It came up recently that I really don't like (500) Days of Summer and I'm not terribly keen on Garden State either. There's a common trope in both of those, and that element is a major contributing factor in my dislike - the Quirky Indie Pixie Girl. This is the type of girl that doesn't exist except in the minds of screenwriters - and a guarantee you that if they DID exist, you'd be less charmed by them than utterly annoyed by them.
Not sure of what I'm talking about. This short from Funny or Die should connect a few dots. (Fun fact: This features spoofs of not only the moment when I realized (500) Days was going to be a shitty, shitty film, but also the first time Natalie Portman was on film and my thoughts weren't "Wow, she's beautiful," but "I want this character to get off my screen RIGHT NOW!")
Somehow, this girl is the trope of choice for most of the wannabe hipsters who write these sorts of films. I imagine the thought process is something like "Ohmigod! A cute girl who isn't so hot that she's intimidating and is totally into the kinds of music and obscure movies that I like! That's what I want!"
Lonely and geeky "artists" of the world, you probably stand the better chance of finding a female gamer and comic book collector with the body of a lingerie model than you do of finding someone like the Quirky Indie Pixie Girl.
If you have this trope in your script, kill it. They're barely tolerable when performed by Natalie Portman. When they're nothing but text on a page, they're even more contrived and annoying.
