Shawn Alff On Directing Discipline And The Art Of Making It Weird

“I don’t have a super-high sex drive,” he admits. “The only reason I did it is because Bellesa wanted to do the ‘Zero to Hero’ series, about a guy who wasn’t a performer, trying to be a studio porn star.”

That Alff succeeded in the endeavor is less surprising once you consider his level of drive and discipline. When he speaks with XBIZ at 8:30 a.m., Alff has already been up for four hours, having woken up at 4:30 and worked out for 90 minutes before jumping in a cold plunge and taking a hot shower ahead of a busy work day: directing the next installment of the “Zero to Hero” series, this time starring Blake Bullet.

“If I’m performing or shooting a POV scene, I try to eat very light because I don’t like to shoot on a full stomach,” he says. “But if I’m directing a scene, I’ll typically eat breakfast or lunch because I need energy. So today, I made chicken, eggs and vegetables.”

At 43, Alff is still in tremendous shape, something he credits to having low testosterone and maintaining a protein- and veggie-heavy diet that’s low on sugar.

“It’s helped me stay young,” Alff attests. “I wrestled growing up and have worked out since I was in seventh grade, so I was always conscious about my diet. I gave up alcohol three years ago, and I work out for roughly 90 minutes a day. I try to run eight miles a day, but sometimes it’s 12 miles if I’m training for a marathon.”

Alff completed five marathons this past year. Does he take rest days?

“I don’t schedule days off, but they happen occasionally,” he admits sheepishly.

‘A Special Event’

To rewind a bit: After growing up and attending college in Austin, Texas, Alff moved to Florida, where he first joined the adult industry in 2017.

“I started as a PA, which was great because there was no stress,” Alff recalls.

After paying his dues as a crew member for a while, he eventually turned to writing scripts.

“I don’t love being on feature sets for 12-14 hours a day,” he laughs. “So it’s nice to write something, let someone else deal with the difficulty of creating it and then see what they do with it.”

Early on, Alff says, he took any writing job he could get his hands on. In recent years, though, he began scaling back.

“Writing pays the least, and there’s no clout in it,” he explains. “It certainly opened the door for me and scratched that creative need, but I couldn’t live off of writing alone, which is why I transitioned to behind the camera.”

These days, Alff directs for Bellesa, Bang.com, Producers Fun and a few others. Most of his work is reality-based, including Bellesa’s “Blind Date” series.

As a director, Alff says, he is more in his element. However, the gig has also meant a whole new slew of potentially stressful complications.

“It’s cool to have that creative power,” he observes. “And it’s nice to make more money! But scheduling is a nightmare. Someone is always canceling.”

All of this has helped Alff appreciate the simplicity of performing as a hired gun, so to speak.

“Performing is great because you get to connect with your peers on that level, and you’re getting paid to experience pleasure,” he reflects. “Sure, there’s stress involved in getting hard on command, or working with someone you’ve never met. But it’s fun.”

After “Zero to Hero,” Alff quickly found himself in high demand — which required him to consider “supply” issues.

“Manuel Ferrera has to jack off every single day, whether he has a scene or not,” he explains. “But for me, coming every three days is pretty good. More often than not, when I have sex, I don’t come. I learned a trick that allows me to hold back — which can piss off a lot of women, because they’re not used to a guy not coming. But it makes it a special event when I do come.”

Playhouse of Porn

Currently based in the San Fernando Valley, within an hour’s drive of some of the adult industry’s various shoot houses, Alff shares a home with fellow performer Little Puck, his primary romantic partner. The two have an open relationship.

“We met two years ago and just celebrated our anniversary,” Alff says. “We ended up being at Burning Man together the year that it rained, and we realized that if you can spend a week together at Burning Man, you can probably live together. We’re always asking each other to hold the camera, because she’s just as busy as I am.

“I had been living with Robby Apples, but he moved out because he got married,” he explains. “Then Siri Dahl lived with me before she got her own place with her partner, so it was just perfect timing.”

The two of them are extra busy at the moment because they have a new tenant: a stray cat they’ve nicknamed Dr. Meow, who lives under their house.

