Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
[Music] and [Music] [Applause] [Music] good morning good afternoon good evening wherever you are in the world it’s Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman with Relationship Matters. This show is all about relationships, all kinds of relationships, personal relationships, professional relationships, and how relationships play a role in our lives because life is all about relationships. Well, you know, I think I said last episode that I thought I could step down off of my soapbox, but no, I’m stepping back on my soapbox. Hey, you know what my soapbox is all about? Uh-huh, yes, the virus, and I’m going to keep saying it, please get your vaccination. Now, I understand that there’s another variant, and I forgot what they call it, be something other or whatever, you know, but let me say this to people, a lot of people in my audience who are anti-vaxxers for some reason or another, let me explain to you about a virus. A virus is a living organism, and what do living organisms want to do? They want to live, and if it takes mutating in order to live, that’s what they do, but they can’t mutate unless they have a host, unless it’s something that’s going to feed them. So if I’m walking down the street and I don’t have my mask on and I haven’t been vaccinated, it’s a very good possibility that I could be a host, and then I could pass it on to someone else. I have gotten both of my shots, including my booster, and if they come along with a fourth one, I’ll get that too because I don’t want to get it because I know people who have gotten it, and I’ve heard brain fog, I’ve heard, oh my god, you know, it really knocked me for a loop, and these are people who, there’s some people who have had the vaccine, but they didn’t die, they weren’t on a ventilator. So I know maybe I can’t convince you, but that’s my soapbox, I’m going to keep on it. Now, you know, I told you last week that my cruise had been canceled two years straight, so now they’ve rescheduled, but we have to have our cards, we have to have a two-day COVID test, negative COVID test, and now they’re going to give COVID tests before we get on the boat, so we’re going, and hopefully everything will be okay. So anyway, I’m gonna get down off my soapbox, and maybe I’ve convinced someone, maybe not. So let’s get on with today’s episode. I have an amazing guest, and his name is Brent Scarpo. So let me tell you about Brent Scarpo. Brent is an intuitive life coach trained in part by the medium James Van Praagh, and I hope that’s the way I pronounce his name right, and he served as his first, well, he served as his personal assistant for two years. And Brent has over 30 years experience as a national transformational speaker, educator, producer, writer, director, and casting director in Hollywood. He’s presented speaking programs in all 50 states and 20 foreign countries, corporations, colleges, universities, high schools, middle schools, community events, and conferences, and he has spoken to over 2 million souls. I grow up, I want to be just like him, and he has received over 100 awards. He also served as a casting director on such films as the Oscar-nominated film The Shawshank Redemption, That Thing You Do, Matilda, and Air Force One, and he wrote and was featured on the Christmas special Christmas Miracles for ABC. And we’re going to talk about something that really, really intrigued me, and it’s called the Red Balloon. But let me say this, when I said The Shawshank Redemption, OMG, my husband got so excited, he must have seen that movie a hundred times, and he’s got all kinds of questions, but like I told him, he can’t take over my show. If you want a show, you gotta have your own. But anyway, I want to bring to you Brent Scarpo, and you know what, I want you all to give some love because Brent was in a car accident today, but he’s a real trooper, and I love him for it because he came on my show anyway. So let’s welcome Brent. Hello, Brent.

Brent Scarpo
Hello, my dear. I know you’re gonna take all my business to the street. I love it. That’s called true transparency and authenticity. Yes, I am grateful to be here because, uh, what, three hours ago I was in a minor car accident, and we talked about it, but here I am. I’m blessed, I’m grateful, and I’m glad.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yes, and so am I, and I’m just so happy that you are okay, and you just got like a little, we got a little, I’m trying to hide it behind my hair here, so if you can see a little something something, but uh, yeah, we had a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a bump.

Brent Scarpo
Yeah, yeah, well, we are very happy that you’re here, and I’m really grateful that everything is fine, you know. So let me start off with this, what is an intuitive life coach?

Brent Scarpo
That’s a great question. Uh, I asked it many times on myself. So listen, here’s the deal, and to empower your audience, we all have intuition, every one of us, right? The challenging part is not all of us use it, right? Women predominantly use it in relationships, men predominantly use it in business, right? I’ll give you examples. So let’s say a particular man is in charge of a team, a sales team, and you know, they’ve been bidding on this new account, say a Coca-Cola account or a Pepsi account, and they’ve been working months on this, and so you know, they’re up against one other, you know, organization, let’s say it’s an advertising firm, and so they send the rep out, you know, he pitches the deal, he does his best part, they take everything, they get back, the sales team’s waiting, what do you think, did we get the account? And the guy says, no, we got it. Oh, you signed a contract? No, but I know it, right? He knows it, right? For men in the audience, you know a lot of this because what we call it, especially when it comes to business or sports, is being in the zone, right? You know you’re going to win that football game, you haven’t even been on the field yet, you haven’t kicked the ball yet, it’s not even the first quarter, but for somehow, some way, you know you’re gonna win that game. Now women, women use it a little bit differently, they predominantly personalize it and use it for relationships. Let me give an example. So let’s say a particular woman, right, and her best friend comes up to her and says, listen, I think your husband’s cheating on you. How do you know? Where’d you see him? How did y’all, where’d you, did you, was he walking down the street, was he with or what? And her best friend says, no, no, uh-uh, a woman just knows these things, right? It’s those signs, it’s those feelings, it’s that intuition. And when I work with clients as a life coach, I try to get my female clientele to use it for their profession, and I try to get my male clientele to use it for their relationships because it’s the same resource, it’s the same tool, right? And so for me, when I was six years old, I realized I had a high level of intuition, right? And everyone’s intuition is different, it’s like a muscle, you can train it, you can get it to be stronger, and there’s all kinds of courses. As you said earlier, James Van Praagh is a very famous evidential medium. I met him back in the day when he was living in a very small apartment on the east side of Hollywood, and we just happened to have met, which there is no happen, and he was looking for his first personal assistant. He said, do you need a job? I said, I do, right? I was a young actor at the time, and he said, well, I need somebody, so he hired me, and for two years I learned all that you could possibly learn when it comes to psychic and mediumship and the gifts that we all have. And so an intuitive life coach has this ability to be able to read other people times a thousand, right? We all have those aha moments, and so for me, and it’s also what made me actually a really good casting director because I could look at a person’s picture and I could tell you just by looking at their picture whether they’re going to be a pain in the butt in the set or where they’re going to cause trouble or where they’re going to be cooperative or whether they’re going to be part of the team. I just know these things, and that’s really listening to your heart, listening to your head, allowing whatever predominant, whether you call God or Buddha or angels or Allah or whatever, allowing that outside energetic force to come in and to listen because it’s always there, it’s there for everybody, and I said just tuned into it a little higher.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
So you said you knew that you had this intuition at six years old. How did you know? What happened?

