Ady Gil. To the world, the name is synonymous with Sea Shepherd’s mighty black boat that valiantly patrolled the oceans to protect the whales from menacing whaling vessels. With its futuristic stealth design and top speeds reaching 50 knots, the Ady Gil was a superhero of the seas masked in the form of a ship. But in Hollywood, Ady Gil evokes other imagery… in high definition.

Mr. Ady Gil is founding partner of American Hi Definition, and one of the most generous animal welfare activists you’ll ever meet. American Hi Definition (AHD) provides state-of-the-art large-screen video projection displays for the entertainment industry. Building the company out of his garage with just US$200 in his pocket and hard work to his name, Ady and his business partner Erez Ram quickly grew AHD into a trusted leader in this niche market. AHD was one of the first companies in Hollywood to offer large-scale video projection, and thus was sought out by big movie productions like True Lies as early as 1992.

Almost two decades later, AHD continues to provide superb multi-media solutions for movies, television shows, and award specials. If you’re watching high-profile events like the Academy Awards, the Grammy’s, and the Emmy’s, you can be sure American Hi Definition is behind the scenes creating these awesome productions. Ady and best friend Kayla take us on a tour of the American Hi Definition facility.

There’s two companies here in the warehouse. American Hi Definition does large screen video projection. We have video projectors, LED walls, screens display that can project on screens up to 70 feet wide.

Then we have Sweetwater Digital here, and we rent broadcast equipment – full packages. Cameras like this, we don’t just rent them as an item, but we do the entire production. So we have everything that we need from mobile television truck, to the equipment, to flypacks, so if you want to make television on location…

Shows like the Academy Awards, Grammys and things like that, you would need equipment like that to be brought into places like the Nokia or the Staples Center or the Kodak Theater because these facilities do not have control rooms and studios, so we turn them into studio for the week.

The trucks are more complicated than the studios, because trucks need to be much more flexible in what they can do. In a studio you may have 5, 6, 7 cameras, and TV shows like the Academy Awards, Grammy’s may have 20 cameras.

Big music shows can have 20 groups, so there’s much more audio in it. There’s much more telecommunication between stage manager. Live shows are more difficult than studio shows. That’s why the trucks need to be so much more powerful and more flexible than the permanent installation.

Professionalism and advanced technology define AHD and Digital Productions Incorporated as the market leaders in the multi-media industry. Now this all sounds pretty impressive, however Ady Gil, the visionary and highly successful entrepreneur, won our admiration for a different reason. As a vegetarian and animal rights advocate, Ady focuses much of his time and attention on something closer to his heart. We visit Ady to find out more.

Hi, we’re here are Ady Gil’s house. He is a renowned philanthropist, he supports a number of animal welfare organizations, and he is a vegan. So let’s go and meet him.

Hi, Ady.

Hi, how are you?

So nice to meet you.

Good, good, good, good. Come on in. This is Kayla.

This is Kayla?

Wow, you have a nice house!

Thank you. (Beautiful!) Kayla, say “Hi.”

Hi, Kayla!

Say “Hi,” Kayla.

Hi, Kayla! Hey!

Who’s coming to see you, good girl?

Oh, she’s so cute! She’s so loving! You’re so loving!

Give five.

Give five, give five.

Good girl!

You’re a good girl!

Come on in! You want to meet my birds?

Oh, you have birds!

Yeah, I rescued these birds. This is Baby, and this is Peek-a-boo. Peek-a-boo! Peek-a-boo!

An animal lover since childhood, Ady adopted vegetarianism early on when he connected the food on his plate to the precious life in the field. Compassion was his calling.

That’s right, that’s right. That was my reason. And I know for other people, the reason to become vegetarian or vegan is because of health reasons. My body is healthier now because of that. But that for me personally, it wasn’t the reason. I made a connection. For me, chicken legs – chicken. Beef, not beef – cow. Veal - how they’d call it - it’s a baby cow.

It is so difficult to make the connection because it’s so well packaged, to create the disconnect. It’s well thought. That’s what they want to do. They want to sell you something that no matter what you do, you will be disconnected from where it came from. That is what it is. So when I look now at a piece of steak, I consciously think about the beautiful eyes of the cow. Think about it every time. Every person, look at the steak, look at the face of a cow. Steak – face of a cow – steak this – do like this.

Do it a couple of times, you will see that the steak will at some point, will become a cow. Not beef and not something red and soft on a Styrofoam plate covered with a plastic wrapper. If you make that connection, you say, “I’m now killing or eating an animal.” That’s what it is.

I will tell you a story. I was feeding Kayla canned food that has meat in it, right? And since I don’t have meat in the house, there was a company Christmas party, and there was a lot of leftover meat. And I said, “I am going to bring some home and give Kayla steaks and chicken and all that stuff.” So I had a bag and I brought it home. And I opened it up and I say, “She is a dog, she is going to eat it.” I gave it to her on a plate and she didn’t touch it. And it’s not that I was teaching her, telling her “No,” you know? So I said, “You know what? Maybe she just made a decision that meat is not on her diet.”

