Kevin Smith Credits Chasing Amy 'Muse,' Ex Joey Lauren Adams, for His Marriage That's Lasted 25 Years

Kevin Smith's relationship with Joey Lauren Adams has stuck with him, more than 25 years after they broke up.

The pair met while making Smith's 1995 film Mallrats, which was followed by 1997's Chasing Amy, in which Adams starred in the lead role opposite Ben Affleck. (Adams and Affleck later appeared as their respective Amy characters, Alyssa Jones and Holden McNeil, in 2019's Jay and Silent Bob Reboot.)

"She was my muse," Smith, 54, says during a joint interview with Adams, 56, in filmmaker Sav Rodgers' newly released documentary Chasing Chasing Amy.

While their relationship was short-lived — Chasing Amy premiered in April 1997, and the two had split by that July — the writer-director says it was formative in his life.

"I became the person that I became for the rest of my life because of that relationship. I never went back to being the other guy," Smith says in the documentary.

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In fact, his time with Adams had such an intense effect on him that it, in turn, ended up having a huge impact on Smith's marriage to Jennifer Schwalbach Smith, whom he met in February 1998 and tied the knot with just over a year later.

"There's no way I would be in a marriage that has lasted 20 years if I didn't meet Joey and she didn't shape me," he says in the documentary.

Smith and Jennifer, 53, celebrated 25 years of marriage this past April. The couple share one child: 25-year-old daughter Harley Quinn Smith, who was born two months after her parents wed.

Asked by PEOPLE in September about any big rules that keep their marriage strong, The 4:30 Movie writer-director said, "My first instinct is, well, there've been no rules, and that's probably why it's worked so well for 25 years."

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Touching on his gratitude for his wife's support over the years, he explained, "I spend a lot of time on the road and doing gigs elsewhere and whatnot, and over the 25 years she's traveled with me a bunch and then lately she stays home to watch the dogs and stuff like that."

"She's been there shotgun through 25 years of this, and she's always been gracious about taking a back seat to it," he told PEOPLE. "When you're married to an artist — an artist who lives with his or her head up their ass thinking about, 'Oh my God, the whole world has to know what I think and feel' — I would imagine that must be irritating to live with. But she's lived with it for a quarter century."

"I can't speak for her, but I just like seeing her. I just like being around her. She's my human," Smith added.

Chasing Chasing Amy, which premiered at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival, is in select theaters now.