Brent Scarpo
So, you know, when you’re six years old and things like this start to happen, you just kind of think you’re a little on the freaky freaky side, especially when you’re talking in the 70s. I mean, the 70s are crazy to begin with, you know, but to add to it, so I’ll give you examples of what happened between 6 and 21. There would be, okay, I’ll give one situation. So there would be situations where I would be with a group of kids in the playground, and I knew I had to leave. I knew I had to leave because something bad was gonna happen. I didn’t understand what it was, but I could feel it in my heart, I could feel where I was having trouble breathing, and but something just said you have to leave, and so I would leave, and five minutes later there’d be a fight, right? Some kid would be fighting some kid in the playground or in the sandbox or whatever, and I got the message there’s danger, it’s time to leave. As I got older, I would have people walk by me, and I would know their names, right? It would just come to me. When I was in my early twenties, you know, and I used to, you know, go out to nightclubs and freaking bars and such, you know, when I lived in California because I’m from Pennsylvania, I would kind of test this. People would walk past me, I remember this one time this gentleman walked past me, and I got his, I totally got his name right, and then, you know, I’m pretty reserved, but I just had to find out, so I followed him. Excuse me, is your name Aaron? He’s like, he turned around and goes, yeah, do I know you? I said, no, no, and I just walked away, and so I walked away, and he started following me, he’s like, hey, how do you know me? And I said, well, I said, I’ve kind of got this gift, and I said, you walked past pretty fast, and I just heard the word Aaron, I’m just kind of seeing what’s going on. He said, oh my god, he said, yeah, my name is Aaron. I said, typically it’s when people are in a high emotional state, and he just looked down the ground, he said, my girlfriend just broke up with me, and I was going to the bar to get a drink. When I was 13 years old, living in Pennsylvania, my mother and I, and she was a single mom that raised three kids by herself, we got into an argument, I don’t remember what the argument was about, yes, actually I do, I do remember what it was about. Unfortunately, you know, my mom was a phenomenal woman, but one of her advices was she was a smoker, she smoked cigarettes, and I’ve known since I was six years old that I can tell you I’ve known that I was gonna lose my mother at a very early age, I knew it was gonna be because of cancer, I knew it was gonna because of smoking, I’ve known since I was six. So as that was going, when I was 13, she and I got into an argument, and I was so upset, you know, because she was smoking in the house, and I ran outside the house, I went across the street to play with friends of mine, and I got across the street, and I just collapsed. I collapsed because I had this overwhelming multiplicity of images flood my brain. I saw my mother, I saw her at the hospital, I saw the cancer, I saw, I saw, and I knew that she was gonna die at an early age, and that if I didn’t really have a relationship with her now, I was gonna regret it later. And it seemed forever, but it was probably about two minutes, and I had tears streaming down my eyes, and I got up, I shook myself off, and I just always believed those, I got to a place where as those things started to happen, and all kinds of stuff like that.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Wow, wow. So do you see that psychic abilities and intuition, are they the same thing?

