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Kevin Smith revealed that his 1997 movie “Chasing Amy” upset “the most famous lesbian in the world”: Ellen DeGeneres.
In a clip for the documentary “Chasing Chasing Amy,” Smith, 54, discussed the LGBTQ+ community’s reaction to the film, which follows a male comic artist, played by Ben Affleck, who tries to woo a lesbian, played by Joy Lauren Adams.
“Do you understand why certain LGBTQ people may not like ‘Chasing Amy?’” Smith was asked in the clip.
“Yeah, of course. Absolutely,” the famous director responded. “Believe me, I’ve had 22 years to get used to that. I got used to that on the f—ing first week it came out. There were some people that were upset.”
“The biggest blowback, and God’s truth, that I heard, felt, and was told about was when they told me that Ellen and Anne Heche went to see Chasing Amy, and it was reported that they walked out in the first half hour,” Smith revealed.
He added, “And us being like, ‘Well, that’s the most famous lesbian in the world. We just lost her. That means we’re never getting on The Ellen Show.’”
DeGeneres, 66, came out of the closet the same year that “Chasing Amy” was released. She dated Heche (who died in a car accident in 2022) from 1997 to 2000.
Smith, being a straight man, acknowledged that making a movie that some critics said set lesbian identity backwards was problematic.
But Sav Rodgers, a queer filmmaker, actually had a positive experience watching “Chasing Amy.” Rodgers even did a Ted Talk in 2018 about how the film “saved his life,” which led to him becoming the director of the new documentary.
“The spirit of Chasing Amy kept me alive for years to come despite the suicidal thoughts that began to permeate from the trauma that I was continuously experiencing at school,” Rodgers said in the TED Talk. “No matter what I was dealing with, I had this one movie to bring me solace.”
The “Chasing Amy” documentary premiered last year at the Tribeca Film Festival, where Smith told Entertainment Weekly that he understands the movie didn’t sit well with everyone.
“This is a flick that was made at a different time,” he said. “I can’t exactly apologize for my complete lack of education. I didn’t go to college for liberal arts studies or something like that. I just grew up with a gay brother, and Chasing Amy was kind of a fulfilled promise to my brother.”
Smith also said he “absolutely loved” the finished documentary about “Chasing Amy.”
“Look, anything that keeps these movies alive for a current generation, I’m all okay with,” he explained. “Even if every documentarian wanted to revisit the movies and be like, ‘Here’s why they’re bad,’ at least it puts those movies [in front of] a current audience as opposed to racking them with old black-and-whites. For somebody to be like, ‘We’re going to take a look at your work in the modern era,’ it means that, for at least a minute, that movie’s relevant again.”
“Chasing Chasing Amy” is now out nationwide on VOD.