"Texas Tales from a Lone Star" by Angel Isaacs
Today’s Stunt by Mark DeAlessandro, Hollywood Hall of Fame:
I wake up because a bird is singing. I’m not a morning person. Now that I’m awake the bird is gone. I think they have a sixth sense. I grope for my phone. There’s a new message from Mark. It’s a video. It’s a video that I sent HIM last week on Valentine’s Day of my 4 year old Granddaughter, Laileigh Rose, creating a homemade Valentine for her mom.
One of the reasons why Mark and I get along so good is because Mark chose to adopt and raise a mixed child, meaning Caucasian and African American, just like my own experience. Skye and Laileigh are mixed. Mark asked to be Laileigh’s godfather because he and I met a month before she was born and I interviewed him with baby Lai on my lap 4 months later. He had paused in the middle of our discussion on a pier at my home that overlooked Lake Travis, paused in the middle of our talk about his work with the late David Wilkerson (“The Cross and the Switchblade”), looked at baby Laileigh and said, “Say Hallelujah!” Baby Laileigh had. We were filming. I have it on tape. So we call her “Hallelujah Baby.”
Mark (to me on the phone, yesterday): “I get to see you soon!”
Angel: “Oh so are you still coming down?”
Mark (surprised): “Yes! For Chuck’s event. I think I’ll bring the black Batman. Do you want me to bring the black Batman?”
Angel: (I barely know what he is talking about but evidently an African American actor has been cast in a new “Batman” movie.) “Sure, bring him.”
Mark: “YOU call him and invite him!”
Angel: “ME???!!!! I’M not calling him.”
Mark: “He was at my event in Dallas a couple of months ago when I spoke at Kyle’s “Dinner with Dreamers.” He stole the show. I think I’ll bring him. How does he get a ticket?”
Angel: “The tickets are $75. each and I’ve already bought 4. That was $300. plus your airline ticket down here. I’m at $500. now. Bring whoever you want but I’m not buying any more tickets.”
Mark: (Incredulously) “We’re talking “BATMAN.” He can afford to buy his own ticket. He just needs you to tell him HOW to buy it.”
Angel: (I’ve already sent Mark all that information but I’m a quiet, studious, thinker and he’s an outgoing, active, doer so of course I’m going to have to send it to him again.) “Ok, I’ll send you a link. LOOK at your phone, at my messages.”
Mark: (changing subjects but I keep up) “I’m going to tell the Producers for Taylor Sheridan that I have a half-black Goddaughter. THAT ought to get me in.”
Angel: “THAT’s actually an EXCELLENT idea, do that.” What we have both immediately jumped to in both of our minds is that when Sylvester Stallone started filming the “Creed” movies we felt like the Producers had reverse-discriminated against Mark because he was white. Mark and I had BOTH talked to Sylvester Stallone about his using his clout to get Mark into the Creed films. We had run into this problem. Now Taylor Sheridan was getting ready to film “The Tulsa King” with Stallone and I had researched the 101 Studios Producers the day before and emailed them and had given Mark the main guy’s direct phone number. “You’re better on the phone than me and this is his DIRECT phone number. Call him,” and Mark had.)
Mark: “Is Skye still single?” (We’re back on the Black Batman topic and my daughter, Skye, is half-black.)
Angel: “She’s VERY happy with her musician boyfriend. She just started a course for her Nursing degree every Friday night. She’s not going to Chuck’s event, but that was a great idea, thanks.”
Angel: “OH!!!! That video you sent me of Stallone being interviewed by 2 of his daughters yesterday!!! (Remembering) I watched the first three minutes and SAW YOU in Stallone’s features. (Mark was Sylvester Stallone’s body double/stunt double for 23 years.) You’re GOOFY - JUST LIKE HIM!!” (I had noticed immediately, in Stallone’s playing around/acting up in the podcast with his daughter’s, mannerisms that I had seen many times in real life with Mark. It was like that in over two decades of portraying Stallone he had BECOME Stallone.) “It was AMAZING. Stallone was just playing with the microphone, moving it around, teasing his daughters, but it was YOU. I mean you’re not ALWAYS like that, but I’ve SEEN you like that when you’re being goofy.”
Mark: (I can just sort of hear him smiling on the other end of the phone.)
Mark: “We need to edit out a section of that video that comes later when they start talking about Sly getting depressed around the Rocky Balboa film period. We can use it when we do our talks (as co-Speakers with me singing/talking about Chapelgate and him talking about his stunt career). It ties into the prayer scenes. (Mark had been part of the reason why Stallone had included prayer scenes of Rocky praying in the films). Dennis Tinerino was a part of that period too because he was training Stallone." (Dennis wrote “Supersize Your Faith” and was one of Mark’s favorite friends.)
Angel: “I can download it and edit it for us. I’ll do that.”
Mark: “A lady Producer I know, and her daughter, are hosting an event this Sunday in Dallas. Do you want to come?
Angel: “I just took “Swan” (my van) to the repair shop. She’ll be there till next week.”
Mark: “Well, think about it.” (Mark never takes “No” as an answer. That’s another thing he has taught me. When I had said I wasn’t going to his Stunt/Action Acting workshop at the 2022 Comic Con in Albuquerque he had just kept saying, “Think about it,” until I had thought of how to go, and I had gone and taken him Laileigh to train. Mark creates success.
Angel: “Well, maybe I can borrow my dad’s truck…”
Copyright 2022 Angel Isaacs All Rights Reserved Written 8:00 am February 19, 2022