Brent Scarpo
So it’s a great question. So when I worked with James, that’s a great question actually. So I was his personal assistant, and he was seeing on average three to four people a day, right? And basically he was doing a mediumship, he was talking to dead people. Now I am as skeptic, Dr. Fortman, as you can make him, I’m a science guy, like I need some facts and some proof, right? And so when he asked me to work for him, and this is way before Google, there was no computers, you know, I mean, I think they were just starting to come out, there was no texting or none of that mess. So I said to myself, okay, if this some kind of sham, I’m out, you know, my mama raised me right, so values and ethics and those kinds of things were common words in my household. You know what, he never asked me a thing. He said, you’re gonna get some phone calls, he said that, you know, I do three sessions a day, and I do one, yeah, three sessions a day and one at night, so four a day. Tuesday nights he didn’t do anything because he had a thing called a sacred circle, and that’s where people such as myself and others would gather together, and he would train us on our particular abilities. I would get phone calls, hey, I saw James here, I saw James, I want to make an appointment, and so someone said, oh, I want to have a psychic reading, and he’d always say no, no, no, tell him no, and I was given a list of psychics that he believed in. He said, because I don’t do that, I talk to those that have passed. Now if they come over from the other side and they give some kind of future reading or warning, whatever, that’s great, that’s not being a psychic, that’s using, you know, the knowledge of what they have on the other side to help whoever it is that has come in. Psychics then are those people who have this a different intuition where they’re able to see the future. Now I call myself an intuitive life coach, right, so but I have a tendency to see the future a lot, right, I get premonitions a lot. I remember one time in high school, I can’t say the names because I don’t know if anyone, but I remember in my high school, there was this particular girl and she was very, very popular, and then, you know, my friend in history class was good friends, and so, you know, we went from history class to English class, and I just looked and I said, hey, and I was a senior, I said, is pregnant. Oh my god, he grabbed me, he threw me into the boy’s restroom, he cornered me in the stall, who told you that, who told you that, nobody knows that, there’s only five, six people that know it in the entire, who told you? I’m like, nobody, nobody, nobody, how do you know this? I don’t know, I just know, and at that time, the only people I knew was the person that was pregnant, her boyfriend, boyfriend’s best friend, which is my friend, the mama, the daddy of the two people involved, and that was it, but I could feel it from him, I could feel it, and I could see her giving birth, and I saw the healthy child, right? So that’s a psychic who has the ability to see the future, but does it, you know, from a different perspective because they have these premonitions, but psychics typically are able to predict the future, they can, they, you know, they sense what’s happening in the present as well, they can offer guidance, you can ask them questions, and you can do that with James as well, but he was really very strict on, I’m a medium, I’m not a psychic, here’s the list, thank you very much. Same thing with like chakras, people who do chakra readings or people who do auras, right? There’s a whole group of people, you know, and you know, as years have gone by, it’s even gotten better. I’m from Warren, Pennsylvania originally, and so people may be familiar with this, I live 20 minutes away from one of the top 10 psychic towns in the world, it’s called Lilydale, New York, it’s phenomenal, and it is world famous. My mama used to take me and her best friend there, and I’d sit in the car, one would go in and get one psychic reading and come out, I’d sit with them, the other one go on the other one and come out, and years later, I actually, about four years ago, I attended their summer conference, it’s a tiny little community, but they have it all, psychics, aura readings, mediums, you name it.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Wow, so in your personal relationships, what has your intuition and your psychic ability, has that affected your personal relationships in any way?

Brent Scarpo
Well, listen, so let’s just say that we all have this, so each and every one of you are listening to me, I’ll prove it right here, I’ll prove it right on this show at this very second what I’m talking about. So yes, of course, why? Because I listen, right? The people who don’t listen, those are the people that have the challenges in life, right? And I will, I’ll, I will prove it at this moment in time. So for everybody who’s listening, I want you to think about that one person, right? That partner, that male, that female, whomever, whatever it is you define as a love, right? And you were with that person, you saw them across the hall, at the club, at the church, at the school, at your place of employment, wait a minute, right? And then, you know, that little bit of sweat start on the side, then somebody had, we text or we emailed or we said hello, we did something, and then, you know, on that first date and second date, and then the next thing you know, it turned into a month, and then maybe went to three months, everybody have a visual of who they’re thinking about right now? And then it got to six months, and maybe even got to nine months or a year, and at some point in time on this particular relationship, you’re like, oh no, right? Something happened, something happened, that’s all, that’s a whole nother thing I deal with when it comes to relationships, but something happened, and one of you went to each other and said, this ain’t working out, or sadly, you texted them and said, I don’t want to see you no more, or you send an email or whatever the case may be, right? And there was a breakup, and then what ends up happening is you go to your friends and talk about that horrible breakup, and I always say a vast majority of you who are listening to me right now, you said something like this, well, I knew it all, right? I knew that was gonna, I knew that the second day, I don’t know why I kept going out with him, I knew this was gonna happen, I don’t know why I kept going out with her, yes, you did, but you didn’t listen to your intuition, right? I knew my mom said this was gonna happen, my dad said, I don’t know why you’re dating her, right? You all knew it, right? We all get the signs, we all get the red flags, right? But here’s what you end up doing, and this is how you combat your intuition, you start using your head instead of your heart, and you say things like this, oh, he’ll change, oh yeah, no, I don’t think so, right? But what you’re doing is your mind is overrunning your heart, and your heart usually is the factory to your intuition, and so you think because of A, B, and C that I’ll change them, you ain’t gonna change anybody, okay? By the time we’re five years old, we have developed our personality, and there’s no changing it whatsoever, but that’s what you do, and what you do is you drown out your intuition, said this ain’t it, time to go, there was the flag, come on now, you’re gonna waste some more time, another month, six months, nine months, and then finally the intuition’s screaming and yelling so loud that you finally hear it when it was talking to you the entire time.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, all right, so I guess if we would follow our intuition, then a lot of mistakes we would not make.

Brent Scarpo
I’m gonna push back on what you said. You cannot, in a loving way, you cannot follow it, you have to act on it. See, people that, you can follow whatever you want, right? But until you take the actions necessary to deal with what it is that you’re dealing with, nothing’s going to happen. Like for me, you know, my entire life changed at the age of 13, my relationship with my mother, when I got that intuitive moment, I knew, I knew, and as some of you may know, I was on the Today Show in 2010 talking about the death of my mom, because at the age of what would have been 57, I woke up at 3 o’clock in the morning, I lived in California, my mother lived a couple miles up the street in her own apartment, and I got another premonition, and I heard, your mother has cancer. Now, I have one of two things that I can do to transition into what we just talked about, ladies and gentlemen, to do what we’re doing now. Now, I can either listen to that, right, just like you either listen or you don’t listen to that relationship or that job or whatever it is that’s eating away at you, but I knew at 3:30 in the morning while I was sweating from head to toe that I better listen to this, so I did. Next morning, I didn’t go to bed from 3:30 to 8, I waited for 8 o’clock, calling my mother, didn’t say nothing, I said, hey mom, when’s the last time you’ve had a physical? She said, five years ago when I moved from Pennsylvania to California. I said, mom, you’ve got to take care of yourself, right? And I made the appointment for her, so we got the battery of tests done by my doctor, you name it, all the women things that women folk have to do, right? And everything was perfect until three days later when the doctor had the opportunity to examine the chest x-ray, and that’s where they found the half-dollar-sized dark mass on her right lung. Had I not listened, my doctor said she had lung cancer.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
She had lung cancer.

