This is the first in a series of reports from an inside source on the set of Alex Braun's Compulsion. Currently in production, the project is a 16mm film that is Elegant Angel’s flagship release of the year. Although Elegant Angel tried to keep the project under wraps, AVN has an insider who has given us exclusive coverage from the set that we will release as we gain more information. AVN has been promised that photos and cast info will follow.
Three months ago Elegant Angel general manager Alex Braun hopped on motorcycle, which he rode despite its lack of alignment, and headed towards a seedy hotel in downtown Los Angeles with a six-pack of beer and five packs of cigarettes for a two-day immersion into character. He emerged from the hotel with the rough draft of a fifty-eight-page screenplay for Compulsion, an epic porn film with a love triangle that involves a mob family.
“I don’t even drink beer,” Braun told AVN.com “I just thought it would help me get into the character’s heads better.”
Braun, who has written numerous scripts for both porn and mainstream projects, felt he had captured something special between those pages. “I could feel how the whole movie was to be shot. I could see it playing in my head,” said Braun.
What Braun had developed was the tale of a mobster’s son, Nicki, who accepts the family’s money but tries to stay out of the family business. Unfortunately, the business doesn’t stay away from him, and when Nicki’s unscrupulous partner in a European nightclub murders his girlfriend, Nicki returns home for help, only to find that his father had taken a trophy wife that is the same age as the son.
Inevitably, the Nicki and the trophy wife, Mia, fall in love with each other. The mob boss finds out when one of his henchmen takes photos of the two together and decides to show the Nicki how Mia really is by having her “raped” as he is chained to a cross and forced to watch. The scene isn’t a real rape – the wife just happens to prefer that sort of scenario sexually.
Braun went to Elegant Angel owner Patrick Collins not just for a greenlight, but also to convince him to play the role of the mob patriarch. “I wrote that character for him. It’s not a large stretch to see Patrick as an intimidating mob character.”
Collins liked the script enough to give it the go ahead, and he liked the character well enough to accept the non-sex role – a rare occasion for Collins. Then the two went home and each tweaked the script separately, only to find out when comparing notes that they had both made the same tweaks to dialogue and locations.
“The first thing he suggested to me, I said ‘Oh, you mean like this,’” said Braun, indicating with his hands that he was showing Collins his draft of the script. “By Collins’ sixth suggestion, all of which matched what I had done, I couldn’t believe it. It was uncanny. We considered that the final proof we had something special.”
