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.
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.
The duo's business partnership also suffers, as they had been close to signing a lucrative deal to adapt Bluntman and Chronic into an animated TV series, and Banky feels that Holden no longer cares about their project.
An old friend of Banky's, who grew up with Alyssa, tells Holden she participated in a threesome with two boys back in high school.
In the parking lot, Alyssa angrily admits to the threesome but refuses to apologize for her past sexual experiences, wanting to continue their relationship.
One year later, Banky and Alyssa are busy promoting their own respective comics, Baby Dave and Idiosyncratic Routine, at a convention.
Banky smiles sadly at Holden, who silently congratulates him for his comic being successful, and gestures over to a booth hosted by Alyssa, encouraging him to speak to her.
Kevin Smith has said over the years that Chasing Amy was inspired by his brother being gay, his relationship with Joey Lauren Adams, whom he was dating during the making of the film, and a crush his producing partner Scott Mosier had on lesbian filmmaker Guinevere Turner.
[4] Turner helped find the location for the bar scenes, which were shot at the since-closed Meow Mix in downtown Manhattan.
[4] Miramax Films initially offered Smith a $2 million budget on the condition that he cast David Schwimmer, Drew Barrymore, and Jon Stewart as the leads.
According to the site's summary of the critical consensus, “Although Chasing Amy's depiction of queer sexuality is frustratingly clumsy, it handles an array of thorny themes with a mixture of sensitivity, raw honesty, and writer-director Kevin Smith's signature raunchy humor.
"[16] 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.
[18] In the book Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women's Love and Desire, Lisa M. Diamond cites the film as a notable example of female sexual fluidity in popular culture, writing that Chasing Amy "depicts a lesbian becoming involved with a man, contrary to the more widespread depictions of heterosexual women becoming involved in same-sex relationships.
[20][21][4] The film was criticized by Judith Kegan Gardiner in the book Masculinity Studies and Feminist Theory, describing Chasing Amy as representative of a "fairly repulsive genre of films" that feature a "heterosexual conversion narrative" that is "set in motion by the desire of a heterosexual person for a seemingly unattainable gay person.
"[22] The scene where Alyssa is shamed by her gay friends when they discover she is dating a man also received criticism from the lesbian community.
[23] On the film's 20th anniversary, Smith said, "For anyone who watches the movie now and goes, like, 'Ew, these sexual politics are ... not very subtle', you’ve gotta remember: It was made by a 26-year-old, 27-year-old guy, who really didn’t know anything and was learning in that moment.
[35] This release includes a new commentary track, a Q&A with the cast recorded at Vulgarthon 2005, a conversation between Kevin Smith and Joey Lauren Adams, and a feature-length documentary titled "Tracing Amy" that details the making of the film and its aftermath.
The band had previously contributed the song Can't Even Tell to the soundtrack of Smith's 1994 debut film Clerks.