Love: It’s a Wrap

Myles Berkowitz’s new movie, “20 Dates,” chronicles his dogged pursuit of two of the most sought-after prizes in Hollywood: the perfect woman and a movie deal. With “20 Dates,” he found both.

His movie, an ultra-low-budget comic documentary about his quest for romance, opens today. And the film has a real-life happy ending: Berkowitz is now engaged to Elisabeth Wagner, an interior designer he is seen scheming to score a date with in the movie.

“When I tell people we’re engaged, I always get a big round of applause,” said the 36-year-old filmmaker, who’s been touring the country to promote his film. When he spotted one of his relatives in the audience at the Fort Lauderdale Film Festival, he instantly swore her to secrecy. “Whatever you do,” he begged, “don’t tell my mother that I’m engaged!”

Finally, about a month ago, Berkowitz broke the news. Why was he so worried? “Because Elisabeth’s not Jewish,” he said. “It took a lot of explaining. My mother’s the only person who doesn’t think this movie has a happy ending!”

“20 Dates” is just one of a number of recent films that break down the barrier between fiction and reality, among them Sally Potter’s “Tango Lessons” and Nicholas Barker’s “Unmade Beds.” Surely it says something about our age that when Berkowitz went boldly in search of love, instead of taking out a personal ad, he made a movie about himself. In a way, “20 Dates” is the quintessential Hollywood love story: romance as a career move.

“It’s just like a chapter right out of ‘Life: The Movie,’ isn’t it?” said Berkowitz, referring to Neil Gabler’s much-debated new book that argues that our lives are now shaped more by entertainment than by reality. “If only he’d known about my movie before he’d finished the book, I would’ve fit right in!”

Berkowitz recounts the history of “20 Dates” with such infectious enthusiasm that he seems to end all his sentences with exclamation points. When he took the movie to the Slamdance Film Festival last year, he helped build a buzz by paying cabdrivers and waiters $20 tips so they’d talk up the film. The first time he screened the movie, he bought out half the house so film buyers would be impressed by the turnout.

Growing up in Westchester, N.Y., the filmmaker was short, fat and full of hustle. “I didn’t grow until my sophomore year of college,” said Berkowitz, now a 6-footer and only a tad chunky, which he blames on the 15 pounds he gained making the movie. “I didn’t shave. I didn’t even have hair on my chest.”

Berkowitz went to the University of Pennsylvania, where he was senior class president, then attended Wharton Business School. But his heart was in the movies, so he chucked the business world for Hollywood, where he found himself at age 30 on the skids, having spent several years unsuccessfully trying to make it as an actor and a writer.

After a failed marriage, his love life was at a standstill. Meanwhile his friends were already successful doctors, lawyers and Wall Street wizards. Berkowitz said he hit bottom after taking a job behind the counter at a Ben and Jerry’s in Century City.

“It was terrible,” he recalled. “Everyone was barely out of high school; my manager was probably 17. Finally he took me aside and said, ‘I don’t think you fit in. I hate to do this, but I’ve got to fire you.’ And then, to make matters worse, he asked me for a lift home.”

Out of a job, unable to sell his latest script, Berkowitz decided to make a movie about his own quest for love. “It was my last Doug Flutie Hail Mary pass,” he said. “Either I was going to succeed or I was going to put the clown suit in the closet.”

Berkowitz sold the idea to producer Elie Samaha, whose recent credits include such films as “Monument Avenue” with Denis Leary and “Shadrach” with Harvey Keitel. But the blunt-spoken producer wanted more than just dates and romantic chatter. He is heard several times in the movie threatening to pull the plug on the project unless Berkowitz puts more sex into the film.

“My [expletive] brother is a priest and he goes out on more dates than you do,” Samaha says. “You’ve got to have pretty women in this movie. People aren’t going to look at your [expletive] ugly face and pay $7 to see you.”

Samaha isn’t seen on camera: Berkowitz said he taped their meetings secretly. But Samaha’s profane outbursts are so funny that you wonder: Were his remarks impromptu or was he giving a performance?

“The honest truth is that if I’d known Myles was taping me, I would’ve punched him out for being so sneaky,” Samaha said. “When he finally showed me the movie, I almost had a heart attack. At first, I wanted him to take everything out. But people told me they liked it; it gave the movie some humor.

“And the truth is Myles is nice, but let’s face it, he isn’t as sexy as the girls I wanted him to date in the movie.”

At the producer’s behest, Berkowitz did go on a date with Julie McCullough, a former Playboy playmate. But he didn’t score. In fact, until he met Wagner, most of his dates ended badly. One woman, Stephanie, excuses herself to use the bathroom and never returns. A date with Karen goes well until Berkowitz reveals that he’s been filming their cozy flirting. “This whole dinner has been filmed?” Karen snaps, her voice suddenly icy. “You think that’s funny?”

‘It’s a Comedy, Not a Documentary’

It’s funny, but is it real? Were the dates really unrehearsed? Or were they scripted to give the appearance of reality? Berkowitz insisted the encounters were unstaged, although he wouldn’t be pinned down to any overall guarantees of authenticity.

“What happened in the film was real,” he said. “But it’s a comedy, not a documentary. It’s closer to David Letterman going into the street: The people’s reactions are real. But some of your questions I’ll have to dodge.”

Berkowitz acknowledged that he filmed more than 20 dates, although he said this was a matter of practicality. As it turned out, he couldn’t include several encounters because the women involved refused to sign waivers allowing him to use the footage. He was sued twice by women who were upset by the hidden camera technique; one suit was settled, the other is in limbo.

“Most women didn’t have any problems when they saw the footage cut together,” he said. “We made minimal changes. It wasn’t the women who looked bad anyway; if anyone looked bad, it was me.”

He admits one woman was so incensed--Berkowitz’s phrase is “sensitive and unhappy”--that she not only didn’t let him use her footage, she also made him agree not to even discuss what happened on their date. He also had to edit out his misadventures at a Jewish singles mystery weekend because “too many people were embarrassed to be seen on film at a singles event.”

Berkowitz had informal test screenings to see how the film played, especially with women. “I wanted to make sure they didn’t hate me,” he said. “But as we showed people the movie, we learned that they wanted to know more about me and why I was going out on these dates.

“I’d never make a documentary again; it’s not a good form. If this film works, it’s because it’s still a movie with a classic three-act structure, where the character has a crisis and then falls in love and changes his behavior.”

“20 Dates” even has what you might call its own Greek chorus, in the form of screenwriting guru Robert McKee, who intones sage-like romantic counsel throughout the film. At one juncture, McKee expounds: “Women obsess on the metaphysical. They create a phantom image of their ideal man, so they’re in love throughout their lives with a man that doesn’t exist.”

Luckily for Berkowitz, his fiancee fell for him, not for a phantom image (although a filmmaker making a film about himself is perhaps the ultimate phantom image). “The film only works because it has a real Hollywood ending, but I lucked into that,” he said.

“We have thousands of feet of film I never used, of me pursuing her, making jokes or cutting down whatever guy she was seeing. We don’t show everything or you’d see how desperate I was.”