https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/38190720/blind-side-subject-michael-...
This gives a whole new meaning to "based on true events" at the beginning of a movie.
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Absolutely nuts that the Tuohy's, including the kids, allegedly ended up making millions off that movie and he got absolutely nothing.
would you like to amend your post now that more facts have come out?
No, because I said......
Ah yes, per the Geneva Convention...
Absolutely believable. People are shitty. Ole Miss people are shittier.
would you like to amend your post now that more facts have come out?
Nope. Everything I said holds.
1. The claims were believable, even if unsubstantiated.
2. People remain shitty.
3. Ole Miss people are above average in their shittiness.
Most of my thoughts on this are way outside the CG, but the part that I can say is that the movie was "laugh out loud" terrible even before all of this came out.
Guess you could say Oher was...blind sided
Lol now they can make a 30 for 30 about it.
Really hope he rinses them in court and gets himself taken care of and everything sorted legally in a way that benefits him the best. Mama Tuohy unironically says "we're blindsided by this" after the judgment comes down
and THEN we can get The Blind Side 2: The Squeakquel: 2 Blind 2 Side
I can't believe Sandra Bullock would do this. She seems so congenial.
If you read the book, you know the movie is definitely dramatized. But that aside... man this article is brutal.
Hugh Freezes ticket into big time coaching.
Pretty much the definition of the white savior trope. Not surprised this ended this way. It always seemed like such and odd story to me.
would you like to amend your post now that more facts have come out?
You have too much free time on your hands.
It's very possible
Yeah, read about it earlier. Super fucked up.
I am really hoping there is something missing that hasn't been leaked yet. Because this has turned a positive story into a horrible one.
Now, I can see that there might not have ever been a royalty check but the base money should have been distributed. We know movie producers use creative accounting to make sure their movies don't make a profit.
Sean Touhy's response to the lawsuit
Basically just saying the conservatorship was to get NCAA off their backs about him going to Ole Miss
Lol, yeah get the NCAA off our backs so they don't sniff around prominent Ole Miss boosters actively steering a major prospect to their alma mater, then also profit immensely from him and conceal the true nature of the arrangement for years. Totally innocent.
I was honestly wondering about the adoption when they talked about him being older than 18.
Oher made over 50 million dollars playing in the NFL. Yes, I suppose a scout would have found him regardless of this but to pretend he didn't benefit from Ole Miss is not honest. He benefited from this. And the Tuouys are shady/scum - more than one thing can be true.
his earnings from the NFL are irrelevant. If they told him he was being adopted, had him sign papers that he believed were for adoption, and instead placed him in a conservatorship they lied and that is fraud.
Yes, I don't think that's the case though? Him not understanding what conservership is and lying are too different things.
He was 18 and had just been taken in by this family, and by all accounts was severely behind academically. I don't think he was in a position to understand a fairly complex legal arrangement at that time, especially considering he had no alternative and nowhere else to go.
Fair point, but we are to assume the Tuouys had ill intent from that point? less than 1% of high school prospects make it to the NFL. Did they really see the millions at that particular point in time? I suppose they could have?
I think they were hedging their bets...like IF he hits it big, at least WE get to sell the story and reap the benefits of that.
True, and I think the wife has made tons on books and speaking engagements just because of the movie.
I live here in Memphis and there have always been some behind the scenes talk of this whole thing being really sketchy. That said, if I had to guess they created the conservatorship primarily for ensuring he could go to Ole Miss, but also with a secondary potential benefit of a book deal down the line - as Sean Touhy and Michael Lewis were friends and former classmates.
One other thing thing to note, the book came out in 2006, only a few years after Oher started at ole miss. So I would bet the idea of the book started at the same time they got the conservatorship.
One thing that was interesting was that Sean Touhy said that he had apparently cut off contact with the family about a year and a half ago, so there is obviously more to the story and who knows if these revelations are the reason he cutoff contact with them or not. I'm not saying that they didn't take advantage of him and they made millions and he got nothing, like the lawsuit says, just saying that maybe the claims made might not be 100% accurate.
