after interrogating it.”
As we become more tolerant and educated about other peoples’ feelings and identities, it’s tempting to say that we should automatically censor media that doesn’t align with sensitivities today. Schmider doesn’t necessarily agree with that. During our conversation, I mentioned how HBO’s Sex and the City depicts conversations about identity and sexuality that we wouldn’t have now because we are more well-informed. Schmider says that we should keep that media as a mile marker to remind us what has come and, ultimately, how far we still have to go.
“The thing about looking back at any media is keeping in mind that it is a product of its time,” he says. “I come from a place of media criticism, and I love to interrogate why and how it was made and how it affected or influenced audiences at the time. If we have moved anywhere close to progress, we are able to look at something differently in the same way that Chasing Chasing Amy is a meditation on growing up. Inevitably and hopefully, our perspectives are changing because of the different life experiences and the people we come in contact with, so we are going to view our pasts different. It’s going to be different than how we felt in the moment. I think that’s a positive. If we don’t have a way to measure that or look back and reflect on, we can’t really have a sense of the progress or evolution that’s come. There’s a conversation to be had, and, with producing, I like to look at stories that have been told or overrepresented or underrepresented. Why have we seen so many trans stories marred in trauma and not the best parts of our lives? If we ask those questions, we can get to the root of why we haven’t been at the center of our own stories for so long. How can we challenge and reimagine what we can see? There’s a value in that. If you can look back to understand the patterns, and I don’t think you can do that if you remove the past. It doesn’t serve us if we can’t see how the past has been like for us.”
Something that might surprise audiences about Rodgers’ film is how close he and Smith become during Rodgers’ exploration. There is a scene where Rodgers nervously walks through Smith’s house as he shows Rodgers memorabilia and history of his beloved filmmaking career, and Chasing Chasing doesn’t shy away from showing how strong the bond is between these two directors. It goes beyond mentorship–we are witnessing the birth and progression of a respectful, true friendship. Rodgers captures Smith’s devotion to listening to Rodgers’ story. Every straight, cisgender man should take note of how they should listen to a trans or non-binary person from how Smith does with Rodgers.
“Being a friend of Sav’s first and foremost, I got to know that friendship more intimately than a producer just looking at cuts and footage would–I truly know that their friendship is a strong one,” Schmider says. “Kevin tells Sav in the film, ‘You can never bother me,’ and that’s very indicative of the bond that they have. That’s unbelievably real. So much of it is from the fact that both Kevin and Sav have positively influenced each other. Kevin says that it’s a different experience for him to have audiences say something positive about Chasing Amy, and then to have Sav come into himself as a person and filmmaker, there’s a reciprocal affirmation happening. It’s been really remarkable to see the growth of Kevin as a person and his own acknowledgement of his shortcomings coupled with Sav’s own coming-of-age. I’ll quote the movie that it was “surprising and delightful” to watch their relationship on-screen is authentic to what it is off-screen.
One of my favorite scenes in the film is one that we, as a filmmaking team, were struggling with. There is a moment after the Joey [Lauren Adams] interview and we talk about Harvey Weinstein. Where did we want to go from there? It was true to life that Sav wanted to reconnect with Kevin in order to figure out the next iteration of the film was. Typically in stories about trans people, there’s a lot of exhibition of physical transition. We were all advocating that rather in do it in that kind of way, there was an acknowledgement from Sav about the steps that he’s taken and the reaction from Kevin not recognizing him. There is acknowledgement of that journey, but it’s a lead-in to an emotional moment where Sav was excited to share himself with Kevin and Kevin gives that back to Sav. That’s such a beautiful and important moment.”
At the end of the film, we realize how much Rodgers has put himself in front of the camera. We see how his love of Chasing Amy has hit every corner of his life, and he says, “I’ve been making a documentary that has forced me to be reflective on the nature of my identity and being in a vulnerable state several hours out of the day. This is not the movie that I set out to make, but it’s the one that we have.” Maybe Rodgers will come back to Smith’s film in fifteen or twenty years, but by becoming involved with the doc’s narrative, we can almost see him turning a page for his own life. Schmider reflects on seeing his friend have faith in his friend as a director and storyteller.
“[That line] is important to say,” Schmider says after a pause. “It’s not the movie that we set out to make at the beginning–Sav never expected to be a central protagonist in his own film. That’s not why he set out to tell this story, and he wanted to interrogate Chasing Amy and its relationship to the LGBTQ community compared to his own. Because Sav is such a generous and open collaborator–and he mentions this in interviews–that he listened to the people surrounding him saying that they weren’t here for Chasing Amy but for the relationship to him. This is a film that saved his life, and he is the emotional core of what is driving everyone to be interested to what it is all about. He listened to that feedback and put himself in the center despite having some discomfort over what that might look like. Ultimately, I think the film, and he agrees, is its best because of the personal touch that is so essential to what we take away from the film. In any kind of filmmaking, especially in documentary filmmaking, you have to adapt to what the story is telling you it is. No matter how many best laid plans are laid out in front of you. If you aren’t listening to where the story and people are telling you where you should go, it’s going to be lacking in honesty and authenticity. It’s a testament to Sav as a director to be vulnerable about that and the trust amongst the producing team to be confident in the decisions being made.”
Chasing Chasing Amy is the Closing Night Film for Outfest 2023, and it makes its Los Angeles premiere on July 23 at the The Montalbán Theatre.