Brent Scarpo
And so we spent the next year and a half to two years battling lung cancer, and I don’t know when this show is going to actually air, but yesterday, right now, so my mama died yesterday, so 25 years ago yesterday, as I often say, she took the early flight to heaven. And so January 26 is always an interesting time because January 13th was my mother’s 59th birthday, January 20th was my 33rd birthday, on January 26th my mama passed away. Now the doctors after she passed said to me, had you not listened to your intuition, you might have had six months, but because I listened, because I’ve trained that ear, right, because I follow through and act upon those guides, that heart, we had two years. We had two years. So there’s many reasons to why you should listen, but we end up fighting that for whatever reason because, oh, he’s good looking, but I do like the job, and then all of a sudden you get pushed to a point where you can’t take it anymore, and your intuition’s screaming at you, and then finally you listen and you act.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Now, would you call that your first mind? You know, people say, oh, I should have followed my first mind.

Brent Scarpo
Yeah, I think there’s a lot of, look, yeah, I don’t care how y’all frame it as long as you do something about it, okay? Yeah, I like to think I don’t have a mind, you know, every time I listen to my mind I get in trouble, right? When I go to listen to my heart, my mother used to do this, so for a lot of you think about this, their head, my mother said, I have head children and I have heart children, and I didn’t quite understand what she meant. Well, myself and my brother, we were the heart children, my sister was the head child. What does that mean? My mom would say, well, whenever there’s a decision you have to make, you always do it out of your heart, Brent, and so is my brother. My sister does it out of her head, and my mother would always say to me, because I would go to her, no, it was always from the heart, she said, okay, now that you’ve talked about it from your heart, take the elevator to your mind. She would go to my sister, okay, just push down, right? Because the head and heart are there for a reason, it’s just that you cannot rely on them individualistically, that’s why they are part of the entire body, right? The head has that logical kind of brain that, you know, scans things and, you know, looks at things, and, you know, and then the heart is the emotional part, but you know how many, how many of us have let our heart lead the way, and we end up falling from some man or some woman, oh, this ain’t good, I shouldn’t have done this, right? That’s because you didn’t take the elevator to your mind, and then people, you know, use just the mind, and you’re forever analyzing the situation, never reaping the rewards of what it is that you should be acting upon, because for the most part, it’s the heart that creates the action.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Wow, you know, you mentioned your mother, and it’s something I want to show, and I hope I can do this right, because you know, I told you that I watch something called the Red Balloon, and I want to play that if I can, if I can do this right, okay, so that people can do that, and then I want to talk a little bit about the Red Balloon, so let me see if I can do what I said I, oops, like my share system audio, and then I go to, yeah, while you do that, I’ll share the Red Balloon is the story that I was picked for for the Today Show. The Today Show was doing an amazing segment called Everyone Has a Story, and I believe in that, that’s how I do my life coaching, it’s finding your personal story, and so they were looking for stories where people had overcome major challenges in their life, and for me, it was the death of my mom, and so I submitted a story, 300 words or less, what I didn’t know is they’re going to get 100,000 stories, what I didn’t know is they’re going to pick winner, eight winners, and what I didn’t know is I was gonna be winning number eight.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
All right, so let me share this, share, okay, let me do here. [Music] and today we wrap up Everyone Has a Story contest with this week’s winner, Brent Scarpo. He wrote in to tell us about his unique relationship with his mother, Betty, and how she still influences his life today. We’ll meet in a moment, but first, let’s listen to the letter. My mother and I always talk about what life would be like after we die. Is there a heaven? What must it be like? After one of our conversations, my mother, proving that there was a heaven, we decided on a red balloon, and it had to be presented somehow to the other person within 24 hours. For years, we always remembered the red balloon and told no one about our little secret. Years later, my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer, which eventually turned into brain cancer. She was put into hospice at my sister’s apartment. Each day, I would remember about our red balloon secret. I did not tell my family what the sign was. Finally, my sister called me and said our mother had died. I asked everyone if they had seen anything unusual, but they said no. I approached my mother’s bed and leaned over to give her a kiss on her forehead, was about to lose it when I spied something on her chest. She was wearing a blue sweatshirt. I noticed a hint of color coming from the sheet, so I pulled it down, and imprinted on her blue sweatshirt was a bouquet of red balloons. I could not believe it. It was amazing, and I looked towards heaven, and I said, you did it, you did it. My sister just looked at me and said, oh my god. She had realized that morning that she had not changed mom’s clothes in a while and decided to at least change her top and put the sweatshirt on that morning. We all gathered around my mother in tears of joy and happiness, staring at the bouquet of red balloons and knowing that yes, there is a heaven, and my mother, my mother proved it, and apparently she continues to prove that. We’re here with Brent and your friend Joe. Nice to have you in his job. So what would you like to watch that tell me? Okay, of course, now I’ve got to, there you go. All right, we’re back.

