Lookin' For Love
Filmmaker Julie Davis brings her own experience
to a romantic comedy about relationships in the '90s.
LYNNE MEREDITH COHN
Staj7Writer
new movie about a 25-year-
old neurotic Jewish virgin
has everything to do with
the woman who wrote it.
Julie Davis, 29, penned the script
for I Love You, Don't Touch Me! at a
time when she was trying to come to
terms with being an adult, sexually
inexperienced woman.
She laughs when asked if any of the
characters are based on her Jewish
family from Miami. "One hundred
percent! Those were all people in my
life," says Davis, who now lives in Los
Angeles and is working on a second
film, Why Love Doesn't Work.
I Love You, Don't Touch Me!, open-
ing today, is a romantic comedy
about '90s relationships — in partic-
ular, the platonic-with-sexual-subtext,
hilarious friendship between the main
character, Katie (Marla Schaffel), and
her best male friend, Ben (Mitchell
Whitfield).
.
When Ben starts dating Katie's
friend, Janet (Meredith Scott Lynn),
who is described in the screenplay as
"Barbra Streisand on speed," Katie
sees her buddy in a new light.
What inspired Davis to write I Love
You (and edit, produce and direct it)
was her own late-to-lose virginity. "In
our culture, everyone has sex so freely
— there's a whole group of women
out there who are virgins, who are
looking for it to be special, [and every-
one else] thinks they're totally crazy."
Davis always wanted to be an
actress. From starring in local produc-
tions and being `"really into music and
photography," she went to Dartmouth
College, where she learned that all the
things she loved could be rolled into
one filmmaking career.
And while she grew up in Miami,
she has a local tie. Davis' mother hails
from Detroit and attended Mumford
High School. An aunt, uncle and
cousins still live in Bloomfield Hills.
Growing up, Davis, who attended
A
4/17
1998
92
Above: "I Love You,
Don't Touch Me!" is
written, directed pro-
duced and edited by
Julie Davis.
Ri ht: Marla Schaffel,
left, stars as Katie, a
25-year-old virgin who
doesn't share her best
male friend Ben's
(Mitchell Whitfield)
romantic feelings.
Interlochen, visited the Detroit 'burbs
frequently.
After Dartmouth, Davis was reject-
ed from the directing program at the
American Film Institute, and se
enrolled in AFI's editing program. But
she was always writing — huge feature
film screenplays that no one would
look at, let alone buy.
Short on cash, Davis worked for
the Playboy Channel while writing the
screenplay for I Love You. By day, she'd
edit explicit adult movies so they
could be shown on the Playboy Chan-
nel, and by night, she'd be typing furi-
ously.
Ironically, Davis credits her stint at
Playboy with making her more self
aware, which in turn enabled her to
complete the screenplay. "With my
personal conflicts about wanting love
and sex to be together — that stuff
sent. me over the edge," she said.
From the start, she knew whom she
wanted in the movie's lead role: her
best friend since the age of 13, Marla
Schaffel. Schaffel, whom Davis met at
a piano recital, also starred in Davis'
first film, a small video project at
Dartmouth based loosely on Jean-Paul
Sartre's The Respectful Prostitute.
Also Jewish, Schaffel traveled back
and forth from Juilliard in New York
to shoot her friend's first flick.
Two of the movie's other stars —
Mitchell Whitfield and Meredith Scott
Lynn — also are Jewish, both in char-
acter and in reality. The movie hints at
stereotypical Judaism when Katie's
mother asks her new beau's last name.
"No, Mom, he's not Jewish," she
replies. Katie also wails about not
being able to find a "nice, Jewish guy,"
and in the end says she
never thought she'd find
love in a slightly over-
weight man with a receding
hairline.
Davis embarked on this
3 project with no funding
t, and limited resources. She
used her life savings and
E sold her grandmother's
is., antique diamond ring ("she
would have been proud of
me," insists Davis) to gath-
er $40,000 in financing.
Most of the cast and
crew "worked for very little
pay, and the actors paid me
back when the film was fin-
ished shooting so I could
afford to edit it," says Davis. "I had no
money, and everyone knew that.
Everyone wanted it to be a good film.
There are a lot of really dedicated
inspiring filmmakers out there."
• Growing up in largely Jewish
Miami, where Judaism "was much
more about flash than substance,"