Page 60 - AVN JULY 2024

Upon the release of the movie in September 2003, Collins told AVN, “This show is all about passion, and Axel has passion to spare. On top of it, the added difficulty of shooting on film gave everyone the drive to excel. No one could coast, or work on autopilot for this movie.
“Most of the performers had never worked on a project of this scope, and they soon realized that it wasn’t just a different ballpark, but an entirely different game. Axel really wanted to raise the bar, and Compulsion is doing just that.”
Braun tells AVN Compulsion was part autobiographical as he drew from some of his life experiences—in particular, his relationship with his father Lasse, the adult film pioneer who passed away in 2015.
“But the real inspiration was Patrick,” Braun says. “I had this character in mind that was a heightened version of him, and the nucleus of my story began forming around it. Pat had never acted before, but his charisma was undeniable. ... He hit it out of the park and delivered a truly epic performance.”
Axel remembers the exact day he began writing it—April 19, 2003. Then he led the principal photography over 12 days in July, with temperatures soaring into triple digits. The “shortest” shooting day of that stretch was 18 hours.
But composing the screenplay was a whole other story in itself.
Braun recounted his unconventional writing process.
“I had written features before, but this one was on a whole different level, and the
stakes were very high,” the director recalls. “It was a massive financial undertaking for the company and I knew what its success or failure would mean for my career.
“I wanted to be isolated from the world during the writing process, and I also wanted to smell the danger of the streets. So, on a gloomy Saturday morning, I got on my motorcycle and rode it to a very sketchy area of Downtown L.A., where I looked for the shittiest motel I could find.
“It was on the third floor of a decrepit building. I went to park my Harley half a mile away in a guarded lot, and walked back as it started to rain. The room was dirty and smelly, with bars at the window, a small desk and a wooden chair, no heating or air conditioning, a bed you’d never want to lay on, and of course no internet. It was perfect. Armed with a carton of Marlboros, two bottles of wine, and my laptop, I sat there for 32 hours writing non-stop.
“On Monday morning I printed the first draft for Patrick and told him I wanted to work with him on his character’s dialogue, so for the next two weeks, I showed up at his house every morning at 7 a.m. and we would spend an hour working on it, until we found the right voice for Big Charlie.”
Compulsion became the first of eight AVN Best Screenplay awards that he would win in his career.
“And although I quit smoking and drinking, my writing process never changed,” Braun adds. “The first draft of each one of them was written in complete isolation inside a shitty hotel room.”
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