Kevin’s Smith’s ahead-of-its-time love story Chasing Amy left an impact on the queer community and seasoned film buffs alike. Perhaps no one more than filmmaker Sav Rodgers, whose documentary Chasing Chasing Amy follows his path from closeted child to out-and-proud transgender man. Rodgers embarked on a journey to document the creation of his favorite film, but the final product was something he never saw coming. Offscreen Central’s Cassie Hager spoke with Sav and his wife Riley about the film’s legacy, and how their love story was practically written for the big screen.

Cassie Hager: It’s so great to meet you two! You’ve been doing the festival circuit for Chasing Chasing Amy for a while now. The obvious question: Why this movie? It clearly made a huge impact on you.
Sav Rodgers: I saw Chasing Amy at age 12 as a closeted, queer trans kid in Kansas. It was the thing that saved my life. It was a life raft for me when I really needed one, and so the premise of the documentary really starts there.

Cassie Hager: You were only two when the film was released, so how did you first see it?
Sav Rodgers: I saw it because my mom just happened to have the criterion DVD. She liked Kevin Smith movies, so we even had Clerks at home. That, and I was going through a phase where I just wanted to watch Ben Affleck movies.

Cassie Hager: Ah yes, we all go through that phase.
Sav Rodgers: Exactly! So as I was going through my Ben Affleck phase I stumbled across this movie that radically changed my perspective on what my future could be, and also what my job could be. It’s not a perfect Transmasculine story by any means, but there was something there in terms of queerness that I really latched on to.

Cassie Hager: So Riley, tell me how you got involved with this.
Riley Rodgers: Sav and I knew each other for a long time, and we were in a long-distance relationship before the documentary began.
Sav Rodgers: There are a lot of parallels between our life and what happens in Chasing Amy. Those parallels are drawn out throughout the film, and it becomes, like, a very weird coincidence that all of this happened. But really, Riley is the star of the movie and the star of my life.
Riley Rodgers: I was present during the whole filming process. It gave me a lot of opportunities to bring some comic relief, and I enjoy doing that.

Cassie Hager: Doing some research on Chasing Amy, I learned it’s quite popular in some circles but controversial in others.
Sav Rodgers: There is a lot of discourse around Chasing Amy and its politics, but I think there are more interesting questions to ask. What does it look like in context? What does it look like to see the progress we’ve made from 1997 to now? Or the way that we talk about queerness? I don’t think “how well did this age?” is necessarily the most interesting question.

Cassie Hager: There’s a moment in the film when you’re interviewing Joey Lauren Adams and she gets incredibly candid. She asks what you’re really looking for in speaking to her. That would have made me so nervous. How did that feel?
Sav Rodgers: I think it was an indicator that the conversation was going to be different than what I had planned, and that was OK. I’m thankful that Joey decided to be as truthful as she was, because she didn’t have to be. It would have been easy for her to give the same answers about Chasing Amy that she had given since the film had come out. I really respected that level of vulnerability from her.

For screening dates and more information on the film, visit ChasingAmyDoc.com