Brent Scarpo
Yes, yes, and I know that you say you still, you see red balloons in your life.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yeah, it depends. I mean, it’s interesting. Yesterday, again, was 25 years, and I actually did something special for my mom. I didn’t know I’m working on this book called The Red Balloon: Transforming Your Life One Inspirational Story at a Time, and the book is based on my relationship with my mom, all the, thank you, Anita, thank you so much, I appreciate you. Yeah, it was, yeah, oh, Sandy, yeah, I didn’t, I didn’t know the doctor was gonna show that, so I’m holding back as much as I can, but I’m glad Sandy’s about to cry because I was about to cry as well, so, you know, it’s so, thank, I really do appreciate that because, like I said, yesterday was the 25th anniversary of my mother’s death, so I really haven’t seen that in a little while, but, you know, I’ll tell you how that came to be. My mother was a single parent that raised three kids by herself. My father was a raging alcoholic that loved alcohol more than he loved me. I mean, when I do my program on alcoholism and addiction, that’s how I start my program, and so my mom took on the responsibility of raising three kids by herself. It’s the reason why I’m doing the book, it’s the reason why we’re going to do an amazing celebration of women either the week before or the week after Mother’s Day. I’ll do a special Zoom call, we’ll be reading chapters of the book, and basically it’s just the wisdom that my mother shared with me trying to raise three kids by herself, and she didn’t shy away from any topic. I mean, she loved to talk, she passed that on to me, and so we would talk about death and dying all the time, and so finally we talked about so much, like what happens, is there heaven, is there not a heaven, what’s the deal? And she’s like, well, you know, we should, we should try and do something. Well, it was a couple weeks later that unfortunately John Lennon was murdered, and I look, I got a copy of the New York Times, and there was an article about how he and Yoko Ono used to talk about death and dying just like my mom and I, and they decided that they would bring a sign back from wherever it is that you go, and they decided to be a yellow handkerchief. Now, it didn’t say whether it happened, but I mentioned to my mom, and my mom being the force of nature she was like, we’re gonna do that. I’m like, we are? She’s like, yes. I’m like, oh, okay, and I said, well, how’s this gonna work? She said, well, whoever goes first, right, we have to bring back a sign that basically says that everything we’ve ever talked about, which was years of conversation, is true. I said, okay, well, what are we gonna do? And so she kind of came up with some ideas, and in second grade, there’s this really great French film called The Red Balloon. It’s phenomenal, I absolutely love it, it’s on Netflix, it was my favorite film as a little kid, so for some reason it popped in my brain, I said, let’s do a red balloon. She’s like, I love it, right? And so we did the red balloon, and then my mother had the gall to say this, but it has to be within 24 hours of the death, none of this three weeks from now kind of crap, and I was like, holy mackerel, I was like, okay, sounds good. So for years we kept that secret. What I did is I wrote out the synopsis of the story, this is back in the day, and I mailed it to myself and had the copyright on it from the post office, and as I was in the middle of a play called The Boys Next Door, and my sister lived below me in the apartment, my grandma had been flown out because we knew that she was gonna pass, and we put her in hospice, which was an amazing experience. So it was like one o’clock in the morning, and my sister back then paged me, right, and said my mom had just passed. Now prior to this, I did sit everybody down and go, look, you know, mom’s gonna pass, we know this is to be true, but mom and I kind of did this thing, and they were, you know, my mother and I were thick as thieves, you know, we’re always up to something, so like, what did you do this time, right? So I just said, well, if I’m not here, because my fear was my grandmother was 88 at the time, so if all of a sudden I’m not there, my mother passes away, and a giant red balloon shows up, the last thing I need is my grandmother having a heart attack, and now I’ve got two dead people on my hands, right? So I said, there’s a sign, and they’re like, okay, fine. I get back there, you know, there’s my mother, and I’ve been dreading this for my entire life because she was my best friend in the entire world, and I walk over, as the story shows, now as I walk over, I did kind of take a moment, I looked at my grandmother and my sister, because my brother was still coming from where he lived, I said, did anybody see anything? My gran’s like, no, I was like, okay. So I walk over, and the sheet was up to her, and I went to kiss her on the forehead, and I was about to lose my mind in an insurmountable amount of grief that was about to come over my shoulders, and I looked down, I saw this little hint of red on this blue sweatshirt, and I pulled down the covers, I don’t know why, and they’re imprinted on this blue sweatshirt, there’s a teddy bear holding a red balloon.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, wow.

