How ‘Chasing Amy’ changed this Kansas filmmaker’s life — and led to his own movie

As a 12-year kid from Olathe, Kansas, filmmaker Sav Rodgers watched a movie that would change his life.

“Chasing Amy,” the 1997 romantic comedy about a straight dude and a queer woman who fall in love, grossed $12 million at the box office and solidified director Kevin Smith’s status as an indie-film heavy hitter.

It also helped Rodgers understand his own queer identity. And it’s the subject of the documentary “Chasing Chasing Amy,” Rodgers’ first feature-length directorial project.

The film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in June, and Wichita audiences will have a chance to catch it at the Tallgrass Film Festival on Friday.

But the documentary Tallgrass audiences will see is not the film Rodgers set out to make.

“At the outset of the project, I did not want to be included in it as a character. I really wanted to stay behind the camera,” he said.

He set out to interview Kevin Smith and other members of the “Chasing Amy” cast and crew, including actors Joey Lauren Adams and Jason Lee. Critics and filmmakers such as Guinevere Turner (“Go Fish”), Andrew Ahn (“Fire Island”), and Kevin Willmott (“BlacKkKlansman”) also weigh in.

During filming, Rodgers experienced massive change in his personal life. He got engaged, then married, to his longtime girlfriend Riley. They moved cities more than once. And he came out publicly as trans.

“By the time we shot our first day of footage, I conceded to be in it a little bit,” Rodgers said. “By the time we got to post-production on this, everyone was like, ‘Sav, this is your story.’”

“Chasing Chasing Amy” runs on multiple tracks. Fans of Kevin Smith and “Chasing Amy” will relish the in-depth interviews and archival footage that give context to the film (and the drama behind it). But the core of the documentary is Rodgers’ story of becoming himself while exploring a movie he connected with as a kid because “the gay and lesbian characters were good. They were not always respected … but they were intelligent and funny and out.”

It’s also Rodgers’ own love story — a real-life romantic comedy of sorts that winds up hitting some of the same narrative notes as “Chasing Amy.” He and Riley even visit many of the Western New Jersey locations that provide the backdrop to Kevin Smith’s films.

Sharing so much of his own life on film was uncomfortable enough for Rodgers without the added element of appearing on-screen at a time when he was uneasy about his appearance.

“(I wasn’t) necessarily hoping to have that version of myself preserved in a film forever,” he said. “I want people to remember me as I am now. But at the end of the day, the story revealed itself over time and I had to just get out of the way.”

‘A cultural Rorschach Test’

“Chasing Amy” may have been a commercial success, but it received decidedly mixed reviews from members of the LGBT community, many of whom objected to a straight man’s portrayal of queer characters.

“‘Chasing Amy’ seems to inspire a very strong reaction one way or another,” Rodgers said. “It’s kind of a cultural Rorschach Test in that way.”

But he didn’t realize that until he entered the film program at the University of Kansas and began talking to other film nerds about his favorite movie. Initially he felt a little defensive, but then Rodgers got curious.

He began thinking about making a documentary after graduating from KU, but Rodgers first explored the topic publicly as a TED resident in 2018. His residency concluded with an 8-minute talk titled “The rom-com that saved my life.”

“Seeing yourself on screen endows you with the feeling of existing in the world,” Rodgers said in the talk. “And seeing myself on screen gave me the strength to navigate that world.”

An embarrassment of riches

Friday’s screening is something of a homecoming for Rodgers. In past years, the Kansas native has showed his short films at the festival. Tallgrass was also instrumental in connecting him to a network of filmmakers and film lovers, both locally and across the country.

“With those deep friendships I was able to strike up, I was able to kind of inadvertently form this (group of) Avengers of indie film,” he said.

Two of the “Avengers” were collaborators on “Chasing Chasing Amy:” Tallgrass co-founder and former executive director Lela Meadow-Conner is one of the producers, and longtime Tallgrass advocate Tyler Emerson serves as an executive producer.

After moving back and forth from Kansas to New York to Los Angeles and back, “I’m deeply appreciative of what (Kansas) has to offer and what this community has to offer in a way that I just could never have anticipated,” Rodgers said.

It took leaving Kansas to realize what “an embarrassment of riches” filmmakers have here.

“I’m really stoked to come back to Tallgrass and reunite with all the incredible Wichitans that I’ve been able to meet over the years,” he said. “But also to just celebrate independent cinema in a place that clearly values it.”

IF YOU GO

“Chasing Chasing Amy” film screening and Q&A with filmmakers

Preceded by the short film “En El Limbo Nos Encontramos”

4:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 6 at TempleLive (Scottish Rite)

$10