Porn Valley- Shay Sights was on The Sports Swami show talking about, among other things, her bust up with partner Renee LaRue in Dragonfly Productions. “It was a vision we created together,” says Sights. “She’s still in my heart and will always be, for being half the vision that created this. She’s still pretty active with me in my ideas.”
According to Sights, LaRue is moving on to different things. “Which is beautiful.” Swami was curious if there was any skullduggery behind the scenes with people attempting to impede Sights from starting up a company. “Not at all,” Sights answered, noting that she had dated Nick Manning for several years.
“I pretty much ran Nick Manning Productions with him,” she said. “We did about ten movies. Then me and Renee were in contract with Wildlife for a little while. She did a movie for them called Passion. We were traveling together for quite a bit. We decided that we wanted to take both our knowledge and our ideas and do something creative.”
Sights explained that the name Dragonfly comes from the fact that both she and LaRue do a lot of healing work. ‘I love porn,” Sights explains. “It’s amazing that I am where I am today because of it.” But Sights also notes that greed’s manifesting itself in the porn picture. “And how we can pay people less money- get the hardest core sex scenes we can get and make the most amount of money. That was never what it was about for Renee and I. We both kind of got sick being on sets.”
Getting back to the healing aspects, Sights said the company symbol is a totem for breaking through illusions. “Because of the transparency of their wings and the power of light- we decided to do some amazing movies with some really great, hardcore, nasty sex scenes…and give people great production value and pay the talent well and have a massage service on set and be real positive about stuff, but not try to change it or make it different from what people want to see. We both think that great, hardcore nasty sex is healthy. If it makes you happy that’s great.”
Sights said she and LaRue had just seen the movie Dragonfly with Kevin Costner. “We both really enjoyed it and we both just started seeing them [dragonflies] everywhere. When we decided to name the company we had dragonflies all over our houses. They’re everywhere now. They’re in my garden flying everywhere now.”
Sights tells another story about how she and LaRue were walking into the Sony building in Manhattan one time. “A good friend of mine used to work there,” said Sights. “We were going to his office.” From what you could gather from Sights’ conversation with The Swami, she mentioned the name of her company and her friend apparently played some song, Calling All Angels; and Sights apparently took that as some kind of sign.
“We took it as such and incorporated that name, and everything fell into place.”
Swami asked Sights to elaborate on the healing-thing. “A lot of people say it’s a bit wacky. Some say it’s revolutionary.”
Sights explains that she’s not a religious person but a spiritual person. “I’ve had a really tough road. I think Renee would definitely agree with that. According to Sights, she’s been involved in different healing communities but once it’s discovered she’s in porn, she instanly becomes judged. Even with the porn community being as open-minded as it supposedly is, Sights said she would get comments. “I just do what I feel is right. What I’m doing with my movies, I don’t push anything down anyone’s throat.”
Sights felt that she and LaRue had some great visions and “cool messages” for the company. Sights said one movie they made was called Butterfly. “There’s a wedding scene at the end of the movie,” she relates. “There’s a half angel, half narrator guy who says the wedding vows. The only wedding vow we have in the movie is do you agree to love one another without condition. And then everyone on the movie comes in after we both say I do and we have this big orgy. It’s kind of funny when I hear myself say it. The message we’re saying is why are we so closed minded in so many cases and so heavily programmed? We’re trying to get out there that sex makes you happy and if you’re not hurting anyone, that’s great.”
Sights says people thought she was wacky before she did porn and didn’t change their minds afterwards. “You can’t please anyone,” she says. “You have to kind of follow your heart. I think we’ve done some beautiful stuff that people are really going to love. Gonzo and amateur movies are really great but when you can take that kind of sex and give someone a really beautiful set, amazing makeup and costumes, I think there’s nobody out there that’s not going to appreciate that. And we don’t shove a whole lot of dialogue down peoples’ throats. We keep it more vignette-style so there’s not really much of a storyline. It’s more in the visuals of the sets and costumes. And we have some voiceovers that we’ve recorded.”
Sights says getting started was difficult. “When we first started out we were going to have a production manager. But it got to the point where we wanted to oversee everything and have it be perfect. So what was the point because we were just going to call and confirm everything anyways. It was a lot of work. But we believe in what we’re doing.”
Swami asked Sights about how she had to reconcile her running Nick Manning Productions with the relationship end of it. “Did it cause a lot of stress between you and your co-workers or even you and Nick?”
Sights acknowledges that she and Manning had arguments about business. “But Nick’s a really great guy. And we had an amazing relationship as far as being open with doing the work and being talent and that kind of thing. As far as the business side and how much work was involved and how much we had to work together, it caused a few arguments. It was a little while ago so I can’t give you any examples of exactly what was going on, but even Renee and I have had our differences. When you work that closely, no two people are exactly the same. At some point you’re going to have to agree to disagree on a few things.”
Swami was angling for some kind of insights to Sights the performer. “There’s something in me that kind of clicks,” she says. “There’s the demon woman coming out and it’s not a demon woman just a completely different energy. It’s something really sexual once I get going. It comes out of me in my scenes.” In her private life Sights says she’s pretty normal. “I garden and I do a lot of healing work and therapy.” Sights also likes to work out and hike. “I’m pretty active and normal.”
Sights grew up in Vancouver noting that when she started doing porn she got e-mails from people she went to high school with thinking that it was the coolest thing. Sights says her mother voiced some early concerns but has been supportive of her career choices. “My dad, I’m sure, would have preferred me to finish up university and have gone that route,” she adds. “He took a little longer to warm up to it. But now that I’ve been doing it as long as I’ve been doing it and showed a progression with where I’ve been going, bought a house, invested my money and started a corporation…he’s pretty supportive now. He doesn’t want to talk details with me, obviously, about it.” Sights notes that she’s an only child.
Sights says she handles all the fan correspondence with her website, www.shaysights.com “Be patient- I’m pretty good with it,” she advises. “It’s just myself and my ex-husband, who’s still a really close friend of mine, he still webmasters it for me.” Sights has thought about making it a commercial site. “But the money isn’t worth having to make fans deal with pop up windows and banner links everywhere, and everything that annoys me when I go on to the big commercial sites.”
Sights has been through enough relationships to realize that problems start when you give your power to someone and start allowing them to control you. “Human nature says they’re going to just try and do that more and you’re going to lose more and more of who you are,” she states. “I’m pretty positive about who I am and what I’m doing and that I’m doing the right thing with my life.” Sights feels that she’s been lucky and “blessed” in her relationships. Swami asked Sights how tough it is to date someone in the industry with all the backstabbing, jealousy and politics.
“It used o be a lot tougher than it is now,” she replied. “I’m thankful that it was because it’s taught me how to not to focus on what other people say and how to focus on my own happiness. Ultimately that’s the most important thing. And what I’ve really learned is when you dye your hair blonde, people are going to like you better as a brunette. And then when you go back to brunette, people are going to like you better as a blonde. You can’t please everyone.”
Asked how she would want to be remembered, Sights says as someone who made beautiful movies, made a difference and made people happy.