Adventist Family Takes Stand Against Lotto Commercial

     Mr. Bell said he and his family are interested in film making and would have  liked to be part of a commercial production, but he said they could not be involved in a commercial for the lottery.

     “It’s about personal convictions,” he said.  “The lottery just doesn’t help people. It takes money away from people, mostly poor people.  Half the people who win end up bankrupt or divorced.  It separates people from their money.”  He added that the promises that the lottery proceeds would support the schools have not been kept.  “They give the money to the schools, but then they take the other funding away from the schools.”

     He said he had explained his views to the location team in advance and they agreed to not include the Bell’s house in the commercial.

     But the spinout scene was shot in the street just a few feet from the Bell’s house, and the couple say it eventually began to involve their family, like it or not.

     “We didn’t care what they did on the street,” Mrs. Bell says.  But the problem came when her sons, who had been indoors all morning, went outside to play in their yard.

     Crew members said they did not want the boys and their friends playing so near the filming equipment, which included several overhead booms, and the stunt car, for safety reasons.  The Bells say the cameras were aimed in the direction of their house, which had been assured would not appear in the commercial.

     Mrs. Bell says several crew members, ordered the kids to go into the house, although she told them most of the boys playing there were not her children.  She says one crew member told her that She and her son had been filmed in the scene

     “If our property  was not included in the scene, and we were on our porch, how could we have been shot in the scene?” she said.

     After what both sides said was an argument, the film crew decided to move to a different location, having already shot most of what they had planned at that location.