And she does not eat meat. You can put a steak, you can put a banana, and you can put an apple, and it is going to go in this order – she is going to eat the apple first, the banana second, and she is not going to touch the meat at all. She doesn’t touch meat by choice, even if it is offered to her.

In a videoconference with our Association members in London, United Kingdom on June 13, 2008, Supreme Master Ching Hai explained how the noble qualities of animals naturally lead them to a plant-based diet:

Meat eating is not fit for anyone, not even animals. But sometimes they don’t have choice, they have to do it.

Even some of the birds, they’re supposed to eat some other smaller insects or something, or smaller fish or smaller birds; when I feed them vegetarian, they don’t go there to eat fish or other, anymore. They continue to come to my house to eat vegetarian. Even my dogs, they refuse meat. They don’t eat meat anymore after they’ve been with me and vegetarian. They know vegetarian is good. They don’t eat meat.

Kayla is a vegetarian by choice, because she decided on her own that she wants to be vegetarian. I did not know that actually you can get canned food [for dogs] and it’s all vegetarian. And Kayla loves her dinner.

Is that her favorite dish?

Yes… No! Apples! (Apples are?) Apples, because Kayla loves apples more… and bananas.

She likes fruits more than this. (Yeah, yeah.) You’re like a fruitarian!

She is. Even her dried food is vegetarian, and she likes it too. See? (Look at that.) This is also, see? And it’s good. Kayla has no problem. She is almost nine years old, and she is very healthy and she is very strong and she is very fast, and she acts like she is two.

She does look very healthy.

Okay so now we are in your kitchen. What do you eat, what do you have in your refrigerator?

Let’s go find out. Okay, so what do we have in the refrigerator, Kayla? Let’s see.

So this shelf used to have a lot of milk on it, because cereal in the morning and cappuccino all that stuff. So slowly the milk went away and more of the other products like soy milk and soy chocolate and Rice Dream and pineapple juice and orange juice. We’ve got that. Since I am Israeli, you can have hummus, right? Garbanzo beans. (Oh, I love this hummus!) This is very, very good.

Yeah, it’s very good.

Very good, right. You can even replace the mayonnaise, which actually tastes better! (Yeah, I agree.) It does, doesn’t it? Yes, it’s good. (Vegan.) Yes. What else? Then we have Kayla’s favorite food, we have apples for Kayla. (This is amazing, that she loves apples.) She loves apples. Here’s an apple for Kayla. (Organic apples.) Organic apples, yeah. So Kayla loves apples, right.

Who’s a good girl. You’re the good girl. Look at her face! (Yeah.)

She’s just totally focused on that apple.

That face is just… Ady, look at her face, it’s so cute.

That’s like the treat of the day for her.

She loves apple. Yes. We take the seeds out. She is very, very interested in the apple.

She looks like she is!

Okay, now let’s go there, let’s see what a good girl does. Come here. Come here, go, go, go. Sit. Here you go, 1-2-3, you ready? 1-2-3 catch. Good girl! And one more. You ready? Okay. Sit, good girl. Good girl. 1-2-3 catch. Good girl!

In 2010, the L.A. Veg Society was founded to promote a kinder, more humane way of living, and to provide resources for vegan outreach. As someone who frequently opens his doors to host events benefiting animal welfare causes, Ady graciously held the society’s first fundraiser in his gorgeous hilltop home.

Prabhat [Gautam] came to me and said, “Ady I’d like to start this Veg Society in Los Angeles.” I thought it was a good idea to get people first to understand what being a vegetarian or vegan is all about, and you can actually live a normal lifestyle and not hurt anybody else. And I said, “If we can start something good, we’ll start something good.”

And if we can start it here at my house and we can have a launch party and we can bring all the friends and the people that actually maybe are not vegetarian yet so they can learn a little bit about it, and we can give them vegetarian food and they can enjoy the party. And they can come out of here and say, “You know what? It was a great party. We did not kill any animal for that, so maybe we can live good healthy life without doing it.”

So hopefully more people are going to know about it, more people are going to become vegetarian, vegan; more animals are going to live; less factory farming; less foie gras; less veal; less torturing; less killing of dolphins; and whatever, and hopefully we’ll survive here on this planet.

Visit Ady Gil online at www.AdyGil.com
The Ady Gil World Conservation charity can be found at www.AGWC501.org
For more info about American Hi Definition, please visit www.Hi-Def.com

Thank you, big-hearted viewers, for your company today on Vegetarian Elite. Please join us again next week on Saturday, May 21, as we learn more about the special relationship Ady shares with his beloved companion Kayla, and what inspires his numerous philanthropic endeavors. Coming up next is Between Master and Disciples, here on Supreme Master Television. May the friendship of animals kindle your heart with love and laughter.