Page 42 - AVN June 2018

FEATURE | BRAUN
FEATURE |
“I DON’T KNOW HOW I DIDN’T DIE SHOOTING IT; I’M
ACTUALLY SERIOUS. I REMEMBER SITTING DOWN AND
THINKING, WOW, THIS HAS NEVER BEEN THIS BAD IN
MY WHOLE LIFE.”
—AXEL BRAUN ON ‘JUSTICE LEAGUE XXX’
Lasse got his start in erotica when he met some
guys in Belgium who printed nudie magazines. He told
them, “I know a lot of people in Italy who could sell
these.” Lasse’s father was a diplomat, so he used the
diplomatic plates to import the magazines. Wondering
how well movies would sell, he put a classified ad
in an Italian paper for “adult movies from Sweden.”
So many people sent in money for the non-existent
movies that Lasse had to make a movie himself.
Shooting in Super 8, he filmed himself having sex with
his girlfriend.
“He became wildly successful because there wasn’t
anything else at the time. There was no porn,” Axel
explained. So Lasse went to the U.S. and met with
Reuben Sturman. Exaggerating his own accent and
deepening his voice, Axel conjures up his father: “You
have all these bookstores and I have all these Super
8 movies. We build little boxes so people can lock
themselves in and they can put a coin and project the
movie.”
Fast forward to the 1990s: “The first porn set I’ve
been to in the United States—I wrote this movie called
Fantasy Nights for my father in 1990 and he produced
it. Henri Pachard directed, and Alex DeRenzy was
director of photography,” Braun recollected. “I’m there
with Joey Silvera and Tom Byron and Jerry Butler and
Samantha Strong—you name it, a who’s who.” Axel
was on set to shoot BTS “with this humongous camera
like we had,” and Tom Byron and Rachel Ryan were
set to do an anal scene—the pivotal moment of the
movie. In addition to him shooting BTS, there were
three camera operators capturing the action. “So we
are shooting and I’m looking at the monitors … three
cameras and these amazing camera people, and yet,
nobody has the shot that I envisioned for this.”
“Of course I’m not going to go tap DeRenzy and say,
‘Dude, the other way.’ … So there’s this little loft. I
went up and I just shot it for the fuck of it. That’s the
shot—I wanted a shot from above, I wanted a clear
shot. Two weeks later we’re in the editing room and
my father is in the editing room with a million VCRs,
the way we were back then, and my father is going
over it and we get to that scene and he’s arguing with
the editor [again adapting his Lasse voice]—‘No, no, I
really need a different shot, not that one, not that one,
not that one, it’s a different shot.’ And the guy goes,
‘You don’t have it.’”
As the elder Braun moans, “It’s a catastrophe,” Axel
told him, “I think I have the shot.”
“Fine, show me the shot,” he recalled Lasse saying,
somewhat grudgingly.
And before long, as Braun remembered it, Lasse was
singing a different tune: “That’s it, he has the shot. ...
My son. Blood of my blood. He has the shot.”
From then on Axel was Lasse’s cameraman—
unpaid, but compensated with plenty of opportunity.
“That’s how I made a career for myself,” he recalls.
“One shot. It was a really good shot.”
The Son Also Rises
The first movie Axel directed on his own was for
VCA—a deal he struck with Russ Hampshire. After
that he had stints at Elegant Angel, New Sensations
and Hustler Video. Compulsion, a 2003 movie for
Elegant Angel, was one of his earlier standouts, and he
also was known for his squirting movies. But it wasn’t
until 2009 at Hustler that Braun first delved into the
popular genre of the moment: parodies. And shortly
after that he hit his winning streak.
“I only do parodies of subjects that I am emotionally
attached to,” Axel said. “Otherwise I don’t. As
successful as it could be, if I don’t have a history with
it, if I’m not a huge fan of it, I’m not gonna do it.
That’s the main reason for my success. Fans are the
people that I cater to; if I catered only to people who
habitually watch porn and pay for it, there’s like 500
of them left. But I go after a different demographic. I
go after people who are fans of the source material—
and trust me, a fan will know if you’re bullshitting
them. … The reason why they respond so well to my
parodies is because they can tell from every little detail
that I’m a fan of the source material.”
Clearly much of that source material comes from
comic books. Asked about his comics collection when
he was young, Axel recalled, “My dad was really good
friends with the Italian distributor of both Marvel and
DC Comics. … I grew up with full collections of every
superhero, Marvel and DC, in two copies. … One to
read, and one to keep.” The “keepers” are still at his
mother’s house. The first superhero to strike a chord
with him was Spider-Man. He’s done two Spider-Man
movies and also put the character in a few other
movies as well—“because Xander [Corvus] was just so
brilliant as Spider-Man.”
With his passion for authenticity in details like
costumes and set design, Axel’s parodies caught
the eye of geek-culture critics. For the 2010 movie
Batman XXX: A Porn Parody, he produced the movie
himself and then signed a distribution deal with
Vivid Entertainment. Another movie made with Vivid
became his most successful title, especially in terms of
sales: Star Wars XXX: A Porn Parody (2012). He credits
its success to a passion for the source—both his and
his collaborator’s, Eli Cross (aka Bryn Pryor). “As
huge of a fan of Star Wars as I have been, I had Bryn
Pryor on it with me and he’s like the authority on Star
Wars shit—it was a labor of love on so many levels.
That’s why we tried to do Empire Strikes Back and I
tried to do that Indiegogo campaign back then—it’s a
movie that’s going to cost half a million dollars. It’s
impossible to do it for less. It just can’t happen.”
Braun wanted to raise money, spend it all on a huge
production and then give the movie away. “It was an
experiment. It was unsuccessful because we didn’t
get to the goal, but we raised, like, $130,000, which is
unthinkable for a porn movie. … We wanted to go to
Alaska to shoot [the ice planet] Hoth. That’s how it
needs to be done. Otherwise we’ll be in Hustler studio
with Styrofoam … here’s the snow.”
The most recent entry in his Best Parody winning
streak was Justice League XXX: An Axel Braun Parody
(2017). But this production was another kind of
labor—a grueling one. “I love Justice League. I don’t
know how I didn’t die shooting it; I’m actually serious.
I remember sitting down and thinking, wow, this has
never been this bad in my whole life. I don’t know that
I can see this through. It’s going to fall apart.”
He elaborated, “It was a huge production and it
was in the middle of summer. And there was a time
constraint because I needed to be done before July 1
because I was having a baby. And so I wanted to block
out the month of July. … And it’s 100 degrees outside.
And you have costumes. And beards. I had had some
scenes with Superman, who now has a beard. It takes
two-and-a-half weeks for [Ryan] Driller to grow the
beard. We don’t get to finish that; he has a bunch
42 | AVN.com | 6.18