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Manic Pixie Dream Girl | With Alex Karpovsky

2017-07-26 | 🔗

Alex Karpovsky of HBO's "Girls" tells the story of one man's quest to turn his love life into a cinematic event.

This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
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Agnes Accra Chakrabarti, have you ever thought of your life as a movie you're, the star, obviously and everyone else is a supporting character. When it comes to real life, romance, though you can't predict what's going to happen, but that didn't stop Madison Perry from trying Alex Karpovsky, Best known as Ray on the H bio series. Girls reads: Madison I say: honey. The It's not your line. Light from the window illuminated the tattoo of a phoenix curbing the left side of her torso. I traced it with my finger from just below her armpit of the speed bumps ever ribs tour hip bone. I dont think tat you like this in the movies, never in person. Never this close and never
in my own bed. I knew I found my very own manic pixie dream girl when he was the film critic of the AV Nathan, Robin coined the term manic pixie dream girl to describe the love interest. Cameron, Crowe's Elizabethtown, though the character it has been in many movies before and since Natalie Portman Garden State being perhaps the quintessential example the Manic Pixie dream girl is now an indie film, cliche, more a collection of quirks than a person who exists to be the perfect love interest for the male protagonist. These weird beautiful girls, appreciate shy. Sad creative boys and t and to enjoy life again through sex love and various activities done in the rain So often perky the manic pixie dream go. Troubled as well
straddles the narrow line between quirky and crazy mysterious and strange sexy and slutty. She is perfectly imperfect and that is the kids, because a mammoth pixie dream girl must be messed up enough to need saving so the powerless guy can do something heroic in the third act. I met my manic, pixie dream girl in a sketch comedy class and the first day she wore bright red dress and cowboy boots, as if a tired by the Costume Department shall the olive skin and dark eyes of her half mexican lineage a look one might describe as exotic that she would punch you in the arm if he used that term. She had a boyfriend, So we couldn't date, but we chatted online learning about each other's lives while we traded Youtube clips of
Saturday Night LIVE sketches one hot summer afternoon we met at Are we the intention of writing sketches together, but our plans changed as they often do with manic pixie dream girls? We never opened our notebooks and instead went on an impromptu bar crawl. Each new bar finest, a bit drunker and sitting closer together, Arnie's, touched under tables in our shoulders brush together, as we walked, we sat so close. I could smell her sweat till the chemicals of infatuation turned into a sweet perfume. The night ended with a drunken attempted kiss by me, but she ducked under. I can't cheat on my boyfriend. She said, even if things aren't going well,
It's going well, I had hope more than hope it turned out within a month. She broke up with him and not long after she and her tattoo ended up in my bed. I'm not a nerd by any means, but I've never been cool in the classic rebel way for Well, I secretly enjoy doing my taxes. This girl, though, was cool, She could get a drink at a hopelessly crowded bar at parties. She enchanted men with jokes and dancing loud laughter, see the envy in their eyes. She left with me. She made me feel cool by proxy like a human vip, pass, impulsive, erratic and electric shield, my opposite and the juxtaposition throughout me. I felt deeply in love and she
love me back. My manic, pixie dream GO was either all in or all out on everything she did. So things move quickly, Within a year, we moved to LOS Angeles where we live together, I never lived with a woman before and loved the intimacy of Brock, but the domesticity troubled her. She begins her freak out periodically about a future together, whatever the cause, the purchase of dining room chairs sparked the first. These freak outs follow the same script to cry and yell and pace around the apartment while declaring of incompatible. I will stay calm and explain how I difference is made us work so well together by strengthening each other's weaknesses. I always justified why she shouldn't be freaking out why we should get together
nothing like her feelings were wrong. Soccer people's feelings are never wrong. I didn't mind the episode so much. I can feel it symptom of my manic, pixie dream girl being perfectly imperfect as we approach three years together. She struggled with about a depression and created a rift between us. We had been a couple that did everything together, but she started going out without me on several occasions. I woke up at three or four in the morning to find she wasn't home. Yet I hadn't called. I would lie in bed vacillating between worry and anger, calling her every half hour. If she answered she'd, usually refused my offer to pick her up and say something like no, I'm still having fun here.
