Chasing Amy is a 1997 romantic comedy about two comic book artists: Holden McNeil (Ben Affleck), a heterosexual male, and Alyssa Jones (Joey Lauren Adams), a lesbian. Written and directed by Kevin Smith, it chronicles how they fall in love and the difficulties they face. One of their main obstacles is that Holden's best friend and partner in comics, Banky Edwards, played by Jason Lee, disapproves of the relationship both because he is slightly homophobic and jealous of Alyssa's role in Holden's life.

The movie is notorious for its frank sexual dialogue, and was originally inspired by a brief scene from an early movie by a friend of Smith's, Gwen Turner's Go Fish, wherein one of the lesbian characters imagines her friends passing judgment on her for "selling out" by sleeping with a man.

The film won two awards at the 1998 Independent Spirit Awards (Best Screenplay for Smith and Best Supporting Actor for Jason Lee) and Joey Lauren Adams was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Comedy/Musical.

Dave Pirner of Soul Asylum was the Musical Consultant/Producer on this film and wrote music for it and numerous other Kevin Smith films.

Cast

Trivia

• Kevin Smith was dating Joey Lauren Adams while he wrote the script, which was partly inspired by her.

• The Collector who calls Banky a tracer is played by Scott Mosier, a friend of Kevin Smith's and the film's producer. The boy he dissuades asking Banky for an autograph is Casey Affleck, younger brother of the film's star Ben Affleck.

• The "titty cake" shown in the montage was a last second addition to the film. Kevin Smith designed the face of the cake himself.

• During the hockey rink scene, which took place at the Ocean Ice Palace in Brick Township, New Jersey, when Holden is prying for more details about Alyssa's sexual encounter with the character Rick Derris, the man sitting next to them is Ernie O'Donnell, who played Rick Derris in Smith's earlier film Clerks.

• Alyssa (Adams) tells Holden (Affleck) outside the hockey rink that she has had sex with Gwen Turner and Shannon Hamilton, who were played by Joey Lauren Adams and Ben Affleck in Mallrats.

• Originally, Jay and Silent Bob were to not appear in the film. Their images were to only be seen as Bluntman and Chronic. Instead, Silent Bob delivers his longest monologue in any of his movies about the titular Amy.

• In Clerks, Alyssa appeared in what was called "The Lost Scene". This scene goes over the entire encounter at the funeral Dante and Randal attended. When Randal spotted Alyssa he called her "fingercuffs". The lost scene was animated as if it came out of the Clerks cartoon, Alyssa's character was voiced by Joey Lauren Adams.

References

• The film's title is mentioned in a line of the song Love Cliche by the Montreal group Bran Van 3000, used to refer to a character who is in love with a girl who reveals herself as bisexual.
• The film shares its title with an Allister song.
• In the MMORPG 'World of Warcraft' there is a quest entitled "Chasing A-Me 01". A-Me is a robotic gorilla.

See also

• New Jersey films

External links

• Kevin Smith essay at criterionco.com

Comedy-drama films | Cult films | Lesbian films | 1997 films | Films set in New Jersey | Films directed by Kevin Smith | American films | LGBT-related films | English-language films

Chasing Amy | Persiguiendo a Amy | Méprise multiple | In cerca di Amy | Chasing Amy