Page 44 - AVN June 2018

FEATURE |
“I’VE GOT TWO SETS OF VERY BIG SHOES TO FILL, SO
RIGHT NOW MY MAIN GOAL IS TO NOT EMBARRASS MY
DAD ... OR MAKE GRANDPA ROLL IN HIS GRAVE.”
—RIKKI BRAUN ON THE BRAUN LEGACY
another fairy-tale parody? He’s done three for Wicked
Pictures—Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella—
calling them “the first stories that had a sexual
component that I could fantasize about. … As a kid
you fantasize about these characters, you know what
I mean? … Your mind goes there.” Braun said, “The
only other one I’ve been wanting to make for a long
time is Pinocchio. … But it also needs to make financial
sense—for me, for Wicked, for everybody.” At one
point a couple of years ago Ron Howard was going
to direct a live-action Pinocchio. “If it had that type of
mainstream exposure to segue into and promote, then
it’s gonna make sense. But right now it’s an expensive
movie without a counterpart to go with.”
He’s also eyeing Beetlejuice. “I have a script that is
hysterical for it—I was still at Vivid when I wrote it,”
he said. But he’s waiting for that mainstream tie-in.
“It keeps almost happening,” he said. And there’s
Lost in Space, the 1960s TV series that’s now a Netflix
show. “I have a script for that, too.”
FEATURE | BRAUN
CALLING THE SHOTS Rikki Braun (right) directing Asa Akira and Isiah Maxwell in Exposed.
XXX will actually be for Seth. He’s basically acting for
the whole movie with his face completely covered by
a mask, and he needs to be funny and emote relying
entirely on his body language. Luckily he is so talented
and committed that I have no doubt he’ll be fantastic.”
Asked what he’d wish for if money were no object,
Axel joked, “A cameo by Ryan Reynolds!”
In addition to his affinity for the source material,
there’s another factor: how to schedule his projects
so they benefit from the promotion surrounding the
mainstream versions. He announced Deadpool XXX a
week ahead of the theatrical release of Deadpool 2. The
Wicked Comix movie is due out September 30—right
at the end of the eligibility period for the AVN Awards.
“To be financially viable you have to tap into
something that can trigger your YouTube views,” he
explained. This approach particularly pays off on a
franchise like Star Wars, which has new movies coming
out regularly. The Star Wars SFW trailer has garnered
5 million YouTube views, and that translates into
sales: “I don’t want to talk money, but I still get very
satisfying checks from Vivid every month.”
Given that degree of success, it’s safe to say that
Axel Braun has been viewed with some degree of
envy within the industry. “You go through many
phases in your professional career. And at some point
I think it’s important to create a polarizing figure for
yourself. I did it back in the days at some point. … I
was able to achieve financial success so I buy fancy
cars. Then I realized when social media started to take
place if I post a picture of my new Rolls-Royce it will
44 | AVN.com | 6.18
get people’s attention and you will have 150 people
saying, ‘That’s awesome.’ I’m actually the guy who
tints the windows [so no one can see in]. I just love
fancy cars. But it’s not because I want to show off. I’m
a happily married man in an absolutely monogamous
relationship and the goal of the day is to tuck my kids
into bed and make sure I spend as much time as I can
with them. I’m not ‘the guy.’ But as far as having a
persona, yeah, I’ve had pictures taken with a Bentley,
and yeah, it gets traction, it gets attention, it gets what
people wanna see. They like to create a mythological
figure for whatever reason. That’s how fandom works.
So I think there is a value in that.”
But Braun is also aware that the times are changing.
“Suddenly, the nature of our business has evolved
in a way where there’s not the same value of being
a part of a big project as there was a few years ago.
ManyVids, SextPanther, all those sites, performers
have been able to monetize what they do faster,
cheaper, they do content trades, they just shoot
themselves camming. ... Before it was like, I’m a new
girl, I’m going to be in an Axel Braun movie, I’m
gonna get talked about in mainstream, I’m gonna get
promotion, I might be up for awards, there is a value
to that. My movies in general don’t carry that cachet
anymore.” Romi Rain, however, understood. “She saw
the value, for her there was a value. This is a fantastic
actress—it’s sad she didn’t win Best Actress, not
because I didn’t get an extra award for my movie, but
because she was such a force.”
After Deadpool, what might come next? Perhaps
Giant Footsteps In addition to the young children Axel has with his
wife—he also had a son, Rikki Braun, from a previous
marriage. “My son, who is 25, went to film school
here, actually. He moved here and stayed here four and
half years and went to the New York Film Academy,”
Axel said. “A whole different plan—again, doors are
even more open for him than they were for me with
my dad. And I never pressured him, but he enjoyed
being around. He helped me on set; he always liked
it—he likes the girls. The girls like him—he’s young.
He goes to the parties and this kind of stuff.”
Rikki served as assistant director on Batman vs.
Superman. And he made the leap to directing when
Axel gave him a screenplay to shoot. “I haven’t done
an original feature in 15 years. That’s why if I make
one this year it’s going to be meaningful for me,” Axel
said. He did have one screenplay lying around, but
it was “too small a movie for me at this point in my
career to make as my first feature in 15 years.” So he
offered Exposed to Rikki. “He read it and he loved it. I
had planned on Asa playing the lead, and he said, ‘You
know who would be great for this? Asa Akira.’
“He started shooting at 24, just like I did. He went
to film school, just like I did. His father was a director,
just like mine,” Axel recalled.
They have something else in common: a skepticism
about religion. In Axel’s case, it took the form of
petitioning the Catholic Church to excommunicate
him after he became upset when the clergy suggested
his sister had been born dead because “God saw she
was going to become a murderer or a terrorist.” After
that he refused to go to religion class and became
“the only minor in Italy to ever request and obtain
excommunication from the Catholic Church. I did that
when I was seven years old.” Coincidentally, when he
visited a seven-year-old Rikki in Italy, his son talked
about an incident at school. “They said there was a big
bang and that’s how the world came about … Then
the other day we had religion class and the priest said
God created the world. So what I’m thinking is that
one of them is lying. … Which one is lying?”
Answering questions via email while traveling in
Europe, Rikki Braun described his own experiences
with his famous forebears. Rikki’s earliest memories