Chasing Amy

Chasing Amy
Theatrical release poster
Directed by Kevin Smith
Produced by Scott Mosier
Written by Kevin Smith
Starring
Music by David Pirner
Cinematography David Klein
Edited by Scott Mosier
Kevin Smith
Production
company
Distributed by Miramax Films
Release date
  • April 4, 1997 (1997-04-04)
Running time
 113 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget $250,000[1]
Box office $12 million[2]

Chasing Amy is a 1997 American romantic comedy-drama film written and directed by Kevin Smith and starring Ben Affleck, Joey Lauren Adams, and Jason Lee. The film is about a male comic artist (Affleck) who falls in love with a lesbian/bisexual woman (Adams), to the displeasure of his best friend (Lee). It is the third film in Smith's View Askewniverse series.

The film was originally inspired by a brief scene from an early film by a friend of Smith's. In Guinevere Turner's Go Fish, one of the lesbian characters imagines her friends passing judgment on her for "selling out" by sleeping with a man. Smith was dating Adams at the time he was writing the script, which was also partly inspired by her.[3]

The film won two awards at the 1998 Independent Spirit Awards (Best Screenplay for Smith and Best Supporting Actor for Lee).

Plot

Holden McNeil (Ben Affleck) and Banky Edwards (Jason Lee) are comic book artists and lifelong best friends. They meet fellow comic book artist Alyssa Jones (Joey Lauren Adams) at a comic book convention in New York City, where they are promoting their comic Bluntman and Chronic. Holden is attracted to Alyssa, but soon learns that she is a lesbian. The two begin hanging out, and a deep friendship develops. Eventually, Holden is no longer able to contain his feelings, and confesses his love to Alyssa. She is initially angry with him, but that night, the two sleep together and begin a romantic relationship.

This new development worsens the tension between Holden and Banky, who is homophobic and resents Alyssa for coming between him and his best friend. He investigates and uncovers dirt on Alyssa's past, and he reports to Holden that Alyssa participated in a threesome with two guys during high school, who gave her the nickname "Finger Cuffs". Holden is deeply upset by this revelation, having previously believed that he is the first man Alyssa had ever slept with. He angrily confronts Alyssa while attending a hockey game, and clumsily attempts baiting her into confessing. During a tearful argument, she tells Holden about her "many" youthful sexual experimentations, and refuses to apologize for her past. Holden leaves feeling disillusioned and furious.

Later, during lunch with Jay and Silent Bob (Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith), Silent Bob reveals that he was once in a relationship similar to Holden's. Despite the fact that he was in love with his girlfriend, Amy, his neurosis about her adventurous sexual past caused him to sabotage the relationship and leave her. Angry with himself for letting her go, he has "spent every day since then chasing Amy, so to speak."

Moved by Silent Bob's story, Holden devises a plan to fix both his relationship with Alyssa and his estranged friendship with Banky. He invites them both over and tells Alyssa that he would like to get over her past and remain her boyfriend. He also tells Banky that he realizes that Banky is in love with him—kissing him passionately to prove the point. Holden suggests a threesome. Though initially shocked, Banky agrees to participate, but Alyssa refuses, explaining to Holden that it will not save their relationship. Before leaving, she states that she will always love him, but she will not be his "whore." Banky then leaves the room without saying a word.

One year later, both Banky and Alyssa are busy promoting their own respective comics at a convention in New York. It is revealed that Holden has dissolved their partnership over Bluntman and Chronic, leaving the viewer with the assumption that he sold the publishing and creative rights over to Banky (which is corroborated in the beginning of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back). Banky smiles sadly at seeing Holden, who silently congratulates him for his success on his own solo comic. Banky gestures over to a booth hosted by Alyssa, and provides wordless encouragement to Holden to go talk to her. He has a brief, quietly emotional conversation with Alyssa, and gives her a copy of Chasing Amy, his new comic based on their relationship. After Holden leaves, Alyssa's new girlfriend (Virginia Smith) arrives and asks who she was talking to. A shaken, misty-eyed Alyssa replies, "Oh, just some guy I knew."

