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Axel Braun Interview
2003-11-13 15:36:38
I snag Axel Braun's biography from Imdb.com:

Son of legendary porn-pioneer Lasse Braun, who, through his work in the early 60s helped the legalization of pornography in Europe, Axel grew up in Italy, where he received a privileged upper-class upbringing.

After attending college and earning a Ph.D. in Psychology, in the late 80s Axel left his country and relocated to Los Angeles, where he graduated from Film School at the prestigious Columbia College. Fluent in five languages, Axel travelled and worked constantly all over the world with his father as an assistant director, writer, producer, cameraman and editor, before finally stepping behind the camera to direct a solo project, The Adventures of the G-Man, the first installment of a successful series that would earn him both critical and commercial praise in his country.

His first break in the American X-rated market arrived in 1997 with the movie “The Book of Lust”, followed in 1998 by “Sexcape”, both of which he wrote, produced, directed, shot and edited. In 1999 he released “Fleshlight” in the US, a hard-core feature that tops the charts in Germany, as well as “Libido” and most notably “The G-Spot Chronicles” which was one of the top-selling adult video of the year in Italy.

Interested in the psychological aspects of sex, and obsessed with the reality of the characters and the care for details, Axel always delivers visually captivating stories that provide a solid buildup for the sexual situations, instead of being mere excuses for it. In June 2002 Axel signed an exclusive directing contract with Elegant Angel Productions, releasing “Gigolo: a love story”, “Delusion”, “The Bachelorette”, “Seduction”, Trust (2003) (V), and the first three chapter of “The Squirting Adventures of Dr. G”. In November 2002 he insured his hands for 2 million USD each with the Lloyds of London.

In January 2003 Patrick Collins named him General Manager of Elegant Angel, where he also continues to direct. Among his upcoming projects, the ambitious hi-budget feature Compulsion, entirely shot on film, scheduled for release in September 2003.

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My friendship with Platinum X Pictures director Mason hung like a dark cloud over my late lunch with Axel Braun Tuesday at Rosti on Ventura and Hayvenhurst Bvlds.

Axel is the son of the legendary porn director Lasse Braun. Nobody wants to hire Lasse to direct any more because his demands are so excessive - limousines, fancy hotels suites...

Axel and I arrive at about the same time, 1:50PM, but miss each other. I wait at the entrance. Axel takes a table. Finally, he calls my cell and we meet at 2:15PM. Axel drinks lemonade. I drink ice water. We each order a margarita 12" pizza, which we consume in their cheesy entirety, leaving only crusts.

Axel and I understand each other. We're each 37 and we speak a similar language. I can bust his balls as much as I like and he can do the same to me.

Axel's talks for a while off the record about the trials and tribulations of being Axel Braun. He wants to know the status of my relationship with Mason. I assure him that it is entirely honorable. She's marrying Graham from England. I've never met the buxom lass in person.

"Everyone thinks Mason is hot because she only shows her eyes," says a source.

Axel: "Mason is a fine person and I wish her the best at whatever she does."

Axel Braun does not receive Christmas cards from Mason, to put it mildly.

Luke: "How did you become general manager at Elegant Angel?"

Axel: "I was a contract director at Elegant Angel for six months and I grew really close to Patrick."

Luke: "How close were you? Was it always platonic?"

Axel: "Platonic. We became friends. We went on a couple of trips together."

Axel gets a dreamy look in his eye as he chain-smokes through our conversation. I'm glad I don't have to kiss him.

Luke: "On these trips, would you share the same hotel room?"

Axel: "No, he was very nice. I had my own hotel room. We kept talking. We exchanged information on how to do things.

"The general manager left. For a while, Patrick ran the company. He wanted someone else to take over so he could spend more time with his family."

Patrick has three kids with his wife, the ex-porn star Nicole Lace.

"He offered me the job and I took it and it was a great experience. Patrick has a great family life outside of porn. I was there at the office at 7:30 every morning and I wouldn't leave before 6PM."

Luke: "Let's talk about Mason."

Axel: "She's a talented director but it was not the kind of stuff we wanted to do."

Luke: "So you ran her out?"

Axel: "I don't like the stuff that Mason does. It's not my thing. When you're running a business, it doesn't matter whether you or do not like the product though obviously Patrick has always tried to do things that make him happy. You've got to make money."

Luke: "Mason's stuff didn't sell?"

Axel: "She sold huge numbers among 30% of distributors."

Luke: "Most of them didn't want to handle her stuff."

Axel: "[In the current oppressive political climate] Patrick didn't want to have problems with the material. On the top of that, the budgets were fat.

"Everything was weird before I got there. I'd ask, 'How much did this movie cost?' 'Uhh, not too much.' And I'd have to dig and look. Normally, you'd have a consolidated file for each movie but this was haphazard. We were spending feature budgets for gonzos. The money we were making was not enough. We offered her [Mason] the chance to do something different [to shoot cheaper gonzos].

"Directors have to understand that when they have a deadline, that means that date, not three days later."

Axel Braun says Mason was consistently late in turning in her product. "Not only from Mason, but from everybody. That's how things got messed up and the quality was low. She just didn't fit in with what we were trying to do. Same thing with Tony Ribas (a porn actor from Spain married to Sophie Evans). He's a nice guy and a talented director. His stuff just didn't justify the amount of money spent on it. Tony's better off with Red Light District. He can make a lot more money."