It has long been documented that he did not like the way the movie portrayed him and that he felt it hurt him with certain NFL owners believing he was "slow" due to the movie. I think the reason he fell behind in school had more to do with his situation than it did his ability.
The article said that because he was over 18 they couldn't adopt him and explained that to him at that time. So not technically fraud.
That would depend on the facts, but those facts help in the direction of not fraud. But further detail may point the other way.
As an example, if I'm a family or trusted friend and I sell you a house and tell you that their are easements that allow people to farm on the land currently and sell it to you that way, that's not fraud. But if I further tell you that you don't have to worry about the easements because once you're owner, you can get rid of the easements and you relied on me because you trusted my word, I have now committed fraud, even though I told you about the easements. (Notably, the easements would be transferred with property ownership and I would have to know that to be true.)
A similar theory could exist here, if the Touhy's told him the conservatorship will work just like an adoption and he would get the same benefits, and then he relied on his relationship with the Touhy's to sign those papers, it could be fraud. There also has to be intent for the Touhy's to gain benefit by the deceit, which may or may not existed, and even if existed, hard to prove.
I really hope we finally get Godfrey's commentary on the movie. He's been teasing it for years.
It just feels gross.
The only thing about this that would be more on-the-nose with the stereotypical racial relationships of Mississippi is if the Tuohys referred to their home as a plantation. I mean hell, they're literally affiliated with a school whose nicknames are the Rebels and proudly flew the confederate flag at football games as recently as 1997.
How did we not see this coming?
Is there any response to this comment that won't go afoul of CGs? Did you even want a response or was this post rhetorical? How bout we just don't, hmm?
lol you know better
The root cause is the asinine, insane glorification of high school sports in America. It's sick, IMO. That's what started all of this. Look the huge shy kid can help us win football games. Meaningless fucking HIGH SCHOOL football games. Who gives a fuck? seriously? high school football- are you fucking kidding me? They are allowed to practice one hour a day, and the season is 8-10 games mostly within the county and they travel on yellow busses. who gives a fuck if you win or not? only sick fucking people. Losers with nothing else going on in life. Fucking high school football. If freeze didn't orgasm at the though of beating central valley prep on friday night, Michael Oher is never taken advantage of in this way- fact. But in some parts of this country, high school fucking football is more important than family, god, country- and that's sad. What I said is even worse in the high school basketball industrial complex- because ya know - johnny's got great handle and ups so he is going to the NBA one day. Meanwhile kids can't do chemistry anymore. I blame the Oher story on the perverted fascination with fucking meaningless high school sports in America.
It's all of youth sports down to elementary school kids. Everything is over-competitive. They're expected to essentially pick one sport and put all of their time and effort into that, otherwise play in some garbage rec program with terrible coaches and horrible management. There's money to be made in youth sports, so they stripped away all the fun to squeeze out every drop of revenue. It sucks.
Also, why did you try to link sports to some garbage theory that kids these days are dumb?
Well I never said "kids today are dumb".. for one. A simple bit of research will show you that STEM scores today are much lower than in the past as an average in the US. If we built a 30K seat stadium- in fucking high school- for the stem kids, maybe we wouldn't be behind in education? But we worship the kids that ride a yellow bus to a game. Its a huge fucking deal- high school football- to vicarious losers.
This is pretty simple. If the Tuohy family told Oher that they were adopting him and instead placed him in a conservatorship, they lied to him and gained from it. That's fraud.
However, no article or Mike himself says that they were adopting him as he was over 18. The question will be if they gained or not and if they gained money that he didn't get a share of. The lawsuit will answer those questions.
It seems like the story is a little bit more nuanced than "the Tuohys lied about adoption." From what I've read, even in Oher's own 2011 book "I Beat the Odds," he talks about the conservatorship rather than adoption. The Blind Side book and movie also don't mention adoption but rather conservatorship or legal guardianship. However, it seems like Oher thought it offered a two-way familial relationship similar to adoption, not the one-way relationship which gave the Tuohys legal authority to sell the movie rights (but apparently not to make any money off of his NFL career, since he had his own agent etc. at that point). It seems like the recent talk of adoption is coming from the lawsuit and related new stories.