Sometimes I didn't know or hear what if here belonged to a guy or a girl in the morning. I would question her whereabouts, more disapproving parent than angry lover playing my role of a calm, rational square boyfriend. She would just not say perfunctory sorry, go to sleep at night. Choose the manic, pixie dream girl for other people. During the day I got the hunger. The pixie nightmare. I knew our relationship was in trouble, but I still loved her and believed this was just a difficult third act before happily, ever after one weekend, I went camping with France trying to
a space. Before I left, I wrote her a letter, five pages single spaced about our relationship. I told her how much I loved her. I wouldn't stop by. for us. I concluded by saying I know my love can't fix her depression, But I still want you to know my loves here and always will be. I put the letter on her desk with flowers and departed. I spent a twelve hour drive to Lake Powell waiting for her to call, but the phone just sat in the cup holder, silent for hours. an hour's Lamy afternoon finally beat not a call, but a text message. She thank me for the flowers and didn't even mention the letter. I knew. Then our relationship was over while the manic pixie dream girl always rescues the man from the doldrums of life in the first act of the movie, the roles,
first, in the end with him, ultimately saving her with his love beyond the coolness and excitement neighbor stone. This is the true gift of them. Pixie dream girl because fixing something especially when it's a person is what makes a man feel most valuable when I said in my letter, I knew my love couldn't fix her depression. I thought my love could fix everything, including her depression, letter was my grand gesture, the one that saves a relationship and the girl It was my Lloyd Dobler moment holding a boombox over my head blasting in your eyes. In the movies there, if gesture works, but it failed me in real life. This
they and court coming to the window only to shut it, so she could go back to sleep. I gave her my heart You think me the twelve dollars and ninety nine cents, flowers makes movies magical is not that incredible things happening, what things happen in real life. Makes movies magical is the end right after the incredible thing happens: they stop after the war is over after the team wins the game after the boy gets the girl, but in life the story keeps going and the boy can later lose. The girl, happily ever after, is too boring for a manic. Pixie dream girl, not long after I returned from my trip she dumped me there'd, be no effort to save the relationship no longer all, and she was all
out it seemed my love, couldn't fix her after all and even worse, she didn't want to be fixed to be repaired, is the number one rule of being a manic pixie dream girl. How could she ignore it? She could ignore it, because she wasn't a manic, pixie dream girl. She wasn't a character or plot device in my story or some damaged creature, with deep despair that I and only I could cure part of my hero's journey. She was simply someone who had fallen out of love with her boyfriend which since its really unseen emetic. But it happens so our story ended. now with credits really to freeze our relationship and eternal bliss, both crime and the division of possessions.
I kept the dining room chairs. She kept the old timey typewriters. While, but I found someone new this time I'm trying to make out in a regional love story. Instead of I stole from the movies Alex Karpov pop reading. Madison Perry's essay honey. That's not your line, we're here from Madison after the break.
I love spelling bee my boyfriend and I often play spelling bee together. By together I mean sitting next to each other playing individually not cheating, sometimes when I open up spelling bee- and I see that you have completed a few words on your own- I feel a little betrayed in salary. They may have happened again to I have one friend who I will send screenshots from spelling bee of inappropriate words. Then I always get nervous. I sent it to my parents or something me and my dad. We liked the first time together and I wish her out out forgot. It J, J, C K, P, o t it's a jackpot yeah nice
I'm same is asking the digital puzzles editor for the New York Times. You can try spelling bee and all our games at annoying times dot com, flash games, we're back its modern love. The pod cast a mega Tucker Birdie, getting dumped by his manic. Pixie dream girl when he was thirty years old, maid matter in Perry want to shake things up in his love life. I'd always been a boyfriend kind of guy. very quickly from serious relationship to serious relationships. I decided I would not be anyone's boyfriend for a year and a date it quite a bit, and the great thing was because wasn't looking for a girlfriend. I dated a lot of people, wouldn't normally takes it and have to be forever it we just had to get along for a while for a. However long we got along. and so I met a lot of good people and I learned a lot about myself as able to rest emotionally, and actually think about what I in a relationship instead of just looking so hard for a relationship that
experiment lasted almost two years, but at the end of that Yours, I met my wife and we in I'm getting married in about four months after we started dating we known each other in college. and so she became the happy ending happy ending. That is to a book that matters wrote about his love life. It's called. a memoir of heartbreak, hookups, love and brunch driven pretty strongly by fear fear of rejection, fear of being alone fear of taking risks, and so when I was single and I was dating a lot- I stopped worrying about being rejected, because there would be someone else to date, and so eventually I was faced with my wife possibly having to leave the country. She wasn't my wife at that point, but we were dating and very much in love, and so I was not,
