The trauma and truth of Award-winning director Axel Braun In a lot of ways parents are responsible for their kids getting into pornography. I know a lot of kids, including myself, who found their father’s secret stash of adult magazines in the back of the closet or neatly tucked away in the garage. We, as curious little kids, loved to look. We didn’t quite know what to make of the naked beauties before us, but we liked it. We knew it was wrong also. Otherwise our fathers wouldn’t be hiding these lovely naked women pressed between pages of porn magazines. For adult film director Axel Braun things were a little bit different. His father didn’t hide anything. In fact, Axel’s father, Lasse Braun was an innovator of pornography back in his homeland of Italy. “I got my start in adult film making because of my father,” Axel told me in a phone conversation. “He was making 8 mm films back in 1961. The films were only nine minutes long and I asked ‘how can you masturbate to a nine minute movie?’ He told me take a look and you will masturbate twice…and of course I did.” When Axel's father started making adult films there was no porn in the film industry. There were no rules or regulations like there are now. So the sex back then was even more hardcore than we see today. “Back then they were simulating rape scenes and gun fights with sex scenes,” Axel explains. “Today you can’t do that stuff, it was very very intense back then.” Another feather in the cap of the elder Braun was Lasse was responsible for bringing the peep show booths to America. Fast forward to present day America. Axel Braun is one of the leading directors in the adult film industry. He has been in the business for 17 years. Despite only working two days per week, he cranks out nearly eight movies a month. But Axel is realistic with his work. “Shooting gonzo is an effortless job for me, and it’s really the performers who can make or break the scene” the former film school graduate told me “but when I do a big budget feature and I shoot on 35mm, the music changes” Axel has created his claim to fame with his squirting films and obsession. “”Movies like Squirting 101 (New Sensations/Digital Sin) cost very little to shoot and they make a lot of money. Volume 1 sold over 9,000 DVDs, but with the bigger features we’re around maybe 4,000 copies.” Compulsion, which is Axel’s big budget feature, cost $140,000 to make. Where as the gonzo features only cost about $25-30,000. For his efforts in Compulsion, Axel was awarded several times over in the past year. Compulsion won two awards at the X-Rated Critics Organization (XRCO) Awards. It won the Best Film, knocking off three Vivid movies. Ashley Long also took home an award for Best Single Performance. He also took home a pair of AVN Awards and six awards from the Adam Film World (AFW), which included Best Director and Best Film, plus International Awards in Barcelona (Best Director and Best Film), Berlin (Best Film), and Milan (Best Foreign Director). “Those awards make all the hard work and money worth while,” Braun told me. “Although I am extremely flattered, it also raises the bar for my next film. But that is what I am looking forward to.” But did all these awards under his belt change the outlook or personality of Axel Braun? Not hardly. “When I shot Compulsion I was very humble and committed to my work. Now that I won awards I am not going to change and become a jackass with a huge ego. I am not like that. I know people who have done that and I don’t want to be one of those assholes.” So how will Axel Braun raise the bar for his next big budget feature and remain true to his roots? Only the director knows. I have the script written already but I haven’t found the cast I am looking for,” Axel told me. “Compulsion took about three months to write, and this one took a little longer. So we will see what happens.” When asked for more detail about what he is going for in his next film he only gives a few clues to the puzzle. “In Compulsion I dealt with a father and son relationship. This new film deals with a mother and son and the impact of childhood trauma on the life of a man” The working title for this epic was Trauma, but it might very well change. The yet-to-be-titled film is a psychological thriller. And like all of Braun’s films has an autobiographical twist thrown in. Axel is always on the lookout for hot and nasty girls to cast in his more expensive films. With his next effort he had a particular A-List star. “Initially I wrote this film for Lauren Phoenix,” Axel proclaimed. “She has a lot of charisma and is great in her scenes…but by the time I shoot she might be under exclusive contract with somebody. That’s one of the bummers of the industry, all the best performers are usually locked down.” That being said, Axel is planning on checking out the ladies at the AVN Awards to see what catches his eye. He would like to have a girl that is fairly new and have his film be the stars first boy/girl scene. Axel does confess he likes girls with a small ass on them because when he’s is fucking them from behind it makes his cock look bigger. It is not all beauty and ass for Braun when casting for a film. “Working with porn actors is easy to get them hard or have sex, but to have them act is really hard. The women are also hard to find these days.” Axel hasn’t really got a male lead for his next feature yet either. But what he does know is he will not cast any of the older men in porn that seem to linger around in the business. “I mean come on. I don’t want to see my grandfather fuck on film. Some of them are great guys but they can’t pull in sales and Randy West doesn’t even have a cum shot anymore.” Being a director is only half the battle for Axel Braun. He writes his own scripts, shoots camera, and edits the films. On top of that, he says on the set he has to be a little bit of at babysitter. That’s where his Ph.D. in Psychology comes handy. “Porn looks great from the outside, Braun said. “But when you do it everyday it becomes a chore. Friends come to the set and are shocked at what they see, but to me it is nothing. It’s an every day thing and not that big of deal. “With the girls,” he continues. “It’s not just about the sex, you have to make them look good and confident about themselves. You have to make them feel pretty and give them lots of compliments. Trust me, it’s a pain in the ass.” So why does he keep doing this? “I am a filmmaker. It is my passion. I love to make movies. All the gonzo stuff is fun and pays very well, but the real reason I am here is to keep telling stories.” With winning several awards, seeing amazingly beautiful women get fucked on film and getting paid for his passion, is Axel Braun bored with porn? “I don’t know if I am jaded, but let’s just say that it’s kinda hard to shock me after all these years. What really turns me on? Integrity. Along with intelligence, it’s the one thing that’s really hard to find…”