Pastor Greg Laurie and his Harvest Christian Fellowship have produced a documentary titled FAME that examines how fame and fortune impacted negatively on entertainment and sports stars before they turned to Jesus to get their lives back on track.
The film chronicles the careers of big names like singers Johnny Cash and Alice Cooper, actor Steve McQueen and baseball sensation Darryl Strawberry. It asks the question, “Is fame all it’s cracked up to be?”
The video version of Pastor Laurie’s book titled Fame: Fortunes, Failure and Faith which has just premiered on Harvest platforms, explores how the pursuit of fame, has in some cases, led to tragedy, and for others, has led them to Jesus.
The pastor posted on social media: “A recent poll was taken among young people and they were asked what they wanted most out of life. The majority of them said: ‘To be rich and famous’. Is that the answer? This new film shows the emptiness of pursuing notoriety and forgetting about God in the process.”
“Deep down inside, we all have a desire to be seen and known. And thanks to social media, everyone can have some kind of fame. We unpack the stories of those who have tasted fame and what they discovered on the other side.”
The documentary reveals that Alice Cooper almost drank himself to death while partying on the road with his band the Hollywood Vampires. “Alice, at one point, was the number one rock star in all of the world,” said Pastor Laurie who also wrote Lennon, Dylan, Alice, and Jesus: The Spiritual Biography of Rock and Roll.
He told Faithwire: “He started living the rock star life to excess. He was pretty much drunk every day. He was using drugs heavily. His life began to unravel. His wife Sheryl left him.”
In the documentary, Alice Cooper openly shared: “Any drug addict will tell you, that drug becomes like oxygen. If you don’t have it, you will sell everything in your house to get it. You will always be trying to fill that hole with something. It is either going to be drugs, or it’s going to be Ferraris, or it’s going to be houses, or wives, or fame. And you’re never going to achieve it.”
He continued: “But there comes that point in your life where you go, ‘What is this about? Is this really it? Because it can’t be.’ And I think that’s when you start hearing the Lord knocking.” That point came when he was on a drug bender and believed he saw blood coming from his eyes. Fearing he was going to die, he called out to God. That’s when his life turned around.
The 75-year-old performer explained: “My father was a pastor, my grandfather was an evangelist. I grew up in the church, and then went as far away as I could from it and almost died, before coming back to the church.”
Alice Cooper and his wife are now devoted Christians and using his platform to help young people understand that God loves them and that the devil is real. “Be careful! Satan is not a myth. Don’t sit around pretending like Satan is just a joke. I think my job is to warn about Satan,” he stated.
Meanwhile, Jesus Revolution the box-office smash hit film that chronicles Greg Laurie’s own conversion during the height of the Jesus Movement in the 1960s and early 70s, continues to impact millions.
“God wants to pour His Spirit out. God wants to save people,” he told CBN. “Scripture says that God believes that no one should perish, but that all should come to repentance. This is God’s heart – to reach this culture and this generation. There are differences between the late 1960s and today, but there are also many similarities.
Photo: Facebook – Greg Laurie