afraid to ask her to marry me because I was in such a stable place and I'd lost that fear that fear of looking foolish. You know I figured if it didn't work out. It would be okay, but did work out Madison and his wife. Lao have been married for almost four years now and he said Their marriage works for all the reasons that his relationship with a manic, pixie dream girl, didn't she's, truly an objectively good partner. she she takes care of me just as much as I take care of her these feelings, these emotions, we get from love and we can really help who we have those feelings towards, but we can help get into a long term committed relationship with, and so my If it's such a stable positive person to have in my life, and so it helps that I'm also really attracted to her and deeply in love with her. So what came of the so called manic, pixie dream, girl matters,
and did reach out to her four years ago, when he found out his essay was being published but she never reached out to me after it was in the paper. So to this day I don't know if she was flattered by the essay or or totally angry about it or how she took it. I'm curious, but I guess not curious enough reach out and ask. But one key lesson has stayed with Madison: it's never a healthy thing to picture other human beings, as characters in your movie cause thereof, in a movie where they're the protagonist and they might have an idea about how the third act in Madison Perry. He's a comedy writer and performer and he lives in L A where he regularly hosts the moth story. Slam
His memoir available came out in paperback in May. The coming up Daniel Jones shares the question that Madison's as a stirred up for him, the what happens when southern charm meets northern Florida. You get uncrowded beaches, embraced by sprawling sand it's ancient MOSS, draped oak trees shade your back nine. Your dinner is served with the freshest ingredients and the warmest smile and a quaint downtown welcomes you with one of a kind treasures and a locally crafted ice cold brew. Moments like these occur each and every day on, Amelia Island, just off the northeast coast of Florida, come make. Memories visit Amelia Island dot com,
I love spelling bee my boyfriend and I often play spelling bee together by together. I mean sitting next to each other playing individually and not cheating. Sometimes when I open up spelling bee- and I see that you have completed a few words on your own, I feel a little betrayed in salary, it may have happened again. I have one friend, Who I will send screenshots from spelling bee of inappropriate words, then I was get nervous. I sent it to my parents or something me and my dad. We likes this time you together and I wish cuz it out it. J J, C K, P, o t It's a jackpot yeah nice I'm same is risky. The digital puzzles editor for the New York Times. You can try spelling bee and all our games at annoying times dot com, flash games.
How do we learn how to be in a relationship? it's a seemingly simple question, but Dan Jones editor of modern love. For the New York Times says, in Perry's essay made him realize how much the answer has changed over the years. You used and had to be in a relationship from our parents relationship, basically for my community increasingly media and Hollywood specifically has taken this out. eyes role in how we navigate relationships, and I just see this again and again- and I say that we look to Hollywood as this guide for what to expect. You now I just love the way the heat teases that out and then just unravels that at the end, Alex Karpov Karpovsky says he too has confused Hollywood portrayals of relationships with the real thing I've dated,
into the manic, pixie dream, girl and only years after our relationships. Integrated or imploded did. I realize the fact that they broke up, because I was dating some sort of notion of a cinematic trope and I was projecting all these things and expecting all these things that were bubbling up not from her her and her personality, but more from movies and A dramatic experiences I sort of subconsciously woven into my worldview thanks to Alex for reading this week, say you can see him in the movie folk hero and funny guy. Available now on Itunes and on demand coming up next week, June Diane Raphael of the Netflix series. Grace and Frankie shares story about a flower delivery, gone awry.
sister and I fought viciously over the flowers she called me cruel and accuse me of making a fool of her in front of everyone. She knows they're just flowers. I insisted why can't you accept it? However? where my judgment I meant to do something to make you happy Modern love is a production of the New York Times and W B, U R Boston, NPR station is produced directed and headed by Jessica Albert John Perotti and Ann Marie Sivertson. additional sound designed by Matt. Read our intern. Cameron, sure Tavi in and Megan Moon, the aid for the modern love. Podcast was conceived by LISA Tobin Avatars, our executive producer, Daniel Joe is the editor of modern love for the New York Times and adviser to the show music for the pot cast courtesy of a pm
A magnet Chakrabarti see you next week, the.
Transcript generated on 2022-04-16.