In the 2001 film “Amy’s Orgasm,” Julie Davis plays Amy Mandell who describes herself as “29, Jewish, pretty with a little celluloid, famous, rich, misguided, horny, best-selling” self-help author doomed to never find lasting love. Off screen in 2002, Davis is a 33-year old mom and wife who is better looking in person, not yet famous or rich, slightly misogynist and, she says, “older and wiser.”

Not only did Davis act, she helmed and scripted “Amy’s Orgasm.” Between the making and Friday’s theatrical release of “Amy’s Orgasm,” which already played here twice last summer at the 2001 Method Film Festival, the Los Angeles resident directed last year’s “All Over the Guy.”

Since the making of the film, she no longer views herself as the neurotic, Jewess who has “Fear of Flying” fantasies. “When I made the movie I had everything in common with her,” Davis said. “But now its a few years later, I’m married and I have a baby, so I don’t have that much in common with her anymore [laughs]. She’s a replica of my former self. At the time I wrote the script I was, um, in this relationship with the man who is now my husband. I wish I would have known that back then because I would have been a lot nicer.”

Typical of self-help authors, Mandell is a proclaimed expert without any serious credentials. In her book “Why Love Doesn’t Work,” she espouses convoluted theories in easily digestible syntax her readers can agree upon in their intellectual lethargy. “Don’t date studs” and “Men get their self-esteem when a woman says yes. A woman gets it when she says no,” are examples of her sophomoric advice.

She continues to enjoy professional success while her personal life is relegated to ice cream and porn until she meets shock-jock Matthew Starr (Nick Chinlund) and falls in love with him, thus causing people on and off screen to ask, “do women just need a big dick and a good ****?” Amy is a “self-help author who had all the answers is now finally in this relationship and she doesn’t know what to do and finds all her theories--all things she tells her friends--she doesn’t know how to apply to her own life and so she feels like a total hypocrite and that’s what I was feeling like, so I thought that would be a fun story from the point of view of a self-help author,” said Davis.

Amy’s surname Mandell is not wordplay but rather, “its’ my husband’s name, Scott Mandell,” said Davis. “You know when I’m writing it’s so weird, I think with names, like certain names will come into my head and they’ll inform me about the character. I’ll see the character. He really didn’t want me to use his last name. And I just thought that was ridiculous. He’s mad, now that the movie is coming out. ‘I knew we should’ve never used the name,’” she said, he said.

On a more serious note, Mandell is no women’s rights advocate, calling them “bleeding **** feminists.” It is sentiment not too far from Davis’.

Do you really think women hate each other, I asked. “Oh yeah. It’s not that we really hate each other, it’s just all this ‘sticking together’ is bull****,” she responded. “I’ve never had a woman help me in this business. From the time I was around 21 and really needed help. And I just think it’s just a lot of talk. And I think women are really competitive with each other…It’s the nature of the beast. I think women have this kind of cutthroat, you know, caddy [attitude]. I think if we were all put on an island together then we would be great, we would be the best friends. There would be no competition. Then [you] put the men in the mix” and things change.

While my own experiences are not the cosmos, neither are Davis’. I have worked in environments full of women and have seen genuine support and mutual respect without any caddy or cutthroat behavior.

Amy also announces at a “women’s” rally that “Women need men to feel complete” to the rousing cheer of the crowd. Does the mother and wife Davis agree? “Women need intimacy to be complete.”
In the end, Amy’s orgasm gets the best of her and she has to rewrite a new book about relationships.

What advice does Davis have for dating? “I don’t give any advice any more. Just take it slow and don’t fool yourself, you know. There’s a certain amount of risk you have to take, too. That was the part, I never took the risk and, ah, you can play it so safe that you could just think about it and don’t do anything. I just think it’s harder for women because we’re more delicate in a relationship as far as sex goes. I think once the relationship is going then the man is more vulnerable. I think he gets hurt more easily,” she said.