The Marc Copage Podcast Show

 My concept has always been spend time on your strengths. Get great at what you already love. Do what you love and the money will follow. Get passionate about something and just do that more and more. Often time the weaknesses will be subsumed underneath that.

You were a member of Burt Bacharach’s band as a keyboard player and background vocalist for the last twenty or so years? Twenty-three years or something like that. What was that experience like and how did that all come to be?

To me music truly has to get back to where there is a deep respect for the evolution of where it is now. At the same time the core values of what it represents. Challenge yourself. Pull something from deep within yourself to touch another person. Music touches you. It’s supposed to touch you, it’s supposed to resurrect something within you. Remember back in the day, all the love songs, ‘La-La-La-L...

My father was the program director for KGFJ. He was the first Black disc jockey ever in the South. He kept the radio station really prominent in the urban and the Black community at that time in the 50’s. He was brought out to LA to be a program director. My father was also even more importantly than programming, he really loved community activism. So when he came out to LA and got involved with K...

I’m a bulldog with things. I don’t give up. I think tenacity is my strong suit. I get my clients to focus. I get them to refine their skills. If they need practice I tell them to practice. If they’re not great writers I ask them to work with great writers to learn more about great writing. If they need some image management. That can be hard for them to take, but you gotta tel them. How they can f...

My grandfather on my father’s side was a big band trumpeter in the 1920’s with a band leader named Ben Bernie and Ben Bernie was best known for writing “Sweet Georgia Brown”. The original “Sweet Georgia Brown”. You can actually see it on YouTube. It’s amongst the first sound film tests done shooting Ben Bernie and his orchestra playing “Sweet Georgia Brown”. But my grandfather at 27 years old had...

On dating and if size really matters.

You brought it up earlier, looking pretty or whatever can work to my advantage. I think that a lot of times it works to my disadvantage. And acting anyway or at least especially with me. I'm blonde, I'm somewhat curvy, I can kind of hide it but people know. It works against me. For instance, I had a representative once who only saw me for sexy type roles and it's hard a lot of times...

There was a flyer in the mail for Miss Texas, Miss Texas USA is what it was called. I convinced my dad into letting me do it. I had no experience at all. I didn't know how to walk in heels or be on stage and not be nervous or nothing and and he let me do it it was fun! I mean I absolutely had no clue of what I was doing, but it was fun meeting the girls and kind of a challenge, oh how am I no...

I was scared out of my wits to go there. You can imagine all the stories that people talk about you know. Oh they're afraid of Black people, well I heard some stories too about lynchings you know and bottles thrown at civil rights workers and all kinds of things with bussing you know. I was truly frightened to go to the school with these white people but I gotta tell you within two weeks I&ap...

When I was in Europe I had already made the decision to actually try this other lifestyle. To shift courses in terms of being involved in a heterosexual relationship. I broke up with my boyfriend who I have been with for five years with the understanding that I wanna feel like I don't have, I'm not cheating on anybody back in the states if I'm doing this. And he basically said, well...

My guest for today is a multi-talented entertainer known for the television series ‘Fame’, the movie, ’Girls Just Want To Have Fun, and has performed in the Equity stage productions of ‘Cats’, ‘Ragtime’ ‘Aida’ on the Broadway stage. You might know him the most from the classic dance movie Breakin’! Phineas Newborn Ⅲ,welcome to the show!  It was interesting because again you don't know when yo...

I think drama is easier than comedy. Especially on film. In a comedy, on stage, I can sense the rhythm, the breath, of the room. I can tell how to ride a laugh. On film, it’s a little harder if it’s a one camera thing. If it’s a three camera thing, with an audience it’s more like theater, it’s a bit easier. I did a comedy called “Love Life” on HBO last year. William Harper Jackson was the star of...

I had to come to a point in my life and this was when I really knew that I wanted to focus on just doing theater. I realized I'm going to have to learn how to be a producer. This is when I realize that I was still fixated on the 6° of separation character. I had come up with the idea that if I produced 6° of separation and I could get Will Smith to come on board as a producer somehow using th...

I don’t think I really need a lot of approval from others. I don’t think I ever really did. Even as a child. If they didn’t like me, that’s ok. I’m not going to bother you, now if you get in my face then we’re going to have a little bit of a problem, but ok I’ll leave you alone if you don’t care for me. I never really took that stance that I needed everybody to like me, that I needed to be the gol...

The commercial spun off some incredible promotions. You could go into Jack In The Box and buy a 45 of my song, “Take Like A Little Easier”. You could buy my puzzle, you could buy my poster. Then a phone call comes in and it’s Matel Toys. They want to produce my doll. I was very thankful to my wonderful agent and manager and all the people I had at that time. The doll was a project called ‘Operatio...

I a lot of ways it’s gotten easier. I see a lot of Black actors doing more parts. You know, different types of parts. That was the thing I really wanted to get to. Cause when you’re playing with GI Joe you can be anybody. That’s been my life. I’ve been able to travel. The dancing took me on the road. When I was producing sometimes I’d have to get in the car and go to Vegas. I’d go to Florida, go t...

My guest for today is a multi-talented, triple threat! She is a professional dancer, choreographer, vocalist and actress. She is a former soloist and assistant director of the Gregory Hancock Dance Theatre. She has been a soloist and master class dance instructor for the Lula Washington Dance Theater traveling and teaching throughout the United States.  She has performed throughout the world in va...

Owner and CEO of Fireboi Entertainment, a production company specializing in producing, and developing feature films, TV shows, animation and video games. They have worked in visual FX, video game production, toy development, locations, writing, directing, booming, and producing. Currently developing content to be distributed on multiple streaming platforms. 

The commercial spun off some incredible promotions. You could go into Jack In The Box and buy a 45 of my song, “Take Like A Little Easier”. You could buy my puzzle, you could buy my poster. Then a phone call comes in and it’s Matel Toys. They want to produce my doll. I was very thankful to my wonderful agent and manager and all the people I had at that time. The doll was a project called ‘Operatio...

I had done “The Jeffersons” for CBS. That was a CBS movie. I had also just finished something called “Buffalo Soldiers”, but they cut me out of a lot of it and I was really depressed about that cause I had told everybody. Isabel Sanford, my mother, everybody. Oh, man, this is going to be great! It was supposed to be a big thing on NBC. They had my name there, but they cut a lot of  me out and I wa...

Diana, when we started working together in ’77 I think it was. She had recently left her husband so she was single. She was no longer with The Supremes so she was a soloist, solo artist. She was coming off the success of Lady Sings The Blues and Mahogany and then The Wiz happened. So she was at the top of her game. Over the years a lot of people have come up to me and told me stories about her not...

We’re standing around and I can’t believe I’m hanging out with Tom Cruise. So I said, why do you do this? Tom replied, “I like to jump off things.” (laughter) “No, really, when I was seven years old, I jumped out of a second story window and my mom was really mad, but I think I’m getting a lot better at jumping off things.  I thought Tom was unbelievably gracious and I learned a lot from my time w...

One of my specialties back in the day was partner dancing. When you’re at the club people would come and go. You might see Bowie, you might see Debbie Harry, people would come in and out. There was this one woman who was super famous in the community whose name was Toni Basil. Mainly because she was one of the original lockers and also because for years she had been the cheerleader for street danc...