The lawsuit ultimately comes down to money, and hopefully the court will sort it out. FWIW, I haven't seen even ostensible defenders of the Tuohys claim that they didn't get all of the rights money for the movie, just that we don't know how much that they got or that they didn't need the money since they were already wealthy (implying but not actually stating that they had no reason to scam Oher). We'll see what they claim in court.
Today's article says his share had been placed into a trust for him. Lawyers will determine the truth in that.
Interesting enough, if they had actually used the conservatorship, he couldn't legally have retained an agent or signed any contract.
I miss The North End Zone.
Still too soon for this son of Atlanta.
Delete
This is starting to look worse and worse for Mike based on the articles I have been reading.
Frustrating that its so difficult to get all the info, and have to scour 15 articles to get everything together.
Yeah, it seems like there was someone in his ear telling him he needed to do this and that they were screwing him. I hope it all works out for the best. If they did indeed withhold money from him then of course he should get his share, but the more that comes out it seems that might not be the case. I guess we wait and see as the courts will sort it all out.
The articles said he refused the royalty checks from the movie, so the Tuoh's put the money in a trust account for Mike's son. That was responsible of them at least.
We all hate to see a feel good story end badly, but it also sounds like we do need to be cautious in our condemnation until we know the full details. In my head, maybe because I enjoyed the feel good part, I just refuse to jump either way until it all unfolds.
Stephen L. Carter at Bloomberg wrote a pretty balanced look at the lawsuit a few days back. (Found the link through MMQB.)
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-08-15/the-deeply-sad-law...
Every time I see more about this story, it keeps getting more sad
If they thought he was over 18 and were told (incorrectly) that they couldn't adopt an adult then they obviously never had the intention.
But I think they have enough financial records to prove they weren't taking advantage of him. Definitely not the millions that he is accusing them of.
Sounds like the big mistake was not dissolving the conservancy after he left college.
I think the big mistake was they lied to him. Then made a movie and lied to everyone that watched it. They created a sob story to rake it in.
On Oher's book he talks about not getting adopted but the conservancy (talking about the 10 year old book). Thought somebody else had the idea for the book not them.
They lied and created a false white savior story profiting off his image and likeness, he gets minimal residuals from his own story while their entire family, including kids, are raking it in
Flip Side- they pulled him out of a drug invested hood where he didn't have food and got him an SEC scholarship worth 200K and exposure to make millions in the NFL. The number of big athletic kids that stay in the projects far outweighs the Michael Ohers.
Which is awesome.
Unless they're profiting off of him and cutting him out of his fair share.
Bad take. You've made essentially the same argument used by some to justify slavery because America was more developed than Africa.
What's at issue is not the quality of life difference between two places, but the exploitation of another persons labor without their consent.
Ummm- they helped the kid out of poverty. Fact. Has nothing to do with justifying anything. And to my knowledge, they did not get any of his NFL checks, and the studio said royalties are miniscule. I'll wait for all the facts.
This is a slippery slope.
The issue is not just that they lied to him. They lied to everyone who ever followed that story. Nowhere in that book or movie did they even come close to leading on that he was only adopted in the figurative sense.
Bear in mind the family didn't write the book or the movie.
That is another thing that has kind of irked me about this whole situation, is that the dad was close friends with Michael Lewis, and got him to write the book right after Oher got drafted. That fact has made me much more sympathetic to Oher's point of view in this whole thing.
I guess that is what the lawsuit will settle. But the studio said there has not been any significant payment or residuals and reportedly the family put Oher's share in a trust for his kid when he didn't accept it.
It's kind of hard to believe nobody made any money on a movie that big.
I honestly believe that. I mean Sandra Bullock did, but royalties, etc? I doubt they were huge.
I suppose the only way to find out is to have a court subpoena the information.
That will the interesting part of this case. There are facts out there. I imagine they are somewhere in between both stories.
Technically, Oher wasn't legally competent to sign his NFL contracts and the family should have done that. Everybody ignore that.
I did some checking, and this is what NBC News reported:
The deal that was made by Fox for the Tuohy's and Michael Oher's life rights was consistent with the marketplace at that time for the rights of relatively unknown individuals. Therefore, it did not include significant payouts in the event of the film's success.
