Chasing Chasing Amy trailer puts Kevin Smith rom-com under a microscope

Filmmaker Sav Rodgers was just 12-years-old when he first sat down to watch Kevin Smith's raunchy romantic-comedy Chasing Amy, in which Ben Affleck's character Holden woos Joey Lauren Adams' titular lesbian. By the time the end credits rolled, his life was changed forever.

"It was a transformative experience," Rodgers, who identifies as queer, tells EW. "It was the first time I really saw queer people onscreen, but also I was so drawn in by the script and its sense of romanticism. I was like, 'This could be a job. That's amazing.' My path really started there."

Sixteen years on, Rodgers has now directed a documentary about Smith's film titled Chasing Chasing Amy, the trailer for which EW can exclusively debut. The movie reveals the ways Chasing Amy inspired and comforted the director as a kid, while also documenting the LGBTQ+ community's criticisms of this romance between a straight man and a lesbian.

"The movie's amazing, but whatever moved you, there's a dark side too," Adams, one of the interviewees, tells Rodgers in the film's trailer. "I can't erase the past," adds Smith, who offered to help Rodgers with the doc after the budding filmmaker delivered a TED Talk on his relationship with the 1997 film.

"Kevin had zero defensiveness in our interview process," Rodgers tells EW, about discussing criticisms of the film with the Clerks director. "He was very open with me in a way that was refreshing, talking about the complicated feelings towards this film."

The documentary tracks important changes in Rodgers' own life — to be unpacked in the context of the film — which prompted the filmmaker to feature himself far more in the work than he originally intended.

"Oh, you have no idea," Rodgers says with a laugh. "I did not set out to be the protagonist of this documentary, but I'm very thankful to have great collaborators around me to say, 'You should do that.'"

Chasing Chasing Amy will receive its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival June 8. Watch the trailer above.

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