Cute Meet

[Dave Monroe]

   "It was what Hollywood likes to call a 'cute meet' ..." (GR, Pt. I, p. 38)

http://books.google.com/books?id=iPDGp7VT8H8C

It was what Hollywood likes to call a "cute meet"

On p.561, Pynchon has Slothrop singing "LOOK-IN’ FAWR A NEEDLE IN A
HAAAAY-STACK!" which is a song from the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers
film The Gay Divorce (1934). In that number, Astaire sings about
finding the woman of his dreams whose name he never learned after they
had had a "cute meet."

Pynchon uses 'cute meet' again in Inherent Vice p. 37

http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Pages_37-42

Coy and I should've met cute

A "meet cute"is a movie term that describes a contrived, humorous
meeting between two possible romantic partners (e.g., a boy and girl
bump into each other on the street then fall in love). In the 1934
film The Gay Divorce, with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, in the song
"Looking for a Needle in a Haystack", Astaire sings about finding the
woman of his dreams whose name he never learned after they had had a
"cute meet."

Roger Mexico and Jessica Swanlake are described as having had "what
Hollywood likes to call a 'cute meet'" in Pynchon's 1973 novel
Gravity's Rainbow, on page 38.

http://inherent-vice.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_2#Page_37

Meet Cute

A meet cute is a convention of romantic comedies in which two
potential romantic partners meet in a contrived way in unusual or
comic circumstances. A staple of the romantic genre, the technique
creates an artificial situation contrived by the filmmakers in order
to bring together characters in an entertaining manner. Frequently the
"meet cute" leads to a humorous clash of personalities or beliefs,
embarrassing situations, or comical misunderstandings that further
drive the plot.

[...]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meet_cute

Meet Cute

Ted: I just gotta bump into her somewhere. Now if only I knew her
schedule, I could arrange a chance encounter.
Lily: That's great, Ted. You'll be the most casual stalker ever.
— From How I Met Your Mother

Meet Cute is a subtrope of Boy Meets Girl, a way to quickly introduce
two characters and set up their burgeoning relationship. A meet-cute
is almost always rife with awkwardness, embarrassment, and sometimes
outright hostility. It's often used in films, particularly the
Romantic Comedy, due to time constraints; while on television a
relationship can develop more naturally over many episodes, a movie
has to get their couple set up right away to fit within 2 hours.

This meeting can happen by way of any of an innumerable array of
circumstances, so long as there's something cutesy about it. Possibly
they have an instant dislike for one another. Maybe they crash into
each other in a hallway and papers fly about. Maybe one of them has
been shopping for ISO Standard Urban Groceries and trips over the
other walking down the street. Perhaps mistaken identity or other
wacky misunderstanding is involved. Sometimes someone is naked or in
an otherwise embarrassing situation. To sum up, there is no clear cut
definition of what constitutes meeting cute. One criterion is that
it's not any way you would expect to meet a significant other. Not
that you can't meet cute in Real Life!

[...]

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MeetCute