deliverance

Confession on the Sunset Strip

By Mark Ellis
Senior Correspondent, ASSIST News Service

CBN.com – SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA (ANS) -- He’s filled arenas and stadiums for “A” list artists throughout the world—everyone from Pink Floyd to Luciano Pavarotti. Yet an awakening at a whisky bar on the Sunset Strip led him on a new path of healing and enlightenment that touches many lives today.

“I’ve never promoted or managed anything smaller than an arena,” says Charlie Gay, co-founder of Promenade Pictures and the current operations director for the Azusa Street Centennial, a worldwide gathering of Pentecostal/Charismatic believers celebrating the 100th anniversary of the legendary revival. Two years ago, he served as arrangements chairman for the Billy Graham Crusade held in Los Angeles.

“If you asked me to do something in a café, I couldn’t do it,” he says. “But if you ask me to do something in a stadium I can do it with my eyes closed.”

In his youth—extending into his early 30s—his private life was dominated by increasingly reckless behavior, even while he deftly organized mega-events throughout the world. “I became a rebel at 19,” Gay says. Despite growing up in “an incredibly loving family” in England, he felt alienated from his father, who was president of one of the largest real estate firms in Europe. “He was larger than life, an incredibly successful man,” Gay notes. “He was like a god to me.”

Gay was sent to boarding school when he was 7-years-old, something he was ill-prepared to handle emotionally. “I had already taken on judgments of unworthiness and un-lovability,” he says. But he poured himself into his studies, and became a Latin scholar by age 12.

He dutifully wore the famous black tailcoats of Eton College, the venerable school favored by the royal family, which has educated 19 British prime ministers. “Eton was an anachronistic world in the ’70s—still very Victorian in its time,” Gay observes. “We weren’t given the tools to the outside world,” he says. “Out of the seven boys who went to my prep school, (and transferred to Eton) three committed suicide in their early 20s.”

Even during Gay’s rebellious phase of life, he was remarkably successful. In his twenties, he became the managing director for the London Arena, staging events for Duran Duran, Pink Floyd and Pavarotti. After promoting concert tours throughout Australia, he was invited by Cher to the U.S. in 1991 to work for her personal management company.

“I was a multi-millionaire by my mid 20s,” Gay says. “But even when I was incredibly successful I would despair myself because of the core issues of unworthiness and un-lovability,” he recalls. “I was incredibly gifted and blessed, but I had no care for my life.”

This inner void led to some reckless episodes as he binged with alcohol. “I’d do Madison Square Garden for Cher, but then I’d leave at 10:00 and end up in Harlem at 4 a.m.” Gay says. “I awoke all by myself a number of times in Harlem and it was frightening.”

“I’ve had knives around my neck three times,” he recalls. “I’ve crashed cars into the foyers of hotels, thrown the keys at the receptionist, and then forgotten the car was down there when I passed out in my suite upstairs.”

Gay maintains he never let his risky behavior influence his professional life. “It didn’t affect my business,” he says. “I’d always choreograph it for a Friday, which would allow me to be a stellar businessman by Monday.”

But internally, Gay was increasingly uneasy. “I was frightened by the number of times where I’d done some serious binging and I’d have no recollection of it,” he recalls. “I knew I had moved into a place of compromise, where it just went around and around.”

At 34, Gay had found success in the fast lane—he was even renting Greta Garbo’s former home in the Hollywood hills. But one Friday night at the beginning of Labor Day weekend he went to a whisky bar on the Sunset Strip with Julian Lennon prepared for a big night of partying.

“I was in the men’s restroom doing something I’d done repeatedly between the ages of 18 and 34,” he says. “There was a drug involved and there was a young girl involved.”

Today he quotes the immortal Dante to describe the place he found himself: “In the middle of the road of my life I awoke in a dark forest where the true way was wholly lost.”

Gay looked into the eyes of a young woman about 20-years-old and realized she hadn’t really grown up, and he was repeating the same cycle of behavior that had gone on for years. Massive internal conflict began to gnaw at the core of his being.

“In that crisis second I had three choices,” Gay recalls. “I could do what I’d done before and ask God to get me out of this place,” he says, noting that addicts frequently mouth such prayers—even if they’re atheists.

Secondly, he could accept a lifestyle he knew was seriously compromised.

Or, he could “go down into my own personal well of grief” and face his need for confession. “I couldn’t point at someone else and say it’s their fault,” he realized.

He says confession allowed his heart to open up to God. “My heart started to gush, and as soon as my heart started to gush I was powerless—I was in His arms.”

Something amazing happened to Gay in this pivotal encounter with God. “I walked out of the bar at 2:00 a.m. with a smile on my face and I’ve never taken drugs again,” he says. “It was effortlessly lifted at that moment.”

Still, Gay’s stubbornness wouldn’t allow him to follow a conventional course. “I didn’t come straight to the traditional church because I’m a rebel,” he notes. “I looked at Hinduism especially.”

But shortly after that, he found himself in a prayer group with Marva Collins, the well-known educator of inner-city students. Collins challenged him to read the Bible. “I was led by Marva into the Word, and the more I read about Jesus the more Jesus became enough,” he says. “For me, the Word of Jesus is enough—a lot of other walks are off that path.”

Gay was baptized at Lighthouse Church in Santa Monica by Pastor Rob Scribner, the former quarterback who played for the L.A. Rams.

In 2003, he was invited by his business mentor, Frank Yablans, the former president of Paramount Group and CEO of MGM to take over an independent theatrical distribution company which became Promenade Pictures. Gay holds an almost worshipful admiration and esteem for Yablans.

“Frank was interned by Jack Warner at 21,” Gay notes. “By 31 he was president of the most successful studio in the history of Hollywood, because they did Godfather and Chinatown in the same year.” Gay says they’re reviving a studio model which hasn’t been attempted since 1958, including some projects involving Christian content.

“I work very much with artists who happen to be Christians, rather than Christian artists,” he notes. “These are Grammy winners and nominees who are giving themselves permission to be in the world freely, but not of the world.”

Gay doesn’t find it difficult to be a Christian in Hollywood. “Some people play victim to it,” he says. “I support someone else being the best they can be. The reality is the church abdicated Hollywood in the ’20s and ’30s.”

Some of Gay’s greatest personal satisfaction derives from his involvement with various philanthropic and charitable organizations, including HUMANITAD: ONE DAY ONE WORLD, which serves as an “awareness platform” for other organizations such as The Mine Seeker Foundation, Feed The Children, International Youth Foundation, and the One Campaign.

As executive director of ONE DAY ONE WORLD, Gay helped to assemble an impressive array of patrons including Nelson Mandela, Queen Noor of Jordan, Sir Richard Branson, and actor Brad Pitt.

“My journey on this planet is about staying on the learning line of life,” Gay says. “I don’t want to live in the past,” he says. “I want to be in the ‘I Am’ of this moment, in the passion and enthusiasm of this second.”

HUMANITAD is sponsoring a world festival beginning in July 2006 to unite 150 nations and all faiths in a globally televised celebration of humanity.

Over the years, Gay was content to use his organizational talents behind-the-scenes, and kept a low profile. “I was very silent, and I’m only speaking out now because things are happening,” he says. “God has made me a steward.”

Mark Ellis is a Senior Correspondent for ASSIST News Service. He is also an associate pastor in Laguna Beach, CA.

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