Brent Scarpo
And I’ll tell you, I will say to you that my mom was a single mom that loved her children more than anything in the entire world. She was the caregiver, she was the protector, and I look at now that’s been 25 years, it makes perfect sense because as much as I grieved at that moment in time, she really wanted me to be full of joy, and I literally transformed. I was like, oh my god, we did it, you know, I’m literally yelling and screaming like this, and I could feel her, like also my intuition just shot up, I could feel her rising above me, I could feel her talking to me, I could feel this insane amount of love around me. I haven’t felt this way in a little while now that I’m recreating it, but I just, I knew everything was okay, and I knew that everything we talked about, years and years of yes, there’s a heaven, yes, there’s a god, yes, there’s an entity, yes, there are angels, yes, there are people watching over you, was real. And you know, I really didn’t even start to grieve until maybe a few days later because I was so high on what she and I co-created together, this miracle, and the fact that I was going to be on a mission to share this with as many people as possible because, and especially, you know, it’s interesting, I’ve been working on this book for 10 years, and you know, it’s been a challenge just because it’s about the relationship with my mom, but it’s also, you know, as I say to my friends who complain to me, you know, do you crush the grapes and then drink it, or do you wait a few years and call it a bottle of wine? I said, this is gonna be the greatest bottle of wine y’all drunk in your entire world, right? So this year for sure, I’ve done everything that I know that needs to happen because it’s a, you know, it’s a book that has very short stories, very chicken soup for the soul, but the difference being is it has a life coaching component to it, so then when you read the stories, not only do you get a good feeling like what we’re going to share on the Mother’s Day, but I give you tools. Okay, well, yeah, that was the important bit that just came up two years ago because you look at this, I go, are not real, I don’t know why it’s not ready, but mama, I need you to tell me why it’s not ready, and then she told me, I was like, oh, so I went through all 50 stories and put three exercises on for each story, so then when I talk about the death of my mom, it’s not like, oh my god, like your wonderful audience going, oh my gosh, I’m crying, so now I can say, okay, think about the person, exercise number one, that you love most in life that’s no longer with them, right? Write down their name on a piece of paper. Now, exercise two, write a letter to them. What do you want them to know? What do you miss? What problem is going on in your life that you’d like to share with them? And then third, wait for the answer. Take a moment, go into your intuition, and wait for them to speak to you because they will if you give them permission.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Wow, that’s very profound, and I know that my viewers really will be interested in that. I will keep them apprised. I want to change a little bit, but before I do, I just, oops, that was beautiful, it shows so much love, and then, oops, wait a minute, and then Sandy again said, my grandfather decided he would do something based on Houdini’s theory of coming back and his followers. He said he would knock my grandmother’s whatnots on the floor if it’s any coming back he would. She said he hated those figurines, and it didn’t happen. Oh, okay, yeah, look, there are many of these kinds of things. You know, when I, I’ve been speaking about this for years, since 1997 when she passed, and I’ve seen thousands of red balloons. I mean, I, you know, my, my, I have my book, which, you know, we’ll talk about, there’s a lot of different things, but the thread is that there is life after this, this, this lifetime, but just the, there’ll be a chapter just on red balloon sightings, you know, just this, you know, so people, you have one client right now, and his mom passed, unfortunately, and, you know, she loved hummingbirds, and at the funeral, he said in the middle of his eulogy, it was like an army of hummingbirds just flew by, you know, but, you know, there’s a separate book I’m going to do that is going to teach people how to exactly do these signs. I decided that there’s going to be like another piece that will go to it. I think that’s the extra gift that we’re going to give when I do the Mother’s Day Zoom call in May, because people, they want to do, but they don’t know what to do, and it’s not, it’s not difficult, but there are steps that you should take, right? And I think if more people would just do it, then when those loved ones do pass, and all of a sudden there, there’s the knock on the door, there’s the red balloon, there’s the hummingbird, or, you know, the hundreds of stories that I’ve heard from people, and they’ll ask me, you know, well, my, my, you know, favorite flower was this, and I’ll give you a, you know, well, yeah, it’s out there. Again, what I said about intuition, you have to act upon it in order for it to appear.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
I got that. Okay, so let’s go into something, if I don’t touch on this, my husband might not speak to me for another week, which might be good, I don’t know, but anyway, The Shawshank Redemption.

Brent Scarpo
Yes.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
All right, so he has got questions about it, and let’s see, we’ve got maybe about, about 10 minutes, so he wants to know, let me see, which one, which of these questions do you want? Yes, we are, so, but he just did a couple of, so he says, what type of research was needed to formulate the cast of Shawshank Redemption?

Brent Scarpo
Okay, great question. So Shawshank Redemption is a period piece and is based on a novella called Different Seasons by Stephen King. The first book that they did in terms of a movie was just on last week, was a movie called Stand By Me. So it’s fall, winter, spring, and fall into spring and summer. So Shawshank is one of those novellas. So it’s 1943 period piece in 1976. We had to get a place that worked in that environment, and so we chose Mansfield, Ohio. I was there for about four and a half to five months, and so for every movie there is, you have a researcher and or historian that is on the set 24/7. So if you’re not using the right costume or the right spoon or the right whatever, he’s gonna let you know. So for me, I’ll tell you this story, I love telling stories about Shawshank, this is my next book, by the way, because I did a, as I shared with you earlier, I’ve seen Shawshank thousands of times, and what I realized that there are so many life coaching lessons in that, so I’m writing a book on Shawshank Redemption’s The Top 10 Life Coaching Lessons. So here was my job, my job was to hire every one of those prisoners and every one of those guards, that was my job, like all 3,000 guys, right? So I went into every, I’m not playing, I went into every bar, every strip joint, every nasty place that you could possibly imagine to find people that look like they would mess you up if you saw them in the alleyway, right? And Mansfield had over a 13% unemployment rate, so they desperately need money. So we get them all together, I got guys with beards and tattoos and long hair and all this mess, and you know, I love them, I love them, but then to answer your husband’s question, they give me the 1943 penal guide for the Maine State Penitentiary, which states on page 42 that every Friday, every guard and every prisoner got a haircut. You all remember how your father’s hair looked like in 1943? Yeah, and I had to gather all 3,000 guys, and I said to myself, I’m going to lose them all. Some of these guys hadn’t cut their hair in 30 years, and so I blew up big pictures, I put them all around the auditorium, I said, okay, we’ll be starting a couple weeks now, and well, this is what you call a period piece. Now, if you don’t know what a period piece is, it means that sometimes movies are dinner, different period, this is 1943. And if you look around the room, there’s pictures of people and the haircuts, if you want to be in this film, we’re going to give you a voucher, and every Friday for four months, you need to go to one of the local 10 barbers in Mansfield, Ohio, and get that haircut. I was waiting for everybody to leave, I lost about 20 people in the rest state. About a week and after two weeks later, we do the first shot, and we never shoot a movie in order, so the first shot is the day that Andy Dufresne comes in on the bus with the new fish, and all 3,000 guys come out to greet him, and there’s that helicopter that goes over, and all my guys, my proudest moment, right? I get there at three o’clock in the morning, and I’m looking at my guys, and I’m like, and they’re like, hey, Brent, I’m like, who? And I didn’t recognize one of them, I don’t recognize one of them, right? That day we shot for almost 14 hours, I get back to my office, I’m not kidding you, this is what I had, this is back in the day when you had answer machines, so I didn’t be, is this Mr. Scarpo? Look, this is LaVonna Johnson, my husband Leroy’s on that film, look, you can keep him as long as you want, he’s never looked so good, he’s never treated me so nice, he’s never smelled so good, oh my god, hundreds of phone calls, mothers, daughters, girlfriends, he’s never been so, I’ve never seen, I’ve never seen his face in 20 years.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
He’s shaking up here, I told you I’d tell you some things here, so you know, when we, I know it’s going to be on again, so when we watch it again, you know, I’m going to keep that in mind, you know, because it comes on often.