Cast

Reception

Box office

On a budget of $250,000, the film grossed a total of $12,021,272 in theaters.[1][2][4] Chasing Amy played at three locations and earned $52,446 upon its opening weekend in the United States.[5] The following week, the film was expanded to a further twenty-two theaters where it grossed $302,406.[6] During the 18–20 April 1997 weekend, Chasing Amy was screened at a further 494 locations, where it earned $1,642,402 and moved into the Top 10.[7]

Critical reception

Chasing Amy received positive reviews from critics. Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a score of 88% based on reviews from 83 critics, with a rating average of 7.4/10. According to the site's summary of the critical consensus, "Chasing Amy explores gender roles, sexual mores, and the limits of friendship with a mixture of sensitivity, raw honesty, and director/screenwriter Kevin Smith's signature raunchy humor."[8] Metacritic, which assigns a score of 1–100 to individual film reviews, gives the film an average rating of 71 based on 28 reviews.[9] Audiences polled by Cinemascore gave the film a grade A-minus.[10]

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times said "While the surface of his film sparkles with sharp, ironic dialogue, deeper issues are forming, and Chasing Amy develops into a film of touching insights. Most romantic comedies place phony obstacles in the way of true love, but Smith knows that at some level there's nothing funny about being in love: It's a dead serious business, in which your entire being is at risk."[11] Ebert believed the film was an improvement over Smith's previous effort Mallrats and he added that Adams was a discovery.[11] Charles Taylor, writing for Salon, quipped "Chasing Amy isn't going to single-handedly save romantic comedy, but Smith (Clerks) has made the only romantic comedy in quite a while that acknowledges, even celebrates, the fact that love and sex are emotional anarchy."[12] Writing in Time Out New York, Andrew Johnston observed: "Chasing Amy, Kevin Smith's third feature, does to romantic comedy what Stan Lee and Steve Ditko's Spider-Man did to superhero comics in the '60s: It makes a tired genre newly relevant by giving its characters motivations and problems that seem real."[13]

Accolades

Award Date of ceremony Category Recipients and nominees Result
British Independent Film Awards[14] October 29, 1998 Best Foreign Independent Film Chasing Amy Nominated
Chicago Film Critics Association[15] March 1, 1998 Most Promising Actress Joey Lauren Adams Won
Golden Globe Award[16] January 18, 1998 Best Actress in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy Joey Lauren Adams Nominated
Independent Spirit Awards[17] March 21, 1998 Best Film Chasing Amy Nominated
Best Screenplay Kevin Smith Won
Best Supporting Actor Jason Lee Won
Las Vegas Film Critics Society[18] January 1998 Most Promising Actress Joey Lauren Adams Won
Los Angeles Film Critics Association[19] January 15, 1996 Best Screenplay Kevin Smith Nominated
MTV Movie Awards[20] May 30, 1998 Best Breakthrough Performance Joey Lauren Adams Nominated
Best Kiss Joey Lauren Adams and Carmen Llywelyn Nominated
National Board of Review of Motion Pictures[21] December 8, 1998 Special Recognition for Excellence in Filmmaking Chasing Amy Won

Home media

A special edition DVD was released with 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen picture and Dolby 5.1 surround sound. It includes the following bonus features: Audio commentary from cast and crew; Introduction by Smith; deleted scenes; outtakes; and a theatrical trailer.

Chasing Amy was originally released as a Criterion Collection Laserdisc. Smith raised eyebrows when he recorded the running commentary for the Laserdisc, as he started it by saying, "This is a Laserdisc, and I'd like to take a moment to say 'fuck DVD'." When Criterion released the DVD—which re-uses the Laserdisc running commentary—Smith recorded a special introduction in which he apologized for the comment and jokingly attributed it to Jason Mewes.

Smith revealed in early 2009 at a Q&A session in Vancouver that he and the film's cast were currently recording new material for an upcoming Criterion Blu-ray release of the film.[22] However, this Blu-ray was yet to happen.

Novel

In Japan, the screenplay of Chasing Amy was adapted into a novel by Kenichi Eguchi and published by Aoyama Publishing. The unique concept of the book is that it is roughly half-novel, half-manga, with Moyoko Anno providing the art for the comic book pages.[23] In an episode of SModcast, Smith revealed that while he was thrilled to have a manga based on his film, he was shocked when he read the novelization, as the characters' sexual histories, which are just mentioned in conversation in the film, are depicted in the novel's manga illustrations as sexually graphic flashbacks.

