Remembering Chasing Amy

For those of you on the east coast, I 'd like to let you know the weather here has been in the mid 70's and sunny for the last few days. :-)


I was thinking about Kevin Smith movies today. Mostly, how important they were for me initially becoming interested in writing and really willing to look for different kinds of films then the regular Hollywood films I used to watch. Smith's early films were intoxicating in their rawness and their wit. Being 16 or so, they were revolutionary. Unfortunately, as time progressed, and I became a more feverish reader, film watcher, etc. Smith's films felt less and less like those originals (Clerks, Chasing Amy, and to a lesser extent, Mallrats). A couple of summers ago, Clerks 2 came out, and I felt Smith regained some of his form, or at least finally figured out how to return to those characters that became iconic, and give them a worthy follow-up. Say what you will about a lot of the gags in that film, the final scene in the jail makes that movie a success, mostly because in that scene Dante and Randall feel real, feel raw, like they did way back when.

I discovered Clerks, conveniently enough, while playing roller-hockey with some friends in a church parking lot. It was part of my routine. Get home from school, and head over to the parking lot and play until dusk. One of the kids was raving about this hilarious movie he saw called "Clerks." The next chance I had I went to Blockbuster and rented the strange looking indie-black-and-white movie. I remember popping in the VCR and laughingawkwardly at the main character falling out of the closet to answer his phone. I was intrigued by the raw look of the film, as I had yet to really start exploring cinema but it didn't take long for the ferociously dense and filthydialogue to take over my senses. I loved the movie. Soon, I was talking about it with everyone, and that's when I discovered that two of the characters make an appearance in Mallrats. So back to Blockbuster. I liked Mallrats, not as much as Clerks, it definitely felt a little too cartoony compared to the realness of Clerks. But it was the character of Brodie that made me love that film. I was a little envious of Brodie's life, his way of speaking and his attitude. I mean the line, "You fuckers think just because a guy reads comics he can't start some shit!?" was a call to arms! Quoting Brodie would become a part of my existence - How many times have I said, "Breakfasts come and go, Renee, but Hartford, "the Whale," they only beat Vancouver once, maybe twice in a lifetime."?
I think what hit me with these films was that they weren't so far off from my own world. True, I was still in high school, but the future of living in my parents' basement, working in stores, discussing pop-culture with scholarly emphasis, sitting in bed playing video game hockey, etc. was only a couple years away! I guess suburban New Jersey's world isn't so different from suburban Long Island.

When "Chasing Amy" came out, I was the only person I knew who wanted to make the trip to the local arts cinema to see it. Like most films shown there, it was gone in a week, so I had to wait until it arrived at Blockbuster. When it did, I found a film that did more than make me laugh and feel at home with the character's world, I actually felt challenged. At the time, I thought Chasing Amy was one of the most powerful relationship films I'd ever seen. It had complex characters with complex emotions, yet it was masked by this outrageous dialogue driven humor. Most of all, I wanted to learn how to write a script like Chasing Amy. It just seemed to have everything I wanted in a movie, and without a big MOVIE sensation to it. It felt honest.

As I started writing my own scripts, I quickly saw how I had to work at not imitating these films. My first script I wrote in college definitely had a huge mall sequence that seemed a little too much like Mallrats...

But I kept watching films.

I kept reading.

I kept pushing my own writing.

But I always re-watched those films and not only enjoyed them for what they are, but for the memory of who I was when I first saw them.

Before I came west, I remember my friend Mike making a great comment about Dogma. He said something like, when I saw that in high school I thought it was so smart. But not anymore. It's nothing against Smith, I think it's more of the whole idea of time and place. I wanted nothing more but to see films like those made over and over, but at the same time I didn't. There was a time and a place when those films were perfect for me.

I'm reading the script for Chasing Amy for my directing actors class, and I'm really enjoying, looking at it from a new view, a new light. 10 years later, it still makes me long for the connection between my world and the characters' world. It makes me remember who I was when I first saw them, and that's more powerful function than being just some funny movie.


Okay, back to reading. Just thought I'd share some thoughts.