Brent Scarpo
All the time, my biggest regret is I was a young actor at the time, and I wanted to get an audition, it didn’t happen for things I’m not going to get into, but that’s one of my regrets, it really, it really, you know, we had the 25th anniversary some years back, oh, I know, four or five years ago, we all went to Mansfield, the director went, it was a huge deal, I’m Facebook friends with a lot of those guys, we transform their lives, we transform that town.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Well, I guess so, so let’s see, he’s got another question here, so why do you think Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins were cast as the lead characters?

Brent Scarpo
Oh, he’s got some, he’s got some potent questions, okay, you all sitting down? Yeah, Tim Robbins is not supposed to be in that film.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Really? Oh, wait a minute.

Brent Scarpo
Yes, so let me tell you that some things that most folk don’t know, so that’s why I’m writing this book. So Frank Darabont, who wrote the screenplay, had never directed a movie in his entire life. Castle Rock loved the screenplay, and so they purchased it, but Frank wanted direct, and they said no, three different times, and rumor has it turned away a pile of money, probably 40 pounds of money, in order to retain direct, which rarely happens. Well, they did it, so they said, great, here’s 25 million dollars, and the lead has to be an A star, right? So I didn’t do that, that was Deborah Aquila, she gets a star to play the part of Andy Dufresne, and we have Morgan Freeman. So here’s the question, ladies and gentlemen, for those of you who are live, who was supposed to play the part of Andy Dufresne and quit six weeks before we were supposed to start principal photography because he wanted to change some of the dialogue in the scene, and Frank said no, and he said, okay, bye-bye, because Tim Robbins was choice number two. Anybody got any guesses who’s supposed to play the part of Andy Dufresne, because it was not Tim Robbins, and Tim Robbins was number two in the list, and when the first actor quit, we went to Tim Robbins’ people and said, is he available, and he was, and that’s why he’s in that film, but he’s choice number two. Morgan was one of the first people cast, right? And if you look in the book, it’s not an African-American man, it’s a Caucasian Irish guy with red hair, right? There’s even a little joke, if you listen, Tim Robbins says something to him, you know, why are you here, or how did you get here, and Tim Robbins, or Morgan Freeman’s character says, oh, it must be because I’m Irish. Well, if you don’t know the book, you don’t know the hidden joke, because that character is supposed to be an Irish white guy with red hair.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yes, I’m telling, we do a whole two hours on this.

Brent Scarpo
We want to celebrate diversity, and we want to have how two friends would come together in a time when there wasn’t a lot of diversity in the 40s and 50s, and still able to bond based on a relationship, that relationship being present. So, okay, here’s the answer. The person that was supposed to play Tim Robbins’ character, Andy Dufresne, Tom Cruise. Tom Cruise, we won’t be talking about this if it was him. I’m glad he quit.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
So, yes, that’s the creative process. Tom Cruise was built, we got our 25 million, and I won’t say what scenes, but he wants certain scenes taken out, and his 100-page contract says that he can take out any word, any apostrophe, any period, any scene, no questions asked, and Frank said no, and Frank, and it was a very nice thing, it wasn’t an argument, Tom said, okay, well, thank you very much, I’m going to move on, and so we got Tim Robbins.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
You know what, I bet he’s sorry.

Brent Scarpo
Well, I doubt it, I’m glad we’re not sorry, just because Tim Robbins was the perfect choice because he plays every man. How many about you, how many of you out there at some point in time, right, were a victim of something that you didn’t do, right? That’s why that film wrestled.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yes, oh my god, okay.

Brent Scarpo
Right, so Tim, you know, if you, if Tim, you see yourself, if Tom Cruise would have been in that film, you would have seen Tom Cruise.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, I see, yeah, yeah, wow, wow, and Renita says, wow, I can’t see Tom in that room, but let me tell you, he’s a great gift giver, because when he left, I remember going to the production office, and I’m telling you, I didn’t know they made baskets that big, I ain’t playing, he sent the biggest basket full of more goodies that you can possibly, it took up the whole table, thanking us and wishing us well.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Wow, [Music] so, so now, how long did it take to make that movie?