As a result, the notion that the Tuohys were paid millions of dollars by Alcon to the detriment of Michael Oher is false. In fact, Alcon has paid approximately $767,000 to the talent agency that represents the Tuohy family and Michael Oher (who, presumably, took commission before passing it through).
I had read that as well. You know the studios have records and so does the talent agency. They will determine a lot of the "facts" of this case.
would you like to amend your post now that more facts have come out?
Bruh...quit spamming
Some people just like fishing for downvotes.
Shouldn't be all that complicated.
Either they made money off of his conservativeship, or they didn't. Either they adopted him, or they didn't. Either they're profiting from his NIL or they aren't. And if they are, they're going to owe him some money.
It's only hard to figure out if someone doesn't want you to.
Guardian put out a (very critical) piece on Michael Lewis (author of The Blind Side, and many other books; One of my favorite authors). Lewis had... what can only be described as a terrible take on the latest turn in the Blind Side story:
I am not willing to take a side, but I have seen more statements that the family only got a limited amount of money for the movie (from the studio records) and that money was split evenly with Michael getting a share.
I have also seen it stated that the Conservatory was not done correctly in that reports were not made. But it was also not used to oversee his NFL contracts, endorsement deals, etc. like it actually should have been if it was being enforced.
The discovery for the lawsuit will decide what the actual facts are. I think the result is that only the lawyers are going to win.
- - - CBS website https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/auburn-coach-hugh-freeze...
From this, you can see that there are some details that it will likely take a court to go through in order to get the real picture. Also, it's interesting that the Tuohys daughter is now married to the film's financial backer. It is clear, however, that they aren't really treating Oher like an actual member of the family, though it appears he's still under the conservatorship. It's also interesting that folks like Hugh Freeze and Michael Lewis, who appear to be friends, are making public comments about this. The Tuohys appear to be well-connected in that community.
The problems with Oher's attorney's claim is that the studio records have already clarified and explained that it is completely erroneous. They have stated for the record that it was a lump sum amount with ZERO residuals to the family. Now, the writer might have a different deal, but the family did not.
I like Lewis quite a bit, and I enjoy reading his books.
His worst take yet, however, is on Sam Bankman-Fried, where he says that Sam may not really understand if he did anything wrong, suggests that there may be some gray area, and suggests that neither the prosecuting attorneys nor that defending attorneys really know if Sam Bankman-Fried is guilty of fraud.
Anyone as smart as Sam Bankman-Fried knows if he's gambling customer money on an exchange he's running, and knows if he was using an artificially-valued token that he created (and owned most of) as collateral on bank loans of fiat currency. Any basic trader would understand this, and certainly any CEO of a trading platform would understand this.
I get that he's trying to sell some books, but the fascination with Bankman-Fried ends when you figure out a lot of his value was vaporware, and that he was covering losses with additional spending on publicity. Sam Bankman-Fried is Elizabeth Holmes with a bad haircut and wrinkled shorts.
Brief Update via ESPN's site.
Tuohy's provided evidence they have paid Oher's share of the profits from the book and movie amounting to $138,311.01 over installments between 2007 and 2023. Those numbers match the numbers from the studio and book revenue records. The agreement said the money was going to be split five ways which Michael getting 1/5th. The provided a ledger that included copies of checks and bank statements going to Oher and his children. Oher's lawyers have no comments.
This makes Oher look pretty bad.
So the other family members and kids got the same cut as Oher?
I mean, I suppose I can kind of see why he might think his cut should have been bigger, but this late in the game, that water is under the bridge.
Never read the book, it might have been about the family including siblings as much as Michael. But yeah, Mom/Dad, two bio kids, and Michael each got a share.
The daughter wasn't in the book much, the son was, but not like Oher was. Theismann was mentioned more than the daughter.
"Tuohy's provided evidence they have paid Oher's share of the profits from the book and movie amounting to $138,311.01 over installments between 2007 and 2023. Those numbers match the numbers from the studio and book revenue records. The agreement said the money was going to be split five ways which Michael getting 1/5th."