Luke: "Is it difficult to compete with other companies that are subsidized by organized crime and gambling money?"

Axel: "I don't know.

"You need to make soft versions to sell to Playboy. You can get $25,000. I said to Mason, 'Do whatever you want to do but give me something with a soft version. That way I can justify your budget.'

"There was also the matter of changing the look of the office. I don't want people to be complete slobs, to sleep there over night with their dog, leave old pizza around. We should be organized. If you're not happy doing the job, it's not going to be done right. I hired Tom Zupko and Ren Savant.

"Whenever anybody runs something that has been running forever, they've got to make changes, just like Tim Connelly at AVN. Of course he's going to bring in his friends. Not just because they are his friends, but he knows their personality and their work habits. I'm much happier now looking at Mason's movie now that it is not an Elegant Angel movie. When you are looking at it as representing your company, you keep thinking, 'Oh no, this could get us in trouble.' Do we want this to represent us?"

Luke: "Who else did you run out of Elegant Angel?"

Axel: "I fired 17 people in two months. They were people who were getting paid but were not doing their job. Why keep in-house editors at $1k a week? How many movies did you cut this month? One. Insane. Stay home. I'll give you the same movie to cut. I'll pay you $2k or whatever is the price when you turn in the movie.

"We had an in-house music guy who was paid a lot of money. He'd been there for years. How much music did we need? My job was to keep costs down. In the first three months alone, I lowered the cost of running the company by more than $50,000 a month. The money went into trying to have better quality in the movies."

Luke: "Why did you leave?"

Axel: "Patrick made a deal with Devils Film for distribution. It was not something I would've done. Part of the deal was to return to hardcore gonzo. That's not something I'm interested in.

"We finally found a version of my feature Compulsion that left me with my integrity as a director. It came out in the US September 30.

"I had no life when I was running Elegant Angel."

Luke: "Did you have a lot porn girls throwing themselves at you?"

Axel: "My fiance, Alicia (Bella Donna's sister who smokes about five cigarettes a day), worked with me at Elegant Angel as the office manager. She did the job of four people. She was working at Red Light District."

Luke: "What happened to your relationship with Chelsea Blue? You guys were together four years."

Axel: "It's been a long time since I've talked to you. [After breaking up with Axel, Chelsea hooked up with Manuel Ferrara for a couple of months.] I had something worse than that. I had Carolyn Monroe (35 years old, but porn years). That was the edge of insanity. She's an alcoholic. She's now happy hooking in New York."

Our pizzas arrive and we dig in.

Axel wants to marry Alicia "but the production of the marriage is turning out to be more difficult than any movie." It will be her first and his fourth. "The fourth time is a charm," says Axel.

"I just can't get up at 6:30 every morning and come to work to do something I don't believe in. When I was at Elegant Angel, I had the boxcovers reflect my personality. The boxcovers we had before were terrible. The boxcovers now are more hardcore and gonzo..."

Luke: "You're the gentleman pornographer."

Axel imitates all the excuses he used to get from his directors about why movies couldn't be turned in on time. "Oh man, last night I got wasted. My girlfriend's on speed." I can't spend an hour on the phone listening to excuses. Everything happens for a reason."

Luke: "You're a religious man. Everything is in God's hands."

Axel, sarcastic: "I'm just a very religious man.

"Patrick is a very religious man. We have long discussions about this."

Luke: "What happened to the scene I did for you?"

Axel: "I shipped it to Italy and it got seized by customs. I've been trying for more than three years to get it back.

"I was good friends with Carolyn Monroe's husband. Two years ago at the show in Las Vegas, he walked in on Carolyn and I. It was really bad. Then they got divorced. Then Carolyn and I moved in together. It lasted a couple of months until she started drinking again."

Luke: "When he walked in on you with his wife, did you tell him, 'This isn't what it looks like'?"

Axel: "I did. I said, 'This is not what it seems.' He said, 'What do you mean? You were not f-cking?' I didn't finish my session [with Carolyn]. I had to drive back to LA with the husband. She stayed there. He tried to go off the road and commit suicide. It was late at night. He hadn't slept. He was f---ed up. He took a complete wrong way. I didn't know if it was on purpose or not. They had had sex about eight times in ten years. There must be something wrong. I thought it was because of him.

"Our first two months, she was great. Then I started finding vodka bottles under the bed, in the bathroom, in the garage..."

Carolyn Monroe is not related to Tami Monroe and other porn girls with names ending in "Monroe."

Axel: "So tell me about your love life [DUC]?"

I turn off my tape recorder.

Axel Braun, a two-pack-a-day smoker, has a contract to shoot a movie at the end of the month for HBO. He's appeared as an actor in several HBO movies.

He owns his own home and five new cars - a Jaguar, Mercedes, Thunderbird, Lexus, and a Chevy Avalanche.

Luke: "Maybe you should give one to Mason?"

Axel: "If she makes the payments, she can have it."

At 3:45PM, we walk to Axel's black Jaguar and shake hands.

Axel: "Are you going to send me a transcript first before you post, like you did for Mason?"

Luke: "How do you know I did that for Mason?"

Axel: "I've got my sources."

Luke: "You haven't done the things for me that Mason did."

We laugh.

Luke: "Just kidding."

I comfort myself with a power-sized Chocolate Moo from Jamba Juice with a protein boost.