“We recently started feeding her,” Alff explains. “The other day, I actually got within a few meters of her! So we’re slowly building trust.”

Alff and Puck share something else in common, it turns out.

“We both work too much,” he laughs. “I have no free time anymore, my whole life is producing and creating!

“The problem for me is that I end up overbooking myself,” Alff elaborates. “Like, I’m doing a nude modeling thing when I get home with a photographer who is staying at my house, and two other models are going to help us shoot some art stuff. Then I need to cut checks and do bookkeeping, and upload content and paperwork before I cook dinner for Little Puck and me. Sometimes I’ll shoot more content depending on how late it is after that.”

Alff shoots and edits POV scenes at his own house, where he recently installed a bed in the living room despite already having a full-fledged production studio in the backyard. It’s a modest setup, he says, but it gets the job done.

He typically heads to bed around 9 p.m. — remember that 4:30 a.m. alarm — and falls asleep an hour later after watching part of a movie or an episode of “Rick and Morty.”

“When we get days off, we call them ‘pancake days,’” Alff shares. “We stay in the house and get sushi, or maybe go on a mini adventure to a museum or out in nature somewhere. We end up decorating the house or doing little art things. Our house is kind of like the ‘Pee-wee’s Playhouse’ of porn: It’s very eclectic, and there are a lot of weird, interesting things strewn about.”

The couple also share another quirky pastime: writing stories together, which they improvise.

“We started during a trip to Europe and began trading off words — enough to fill a page or two,” Alff explains. “We both have an idea of where we want to take the story, and each one goes in weird directions, but we just love being creative and ridiculous together. We laugh a lot every day.”

Alff and Puck are skipping Burning Man this year, to visit Europe for two weeks. Alff is also heading back to Texas this summer to visit his family and enjoy a day at the waterpark together, then heading to the Kern River Valley for an annual meetup with a posse of longtime friends. He also has a trip to Thailand planned for February.

Skill Set

Running on such a packed schedule in both his personal and professional life, Alff considers it crucial to make the most efficient possible use of his time — and everyone else’s.

“Today, we’ll start shooting around 11 a.m. and hopefully wrap by 4 p.m. because it’s only one scene,” he says. “But tomorrow, we may do three or four scenes and shoot until 6 p.m. or 7 p.m. Typically, I try to make my shoot days like a normal business day — eight hours or less.

“I try to keep it moving, because nothing pisses me off more than wasting time on set,” he adds. “As a director, you have to have good time management and the ability to make compromises and pivot. You can’t be fixed to a specific way of doing things.”

Alff says he learned a lot about shooting efficiently by serving as a PA on many of Mike Quasar’s shoots, as well as shoots directed by Jacky St. James. Alff also works frequently with Jacky’s husband, Eddie Powell, who serves as Bellesa’s main camera person.

“I definitely don’t think I’m the smartest person in the room when it comes to lighting or camera equipment, so I’m always asking questions,” Alff says. “Editing is another skill that others are much better at than me. It takes me so much time, so I prefer to hire editors — but I will say that editing your own stuff will make you a really good shooter and a better director.

“My real skill is organizing it all and being able to deal with different personality types,” he offers. “I put a lot of faith in the people I hire — people I trust and know will show up on time.”

Alff says he admires and “appreciates the art” of helmers like Bree Mills and Ricky Greenwood — but that’s not his wheelhouse, especially since feature directors spend half the day setting up the camera and shot.

“I can’t do what Ricky does,” he says. “I have no interest in directing on that level, with the anxiety of all those locations and stunts. And I’m not a genius when it comes to storytelling. I’m more interested in the actual sex.

“For me, the fun is the chemistry and the buildup,” Alff enthuses. “That’s what we focus on at Bellesa with the ‘Blind Date’ scenes: I’m trying to figure out who the other person is and the type of sex they want to have naturally. I’m trying to make the talent happy, not just the money people.”

Occasionally, Alff will even pull an “Undercover Boss” move.

“I still do PA stuff from time to time,” he reveals. “Being a PA is a great way to meet new talent — and I like to see how people treat me as a PA. I don’t want people sucking up to me or being nice to me just to get work. I don’t want people to change how they treat me just because I’m the director.”