The subject of the 2009 Sandra Bullock film The Blind Side is suing the family portrayed in the film, claiming they made a “caricature” out of him and earned money using his story, and that he did not get a fair cut.
Michael Oher is a 38-year-old football player for the NFL whose life story was told in the movie, and in the book of the same name written about him and the Tuohy family in 2006. Oher was a homeless black teen going down a bad path when Leigh Anne and Sean Tuohy, a white couple, took him in and started helping him manage his life.
The 2009 film adaptation of the story earned $300 million at the box office and made the Tuohy family quite prominent. Now, says Oher, the Tuohys have made millions while making him appear worse off than he was before they took him in.
For their part, the Tuohys claim Oher is “extorting” them for having done him a good deed. He wants $15 million in royalties from the film; he claims the book on which it was based cost him better opportunities in the NFL draft, and he makes substantially less because of those lost opportunities. His main complaint was that the book and movie made him appear dumb, in his view.
“The NFL people were wondering if I could read a playbook,” Oher claimed at one point.
Oher is disturbed by being so associated with The Blind Side, and said when the movie came out every article and many social media posts called him dumb and stupid. He says he thinks the movie might have a bad effect on his own kids.
Oher is focusing on what he says are inaccuracies in the movie, and also in the Tuohys’ own book, In a Heartbeat: Sharing the Power of Cheerful Giving. For example, he said, the claim that he was living in a trailer before the Tuohys came along was inaccurate because the building was actually a manufactured home. He seemed to make snide digs at Leigh Anne Tuohy, saying perhaps she thought it was a trailer because she was rich and sees things differently.
In another example, he said the Tuohys got the date he moved in wrong, and they incorrectly portrayed him as knowing nothing about playing football until they came long.
Last year a judge revoked the conservatorship the Tuohys still had with Oher.
Oher’s civil case against the Tuohys may go ahead this fall, but the only thing on the docket so far is an initial court hearing in October.
