Originally posted in an online journal on September 28th, 2003.

Chasing Amy: Love, Loss, Lesbians, and Literary Genius

It’s safe to say that a very large percentage of my humor, my writing, and even to a limited extent, the way I speak, has been directly influenced by Kevin Smith. Somehow a fat nobody from New Jersey made a connection with a fat nobody from Ohio. I just got him. This is a man who has lived the American Dream. He laid it all on the line for something he thought was good and worthwhile, and he reaped the benefits of that decision. This is someone who has been making a living doing exactly what he wants to do, and that’s a miracle for anyone, let alone in the Executive Obsessed Hollywood circle. That’s admirable. So, too, is that this man has earned a cult following by both ripping off past auters and telling dick and fart jokes in a way that makes them come off as having genuine comedic integrity. Most admirable is that the time that Kevin dropped one of the best movies of the 1990′s in early ’97 based off of his own personal experiences. No day-in-the-life motif that dominated his first two films. No absurd situational comedy. This movie was one of a kind. An uproarious film that is peppered with vulgar and base sexual humor that in the same breath offers up some of the greatest characterization with some of the most vividly emotional and soul stirring drama ever seen in the comedy genre. Fuck, he even pulled a performance out of Ben Affleck. Chasing Amy is a story of love, and loss. It is a story of innocence and understanding. It a story of incredibly intimate personal tragedy, and because of that, it deserves every modicum of admiration it receives. In my mind, Amy is an achievement in cinema that few people have ever come close to accomplishing.

It’s a very misleadingly ingenious script. The love shared between Ben Affleck’s Holden MacNeil and Joey Lauren Adams’ Alyssa Jones is tangible. It permeates the movie. Which is why the ultimate heartbreak is so convincing and shattering. Alyssa is a free spirit, a roamer, an unchained soul. She has looked for love in every nook, in every alley, in every bed in New York. She’s tried men, women. She’s tried everything in the search for the one person who would make her the happiest. She finds that in Holden, a very traditional and flawed twenty-something man. Holden’s best friend, Jason Lee’s Banky Edwards, is at once both immature and inimitable. He’s funny, but in that embarrassing kind of way. He doesn’t approve of the relationship between his best-friend and the -up-until-recently lesbian, Alyssa. It’s both because he has a passive-aggressive prejudice against gay people, and because he sees that the relationship will break both Holden’s heart, and their 20-year friendship. Thus, a triangle is formed, and one of extremely accurate emotions and agendas.

The characters are what pushes the story forward. Smith creates them vividly, and their reasons and actions are appropriately misplaced and ignorant and incorrect. They’re all flawed. They’re amazingly three-dimensional. Just when you root for the lovers to end up on top, you realize that sometimes they come off as absolute idiots, and that’s why they’re so perfect. It’s because they aren’t. Holden is dismissively stoic in his standards and beliefs. So much that he risks the two people he loves most in his life because of his stalwart inability to accept change. Banky is both the fool and the genius. He sees things for what they are, but his wisdom comes in the guise of pure idiocy. He is also full of hot air, and is a slur-spouting madman. He’s probably the least likable of the characters, and that’s exactly why he works so well. Alyssa is the pinnacle of reason. She’s done it all, and knows exactly what she wants and doesn’t want. of course, she does things wrong from time to time, but since this film is almost a love letter to Joey Lauren Adams, her character comes off as the one who is the most reasonable, despite her obscenely sordid past.

There is a reason this story works. It’s because the plot is derived almost verbatim from director Kevin Smith’s real-life stint with Adams. It’s obviously exaggerated, but Holden MacNeil is Kevin Smith, and he comes off as a likable loser, and as a complete fool. It’s nice to see honesty instead of ego for a change. It’s also amazing that Adams even agreed to be in the film. She is effectively playing herself, in a script that mirrors her real life relationship and brings out all the flaws in it. This film was made while the two were still dating, and that makes it even more remarkable that she would take a script that in some way was a harbinger of the inevitable defeat that their relationship would eventually come to.

The script points in this direction the whole time. You see the uncomfortableness of Holden when he witnesses Joey’s love for women for the first time. You see Banky rattling of reason after reason why the relationship isn’t going to work. You see Holden make all the wrong choices until there is simply none left to make. And in one of the best scenes in the movie, the plot is spelled out word for word by the character whose words we’re supposed to take least seriously, Banky:

BANKY
This is all going to end badly

HOLDEN
You don’t know that.

BANKY
I know you. You’re way too
conservative for that girl. She’s
been around and seen things we’ve only
read about in books.

HOLDEN
But we have read about them. So we’re
prepared.

BANKY
There’s no ‘we’ here. You’re going to
have to go through this alone. And
it’s one thing to read about shit, and
something different when you’re forced
to deal with it on a regular basis.
When you guys are walking in the mall
and both your heads turn at a really
nice looking chick, it’s going to eat
you up inside. You’ll spend most of
your time wondering when the other
shoe’s going to drop. Because for
you, this isn’t about cool weird sex
stuff, it’s about love.

HOLDEN
Maybe it is for her as well.

BANKY
Somehow I doubt it.

HOLDEN
Everyone’s not out to get someone in
life. Bank.

BANKY
Everybody has an agenda. Everyone.

HOLDEN
Yourself?

BANKY
My agenda is to watch your back.

HOLDEN
To what end?

BANKY
To insure that all this time we’ve
spent together, building something,
wasn’t wasted.

HOLDEN
She’s not going to ruin the comic.

BANKY
I wasn’t talking about the comic.

It’s Shakespearean. The tried and true “fool” of the story has the clearest vision and the bet advice and foresight. And because that dialogue is delivered by the least credible character, it’s all for naught. Flaws make stronger characters, and Amy has some of the strongest characterization of any film in recent memory.

This film deserves the Criterion Collection treatment it got on DVD. It’s a sucker-punch of a movie that is more than the sum of its parts. The movie uses drug, sex and vulgar humor while mixing in a relationship as real as any you see on the streets. It’s a lesson in love, with lesbians. It’s something that runs deeper than the jokes, and something that has more heart than movies that are solely based around a romance. This movie offers opinions on alternate lifestyles that are positive and reinforced. For my money, it doesn’t downplay same-sex relationships or imply that the “natural” way is man/woman. A majority of the supporting cast is gay or bisexual, and they are not played for laughs because of it. They are played for laughs because of the intelligence of their comments and the appropriate lashes they make at both the gay and straight communities. This movie is simultaneously serious and farcical and it balances itself on the edge of a razor. One false step and the movie could become either a mockery of itself or a blundering mess. It plays both cards as well as any veteran blackjack dealer, and not once does it misstep on its fine-line journey.

There are so few stories today that resonate with the sheer intensity and intelligence that Chasing Amy does. It preaches openness and understanding while offering up lines like :” I’ve got a weird thing for girls who say ‘aboot’.” It proves that in love, you have to put individuals ahead of their actions. That love exists everywhere, you just have to know where to look for it. And not limiting your options can yield some positive results. And it proves that great writing makes a great movie. This story is about love. It’s about all the right kinds of love in all the wrong places. It’s about human nature, and why we’re destined to be idiots. It’s about freedom, and the right to love the one your with, no matter who they are. Above all else, it’s about life, and all the shit it throws at you. We’re imperfect people in an imperfect world. And Chasing Amy is all of that in two short hours. Hats off, Kevin Smith.

You’ve made a believer out of me.

Share