Professional footballer Michael Oher, whose life story was the inspiration for the 2009 Oscar-winning film The Blind Side, has revealed its major inaccuracies.
The 38-year-old man According to the New York Times The film turned him into an unrecognizable caricature as he sues the Tuohy family for allegedly exploiting his name, image and likeness to promote speaking engagements that have earned them an estimated $8 million over the past 20 years.
He says they profited from the film, for which Sandra Bullock won an Academy Award, but which portrays Oher as docile and helpless until the Tuohys get involved, he argues.
The film grossed $300 million and brought the Tuohys widespread fame.
But the Tuohys say Oher is extorting them and demanding $15 million in royalties from the film.
Michael Oher has spoken out about inaccuracies in the 2009 film The Blind Side
In the film, a character played by Oher is taken in by the Tuohy family, played by Sandra Bullock and country singer Tim McGraw.
Among Oher’s complaints about the film (and Michael Lewis’s 2006 nonfiction book of the same name) is that it made him look stupid and helpless before he moved in with the Tuohy family.
He said the book cost him a higher draft pick and the pay raise that came with it by portraying him as unintelligent.
“People around the NFL wondered if he could read a playbook,” Oher told The New York Times.
After the film came out, Oher said he also started seeing posts saying “I’m dumb, I’m stupid,” noting that “every article about me mentioned The Blind Side, like it was part of my name.”
Now she worries that the film will have a negative effect on her children.
“If my children can’t do something in class, will their teacher think, ‘Their father is stupid, is that why they can’t understand?'” she said.
The film portrays Oher as stupid and helpless before he moves in with the family.
Oher, who has played eight seasons as a starting offensive tackle in the NFL and won a Super Bowl with the Baltimore Ravens, also criticized Tuohys’ description of when and how he was brought in.
Lewis’s book claims that Leigh Anne Tuohy noticed Oher living in a trailer with another black classmate, Quintero Franklin, and demanded that he move in with her.
But Franklin’s house was actually a prefabricated house.
“When you’re rich and you have certain things, I imagine you have a different way of looking at the world,” Oher said.
“Maybe it looked like a trailer to Ms. Tuohy.”
But in their own book, In a Heartbeat: Sharing the Power of Cheerful Giving, the Tuohys wrote that Oher moved in that spring and “suddenly, it seemed like we had the most in-demand football player in the country living in an upstairs dorm room.”
Oher, however, says he didn’t move in with the family until the summer, when he was already one of the most sought-after college football recruits in the country.
The most glaring error, however, is that both the film and the book state that Oher had no idea how to play football when he first stepped onto the field at a private school in Memphis, Tennessee, attended by the Tuohy children.
In fact, it was the same season that Oher was named to the All-Metro team by The Commercial Appeal, Memphis’ leading newspaper, according to the New York Times.
After that season, Oher was identified as one of the top college football recruits in the country.
Oher has played eight seasons as a starting offensive tackle in the NFL and won a Super Bowl with the Baltimore Ravens.
He is now suing the Tuohys for allegedly exploiting his name, image and likeness to promote speaking engagements that have earned them approximately $8 million over the past 20 years.
Oher now says he followed Tuohys’ “narrative” for years because he felt telling a different story while playing professional football seemed more than he was capable of.
The 2009 film was based on Michael Lewis’s 2006 non-fiction book of the same name.
But after being forced to quit professional football due to a knee injury, a concussion and chronic migraines, he said he was “lost”.
He says Lewis, who has also written Moneyball and The Big Short, was researching the importance of the left tackle position in football and the financial resources NFL teams devoted to the position when he discovered that his old friend, Sean Tuohy, had a potential NFL left tackle living in his house.
Lewis later described his longtime friend as someone who had an innate ability to instill confidence in his teenage sons and was said to have become especially close to the few black athletes at the private school.
The book was later made into an award-winning film produced by a company controlled by Tuohy’s daughter’s future father-in-law and executive produced by his daughter.
Still, Lewis maintains he told the story correctly.
He told the New York Times that he was confident that the people who witnessed Oher’s story gave him an accurate account of events, and argued that without the Tuohys, Oher was headed toward a life of homelessness or crime, although Oher had no criminal record.
“That’s what everyone told me,” Lewis said. “I was on a pitch that was very bad.”
Both the book and the film wrongly state that Oher did not know how to play football until he moved in with the family.
Oher is now suing the Tuohys, arguing in court documents that the family wrongly claims to have adopted him.
Instead, the couple asked to establish a guardianship that would give them control over their finances and major life decisions.
It was approved by a judge, even though the Tuohys acknowledged that Oher had no known physical or psychological disabilities, which Tennessee state law requires for a guardianship.
The conservatorship remained in place for two decades, until the end of Oher’s football career, though it is unclear how the Tuohys exercised the power it gave them.
Oher’s lawyers, however, argue that this allowed the couple to profit from him.
A judge eventually revoked the conservatorship in November, but Oher is still seeking unspecified monetary damages.
He claims that he did not benefit fairly from the production.
The Tuohys, however, have stated that the money was split five ways, with equal shares also going to their two biological children.
They say Oher verbally agreed and the money would go directly to the couple and then be distributed among the others.
Sean and Leigh Anne argue in court documents that Oher’s share amounted to just over $138,000.
His lawyers claim he was already receiving royalty checks, but Oher says he didn’t start receiving payment until he sent a text message to the Tuoyhs demanding the money.
The Tuohys have now requested partial summary judgment — a motion to dismiss some of the claims.
A hearing is now scheduled for October 1, and if the case goes to trial, it likely won’t happen until next year.
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