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Meet cute

In the 2006 romantic American comedy The Holiday, one of the characters, Arthur, an elderly script writer (played by Eli Wallach), explains a meet cute with an example: "It's how two characters meet in a movie. Say a man and a woman both need something to sleep in, and they both go to the same mens pajama department. And the man says to the salesman: 'I just need bottoms'. The woman says: 'I just need a top'. They look at each other, and that's the meet cute."

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Billy Wilder uses it in a 1996 Paris Review interview, in reference to his 1938 screwball comedy film Bluebeard's Eighth Wife, adding that the concept was "a staple of romantic comedies back then".

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