Smith had the original screenplay published along with his "Clerks" script from Miramax Books.

Sponge clip

The music clip for the song "Have You Seen Mary" performed by the band Sponge features several scenes of the film. In Chasing Amy, the song is played in the scene while Holden and Hooper are at Jack's Music Shoppe.

Cultural references

In a scene originally written for Mallrats, several principal characters share memories of sexual escapades gone awry. This scene reveals the character's own emotional "sex scars" and was purposefully created—down to the style of dialogue and set dressing—to mirror a scene from Steven Spielberg's Jaws in which Quint and Hooper share the physical scars they've both earned from encounters with sharks.[24]

References

  1. 1 2 "Chasing Amy: Synopsis". View Askew Productions. Retrieved January 18, 2009.
  2. 1 2 "Chasing Amy (1997)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved January 18, 2009.
  3. ↑ Kevin Smith (June 26, 2000). "Kevin Smith's comments on his own film". The Criterion Collection. Archived from the original on December 9, 2008.
  4. ↑ Sciretta, Peter (January 21, 2015). "The Best Movies of Sundance Film Festival History 1985-1999". /Film.
  5. ↑ "April 4-6, 1997 Weekend". Box Office Mojo. Internet Movie Database. Retrieved March 29, 2012.
  6. ↑ "April 11-13, 1997 Weekend". Box Office Mojo. Internet Movie Database. Retrieved March 29, 2012.
  7. ↑ "April 18-20, 1997 Weekend". Box Office Mojo. Internet Movie Database. Retrieved March 29, 2012.
  8. ↑ "Chasing Amy (1997)". Rotten Tomatoes. Flixster. Retrieved March 29, 2012.
  9. ↑ "Chasing Amy". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved March 29, 2012.
  10. ↑ Published on Apr 11, 1997 (1997-04-11). "Critical Mass". EW.com. Retrieved December 4, 2013.
  11. 1 2 Ebert, Roger (April 18, 1997). "Chasing Amy". Chicago Sun-Times. Sun-Times Media Group. Retrieved March 29, 2012.
  12. ↑ Taylor, Charles (May 11, 1997). "Chasing Amy". Salon. Retrieved March 29, 2012.
  13. ↑ Johnston, Andrew (April 2–9, 1997). "Chasing Amy". Time Out New York: 68.
  14. ↑ "1998 British Independent Film Awards". British Independent Film Awards. Archived from the original on July 1, 2012. Retrieved March 29, 2012.
  15. ↑ "Chicago Film Critics Awards - 1988-97". Chicago Film Critics Association. Retrieved March 29, 2012.
  16. ↑ "Nominees for Golden Globe Awards". CNN. Turner Broadcasting System. December 18, 1997. Retrieved March 29, 2012.
  17. ↑ "The Independent Spirit Awards: 1998". Film Threat. March 23, 1998. Retrieved March 29, 2012.
  18. ↑ "1997 Sierra Award winners". Las Vegas Film Critics Society. Archived from the original on March 31, 2012. Retrieved March 29, 2012.
  19. ↑ Kronke, David (December 14, 1997). "'L.A. Confidential' Gets L.A. Critics' Top Award". Los Angeles Times. Tribune Company. Retrieved March 29, 2012.
  20. ↑ "1998 MTV Movie Awards". MTV. Viacom International. Retrieved March 29, 2012.
  21. ↑ "Awards for 1997". National Board of Review of Motion Pictures. Archived from the original on March 30, 2012. Retrieved March 29, 2012.
  22. ↑ Scooped by Steven Kirkham; Robert Jamieson; James Turner (March 29, 2009). "Vancouver Q&A: What We Learned..." News Askew. Archived from the original on April 4, 2009. Retrieved May 6, 2009.
  23. ↑ Vizmedia.com Archived June 7, 2011, at the Wayback Machine.
  24. ↑ "The Hows and Whys of 'Chasing Amy'". Criterion.com. Archived from the original on December 9, 2008. Retrieved May 6, 2009.
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