Myles Berkowitz wrote and directed this mock documentary about a filmmaker who gets a producer to finance his personal search for a girlfriend, filming the odyssey on a $60,000 budget. In the opening credits, Berkowitz tries to drive onto studio lots without success. His first date observes that the film is really only about himself, and his second date exits the restaurant and doesn't return. After a discussion with script analyst Robert McKee, he decides to use hidden cameras -- which bring
only the threats of lawsuits. After he meets shop girl Elisabeth (Elisabeth Wagner) and they become a twosome, he attempts to renegotiate his contract by stopping at 17 instead of 20 dates. This film was awarded the audience prize at the 1998 Slamdance Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, Rovi
A chronicle of how aspiring American filmmaker Myles Berkowitz finally came up with an idea for selling a film: He'd combine his two areas of failure in life -- trying to break into movies and trying to find a girlfriend -- into one problem.
Like an obnoxious four-year-old who believes everything he does is fascinating and adorable, filmmaker Myles Berkowitz likes to announce, at the very start of a first date, that certain foods cause him to suffer from diarrhea or constipation.
What's so disagreeable about Berkowitz is that he seems to think that his natural tendency towards egotistical self-promotion is an adorable quirk, something that you should be completely taken with even as it makes your skin crawl.
Berkowitz went to great trouble to stage, edit, and control certain aspects of his film so that it has a formulaic dramatic structure; one wonders why he didn't make the effort to present himself as a likable human being.
Had the filmmaker gone the path of the true, entertaining, and unpretentious faux-documentary, the audience would have cheered our love-starved hero along his entire journey rather than restlessly waiting for a date to strangle him with a camera cable.
The movie has its funny moments, altough the director departs from the initial idea, leaving the improvisation, and therefore, the film loses its originality.
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