Celluloid Self-Promotion Works Because It’s Funny

Myles Berkowitz needs you to like his movie. As writer, director, narrator and star of “20 Dates,” his offbeat, kinda-sorta documentary about dating, he’s in our faces like a desperate suitor. He’s scared to death we won’t find him funny or charming or exciting enough. It made me want to slap him. You’re funny, Myles. You’re charming. But why do you have to be so annoying?

Ingeniously conceived, “20 Dates” is a laugh-out-loud chronicle of the struggling filmmaker’s hunt for a girlfriend (and, not incidentally, a cool Hollywood job). It’s nothing less than Berkowitz’s blunt celluloid advertisement for himself, a calling card for producers and a dynamite way to meet chicks.

Much of it plays like a longer big-screen merger of “Love Connection” and “Candid Camera”--you get to see the dates instead of just hearing about them. And in a couple of deliciously uncomfortable sequences, you watch the storm clouds gather about the head of some unsuspecting woman as she learns halfway through a meal that the evening is being filmed.

The interesting thing is that, even though two women sued to keep Berkowitz from including footage of them, most of the dates agreed to appear, even some who seemed hurt or angered by his deception. It’s hard to resist being in a movie, I guess.

This is part of the fascination about “20 Dates”--the way it manifests the current phenomenon of ordinary people offering themselves up naked for public display. Fifteen minutes of fame aren’t enough anymore; now everyone wants a movie deal, his or her own home Web cam or--at the very least--a Web site featuring photos of the family. (“Hi, I’m Ted. This is my dog Shirley. Here’s a picture of where I work.”)

The movie feeds on a kind of me-centered energy that may not be restricted to Los Angeles, where it was filmed, but is certainly endemic here. Like “Love Connection,” a show I confess to having once found addictive, the film tells us things Berkowitz never intended about our lives and culture today.

The movie exuberantly jumbles real life, staged scenes, interviews and a few supposedly true-to-life characters and encounters that seem too wacky or well-formed to be true.

Example: Over dinner, Berkowitz points out the camera to a date, a “feminist ballerina,” as she holds a fork in her hand. In the next scene he’s sporting bandages. He tells us in a voice-over that he needed 20 stitches, but the more cynical among us--and perhaps some of his other dates--might want to see the injury afflicted.

Then there is the matter of Elie Samaha, the ill-tempered, profane and never-seen investor who hovers over this story like a Mafia don. He repeatedly clashes with Berkowitz over how to make the movie, going so far as to fix him up with an attractive and, shall we say, sexually accessible model in hopes of spicing up the story line. (Shamelessly, Berkowitz cuts from their sexual banter over lunch to a shot of himself in underwear closing the curtains in the model’s apartment.)

Samaha doesn’t want to be filmed, so Berkowitz sneaks a tape recorder into their meetings. It’s a good thing, because his rants are among the movie’s best lines. “If this [expletive] movie doesn’t make five times my investment, you’re going to [expletive] wish you’d never been born,” he yells at one point, threatening to break Berkowitz’s legs.

There are undeniable pleasures in eavesdropping on someone’s unedited life. But for all of its documentary trappings, “20 Dates” has the arc of a feature narrative with rising and modulated tension, a powerful villain, the requisite bits of sex and violence and the all-important happy ending: Berkowitz is engaged to the woman he pursued most ardently in the film.

All of this gives the movie verve--it should have way more mainstream appeal than the usual documentary--but it causes some unease. Because he’s winking at us throughout, it feels peevish to get steamed over the way Berkowitz trumps up and manipulates reality. But boundaries get blurry. Should he really call this a documentary?

And it’s annoying the way he works within scenes, putting people on the spot or goading them in hopes of juicing things up. At times like these he comes across as a user, and his treatment of people seems cruel.

It made me question a time or two whether this cinematic date with Berkowitz was a good idea. Then I’d start laughing and forget to be annoyed.

* MPAA rating: R, for pervasive language and brief sexual images. Times guidelines: Elie Samaha’s language is particularly colorful.

‘20 Dates’

Myles Berkowitz: Himself

Elisabeth Wagner: Herself

Elie Samaha: Himself

Richard Arlook: Himself

A Phoenician Films Production, released by Fox Searchlight Pictures. Director Myles Berkowitz. Producers Elie Samaha, Mark McGarry, Jason Villard. Screenplay Myles Berkowitz. Cinematographer Adam Biggs. Executive producer Tia Carrere. Editors Michael Elliot, Lisa Cheek. Music Steve Tyrell, Bob Mann. Music supervisor Ann Kline, Tri-Tone Music. Running time: 1 hour, 28 minutes.

Playing exclusively at Sunset 5, 8000 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, (323) 848-3500; Mann Criterion, 1313 Third Street Promenade, Santa Monica, (310) 395-1599.