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,"