Brent Scarpo
So an average film takes about three to four months to shoot, and we shot that on location in Mansfield, that’s typical, if you go to six months, like the Titanic, that’s not so good, you’re usually going over budget, and then we shot that in 94, I think it was released in 95, then you have to do editing and posts and all that, and then we got nominated for seven Oscars, which was a big ol’ surprise, and then it became the, not one, American Film Institute says it’s one of the top 10 films that you have to see before you die. Let me tell you why, and I’ll bring it to life coaching, I’ll give you one of my life coaching lessons from Shawshank. On the 10th anniversary, I got a gift from the production company, it was the second poster that they developed, a second to celebrate the 10th anniversary, so I put it next to my old poster, right? Now, I’ve had this up for 10 years, but I never read the caption, and for some reason, when I put up that second poster, I read the caption, and I said to myself, this is why this film is one of the top 10 films you have to see, and it’s why it’s one of the greatest life coaching lessons that is going to be in my future book, Life Coaching Lessons as Seen Through Shawshank Redemption. The caption of the film is this, fear can hold you prisoner, hope can set you free. Let’s say it again, fear can hold you prisoner, hope can set you free. And here’s the deal, ladies and gentlemen, the deal is that, especially now in 2022, you know, Dr. Gonna Soapbox, and I was right on the box with her, waiting to get on, we got to face our fears and create the necessary actions and steps to overcome them. You know, Andy embraced the hope of getting out of prison, and he did it by using one small hammer through a wall that took him years, and what was supposed to take 600 years took less. Why? Because he took the action necessary and didn’t listen to what people were saying to him, but he listened to his heart, and he knew he was innocent, and he took the action necessary to prove it to the world. How many of you are taking the actions necessary to prove to the world that you are not a victim, but that you are coming from a place of strength and coming from a place of hope? That’s what I do in my life coaching business.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Wow, this, you know, this hour has gone by so fast, but you know, if people want to learn more about you and what’s coming up, they all they have to do is go to brentscarpo.com, and oh my god, you know, you have to come back because, you know, we only got two of his questions.

Brent Scarpo
Yeah, we only, and I don’t want your husband not to be talking to you for the rest of your life, that will not be good, that’s not about, that’s not about creating good relationships.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Not at all.

Brent Scarpo
And I’ll even do this, I do, you know, when I come on shows like this, I do, I offer discounts for my intuitive reading, so I do a usually an hour to our intuitive reading, if anybody is interested in intuitive reading, it will blow your mind, I do that along with life coaching, but if you, if you want something just to deal with stuff right now, I’ve mastered these intuitive readings, all you have to do is text me, I’d rather have you text than call, but just text me at 760.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Wait a minute, I’m gonna put it here.

Brent Scarpo
Yeah, 760-835-3327, and just, you can text, I saw you on Dr. Janice Fortman, or you can text, I want my, you know, intuitive reading, I want my intuitively, I’m doing, I just finished one for another podcast, because it takes me about two days, all I need is your birthday, and anybody that sees me on any podcast, I offer a 50% discount, you can’t beat it, it literally will be any, I’ve had them go as long as three hours, and as short as an hour, whatever comes up, comes up, and let me just say, if you’re truly interested in text me or email me, and I’ll give you a call, we’ll set it up, but you have to have the strength to embrace what it is that you have to address, and so when I do these readings, here’s what comes up, ready? The good, the bad, the ugly, and the beautiful.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, you hear that people, the good, the bad, the ugly, and the beautiful, so you got to be ready for the bad and the ugly.

Brent Scarpo
Thank you, right, yeah, and here’s why, because you wouldn’t be calling me if there wasn’t some bad and ugly happening in your life, but the reason why we have to deal with the bad and ugly is so that it can turn into the good and the beautiful.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Sandy, look, I do, I do, you know what, we’ll probably be texting at the same time.

Brent Scarpo
That’s fine, like I said, I give a 50% discount, I do it with all the podcasts, I want people to have the ability to create a better version of themselves on a daily basis, it takes me about 48 hours to do, depending on how many I’m doing, and all you have to do is text me the month, the day, and the year, that’s all I need, you don’t need to tell me no, I mean, you know, maybe give me your first and last name, and then as soon as I get it done, we’ll contact you, you can pay Venmo or PayPal, whatever, it’s very doable, very doable. I turned my phone off because I didn’t want my phone to be going off and Dr. Fortman looked at me and going, ah, wait a minute, why is your phone going on? So yeah, I’ll take them as they go, it is an amazing gift to give yourself, you know, and for those of you who want to see my ability, and thank you, Dr. Fortman, I really appreciate it, just continue to watch the Today Show, I’m glad that you didn’t do the whole thing because I don’t think I would have made it, but that will give you a great example of what it is that I do. Kathy Gifford said it best, they did eight stories, and when I saw her in the makeup room, she said, listen, I want to tell you something, I said, what? She said, this is my favorite story, and that’s why I told them we had to save the best for last.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
But that’s so wonderful, Brent, I want to thank you so, we have run out of time, thank you so much, you know what, there is going to be a part two, so we’re going to get that together on a date when you are available, of course, because like I said, you know, I think my husband got about 20 questions, and so, and we’re going to talk mainly, well, really the whole show.

Brent Scarpo
Yeah, no, that’s fine, I can, look, that show, that movie, like I said, my next book after this one comes out is literally going to be the life coaching lessons from that movie, because everybody watches it, and I know why they watch it, they may not know why they watch it, but I have 10, I have 10 of the greatest lessons, and these are 10 lessons that you can take, put into your life, right? And so the book’s going to be the 10 lessons, and then I’m going to talk about, you know, the things that we just talked about that people didn’t know, that like Tom Cruise was supposed to be in that corner, so that’ll be in between each of the lessons.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Thank you so much, and I want you to have the rest of your day be a beautiful day, and you take care of that.

Brent Scarpo
All righty, all right, thank you so much.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Thank you.

Brent Scarpo
All righty, bye-bye.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Bye-bye. Wow, this has been great, the time went by so fast, as a matter of fact, we went a little bit overtime, you know, but it was, it was well, well worth it. So I want you all to stay tuned for the next time that Brent comes on, and I want you to join me next week, and next week we have a numerologist on, so we’re going to talk about numbers, and I guess, you know, I’m gonna see if it kind of corresponds a little bit with the intuition, psychic abilities, and stuff like that, I really don’t know, but anyway, so I will see you again next week. Remember, life is all about relationships, because they’re all kinds of relationship matters, and relationships do matter. See you again next week. Bye. [Music] my [Music] uh [Applause] [Music] now [Music] me [Music] you