Charlyne Yi, Geek Love: Charlyne Yi is the co-writer and executive producer of Paper Heart, a hybrid documentary about a fictionalized version of herself. This feature film, which stars the 23-year-old along side Michael Cera, has won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival.
In recent years, there’s been no shortage of well-soundtracked "alternative" romantic comedies, and most have hinged on a very particular archetype: the unassuming nerd girl. Equal parts brains and quirk, 23-year-old Charlyne Yi is a real-world version of those characters—and she has no reservations about that. "I’m sort of a dork," she deadpans.
In Paper Heart, which Yi co-wrote with director Nick Jasenovec, she conducts a series of cross-country interviews for a faux documentary on modern love. Yi plays a slightly fictionalized version of herself, and she’s masterful as a bookish cynic—within the film’s first few minutes, she’s already told her friends, a biology professor and none other than indie heartthrob Michael Cera that she doesn’t believe in love. But after she falls for Cera, the film’s focus shifts to follow the couple as they stutter and stumble through the growing pains of young romance.
Paper Heart debuted at Sundance 2009, and was immediately hailed as a breakout hit. “We were really surprised by the reaction—after Sundance we expected to only get screenings in L.A. and maybe New York,” Yi says in her staccato voice. "Instead it blew up into this big cultural thing, like it’s our generation’s next great love story or something."
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