Wow. It's almost like people should wait until some evidence comes out before they make assumptions about how terrible and evil and greedy and racist and Islamophobic and anti-Semitic and ... people are. Sometimes people are like that. I'm finding that most people are not. Maybe people should take a breath on these things.
But we're on the internet aren't we supposed to make fast and sweeping judgements based on questionable info??
/s of course
Yeah, how else are we supposed to know if we need to fire our offensive coordinator?
So the family got less than $700k for the book/movie? That is surprising. Not suggesting it's untrue, just saying I would have assumed the number was in the 7-8 figure range given how well known the movie is.
I think they signed it before the movie was a huge success. They probably should have negotiated for a piece of box office or residuals, but my guess is the upfront would have been much smaller if they did.
So the movie made $30 million, and Oher got $138,000.
I can see how he thinks maybe his cut should have been more.
My thought as well..this seems like a startlingly low amount for a movie that made >$300million at the box office.
One article I read stated that they signed to receive 2.5% of the movies profit..that would mean the movie only netted ~$30mil and 90% of the box office was lost in expenses...dunno much about Hollywood but that seems extreme.
"Hollywood Accounting" the art of your studio having subsidiaries that do everything and charge themselves "market" rates for those self-services rather than having things all handled in-house at cost.
after all those fees the movie production office can be lucky to turn a profit. meanwhile all those subsidiaries are making a nice margin which flows up the books such that the central company's overall P/L looks pretty darn good.
I forgot which movie, but there was a very famous movie that never got a sequel because the person who own the rights never saw a cent from it because they were paid in points and the movie "lost" money. The studio wanted a sequel and he said that he could not in good conscious let them release another movie that loses so much money, tongue and cheek because he was pissed he never got paid on a super popular movie.
EDIT: Movie was Forrest Gump
Yeah, I did a bit of a dive into "Hollywood Accounting" and apparently a common practice is to form a subsidiary (i.e. shell) company and use that company to "bill" the studio that owns it for various services. The purpose of which is to make highly profitable movies appear less so specifically to avoid having to pay large royalties (and to hide other losses). This is all apparently considered legal.
The common thought is anyone who signs a contract that gives them a percentage of a movie's net profits is a sucker.
So if Oher has a complaint with the Tuohy's it should be that they signed a crappy contract with the Film/Production Company, but it would appear from what has been released so far that they fulfilled their end of the financial arrangement.
Seems like they would have restructured the deal, if they wanted a sequel.
Though I'm not sure how you'd do a follow up to Forrest Gump. No way it would live up to the original.
The author wrote a sequel.
I didn't know that, because, you know, no movie.
Tom Hanks turned it down because he was doing That Thing You Do.
Actually it was all set to be made but was turned down after 9/11 because several of the makers thought it would not be well received.
Remember they tried to tell Peter Jackson that the Lord of Rings movies (each grossed over a billion) didn't make any money and he wasn't entitled to his cut of the profits.
Pretty standard in the music industry as well. That's why one should always negotiate a percentage of the gross, not the net.
Which is good to know, in the event I write something that gets turned into a movie. ;^)
The thing that stood out to me about this story is the sudden mention of "adoption" in both the lawsuit and related news stories. I've heard that Oher and the Tuohy family are no longer on good terms, and I wonder if this lawsuit was an attempt to somehow coerce the family to legally adopt him.
If you're a retired NFL player trying to figure out your financial future, you might be hoping for an inheritance from your rich "parents." If you then learn that the legal relationship (the conservatorship) only goes one way, I can see why you would start a legally questionable but highly publicized lawsuit and make a big deal about how you were never adopted.
Can you even adopt someone over 18? I thought that was the whole point of distinction that made them go conservatorship instead of legal adoption
Apparently Yes, but I didn't know that.
Probably more about ending the conservatorship.
I think it was more about soaking a family worth over a hundred million for more money. The conservatorship hadn't been used since he was in college.
But it was still there, and if I were an adult with a conservatorship over my head, I'd want it to be done with as well.
Definitely but my point is nobody paid it any attention. Legally, he couldn't have signed any of his NFL contracts, signed an agent, bought a house/car, etc if people were using it.