gift link
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Add a few more names to the list of needy individuals Michael Oher saved:
To arrange the conservatorship of Oher, the Tuohys turned to Debbie Branan, a lawyer and family friend who, like Leigh Anne, had been a member of the Kappa Delta sorority at Mississippi. She was later the treasurer for their foundation, and her daughter, Whitney, was credited with a minor role in âThe Blind Sideâ movie.
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In following the gifted link from @oldmom4896, I read this other article that I donât think has been shared here (gifted link):
What I liked about this article was to hear more of the other side of the story.
âI was one of 12 kids,â wrote Oher in his second book. âI donât remember anyone ever having a job and no one in my family graduated from high school before me. Just about every adult in my life was addicted to crack cocaine. I barely knew my father before he was killed. I was on my own from age 7, going back and forth from foster care to living on the street. I attended 11 schools in nine years.â
The article also quotes Oher mentioning other people who helped him along the way, but making it from 7 to a high schooler and not getting wrapped up in all of the obstacles that take too many kids down illegal/deadly paths shows real drive in Oher. Making it through that time wasnât a matter of dumb luck.
In his first book (published in 2010, emphasis added),
Oher alludes to at least one conflict involving the family. âIâve read some newspaper articles recently where Leigh Anne Tuohy is quoted as saying that I would either be dead from a shooting or the bodyguard to some gang leader if I hadnât been taken in by their family,â he writes. âI think that had to have been a misquote because despite the sensationalist things that make for a more dramatic story, what my family knows and what I know is that I would have found my way out of the ghetto one way or another. Failure was not an option for me.â
Oher was pushing back against parts of the savior narrative even while he still considered the Tuohys his family. And as others have mentioned upthread, he already knew that he was highly likely to make it out of his life circumstances via football when he met the Touhys.
Oher recalls how they treated him âlike a member of the family â a real family"âŠâSince I was already over the age of 18 and considered an adult by the state of Tennessee, Sean and Leigh Anne would be named as my âlegal conservators.â They explained to me that it means pretty much the exact same thing as âadoptive parents,â but that the laws were just written in a way that took my age into account. Honestly, I didnât care what it was called. I was just happy that no one could argue that we werenât legally what we already knew was real: We were a family.â
Again, thereâs this repeated emphasis on being a family. They treated him like family, and he thought that the conservatorship was making them a legal family.
âSituations get exaggerated for the sake of Hollywood,â Oher writes in âWhen Your Backâs Against the Wall.â He goes on, âThere has been so much created from âThe Blind Sideâ that I am grateful for, which is why you might find it as a shock that the experience surrounding the story has also been a large source of some of my deepest hurt and pain over the past 14 years. Beyond the details of the deal, the politics and the money behind the book and movie, it was the principle of the choices some people made that cut me the deepest.â
I have no idea what the state of Oherâs current finances are. But for someone who was convinced that he was family, it sounds as though the pain of realizing that the Touhys didnât view him that way but kept capitalizing on the relationship is what was painful. He was told they couldnât legally adopt him because he was 18 so they did the conservatorship, but it turns out Tennessee does allow legal adoptions of adults. He thought they were doing the conservatorship for his benefit, but none of the protections for the conservatee were made (i.e. having his own counsel, proponent, annual reports). Additionally, I would be very surprised to learn that a child celebrityâs earnings are shared equally with all of their siblings. If the proceeds really were split evenly amongst âallâ the Tuohys with Oher included as a Tuohy, that seems awfully strange to me. Iâd also be quite curious to see the most recent iterations of the Tuohy wills prior to the request to end the conservatorship. But I doubt Oher was in it, or certainly not in equal shares as the biological Tuohy children.
Frankly, the latest bits seem like someone lashing out in (justifiable) pain. It seems like he might have known or suspected that the Tuohyâs were being advantaged due to the film/books/appearances, and though it wasnât his favorite, he kind of went along with it because it was his family. Perhaps the continued messaging from the Tuohys led to the estrangement.
But when his family kept putting him down and making him seem totally dependent on them AND when he realized that they didnât really consider him family, I think thatâs what broke everything down.
Finally, Oher writes, âAfter the movie came out, the narrative downplayed some of the qualities that make me who I am. That I am self-taught. That Iâm intuitive. That I work for things. The fictional story swept all of that away. It made it look like I was sitting there waiting for a handout. It cheapened those countless days of shaking off the cold and getting to class. The years of survival, resisting the streets, making the most of myself. For the sake of a better story, the movie suggested that some of the character traits that most define me are not true.â
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If youâve seen the movie, the family played as big a part in it as Michael. Without Michael, no movie but without the other Tuohys, no movie. I was trying to do a little research on what the NCAA allowed players to receive for interviews, book deals, and movies in 2005-2009, but I couldnât find an answer. This was before NIL so not sure what was allowed.
The movie came out in 2009, just after he graduated from college and when he signed the NFL contract. He had his own agent and his own attorneys. I donât think Oher was concerned with it at the time he was signing his NFL contract as heâd be making millions.
I donât know if families that have one child making millions divide all their assets equally in their wills. Oher made $32M in the NFL (in salary). He has a current net worth of $20M.
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Had Michael Oher been independently and competently represented in the movie negotiation, I am not sure his representation would agree with this.
But the problem is, Oher seems to have been left out of the negotiation entirely. He doesnât seem to have had any input as to his share of the take, how he was portrayed, or even the movie being made. Presumably, the Tuohyâs signed away his rights via the conservatorship, which they claim was only about enabling him to play for Ole Miss. At the very least he should have had independent representation in the negotiation.
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Well, this is what the movie producers are claimingâŠ
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The Touhyâs could easily receive millionsâbut then the money was split. Michael received his split.
Who negotiated his âsplit?â
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The split from what I gather was from long ago. Every member in the family got one. Evenly. And the story really is a part of each family member. Itâs a family story. The Tuohyâs took him in, he became essentially a family member, got room, board, tutoring etc. The Tuohyâs paid for everything with no expectation of payback just like any family member. No expectations of Michael. They didnât need the money. Still donât. The Blind Side story is a story about ALL of themâitâs not a single person story and so the money was split amongst all of them equally.
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My question remains unanswered.
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What are you trying to ascertain? Whether The Tuohyâs negotiated for the family? Whether Michael should have been negotiating the movie rights or perhaps his mom should have been in the room? Do you think the Tuohyâs at the time should have asked for more money?
It sounds like the movie studio offered a deal that was boiler-plate for unknown/ perhaps risky stories. The Blindside Movie turned into a block buster; but did not have the same guarantee as Mission impossible or a Star Wars story.
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Iâm trying to ascertain whether Michael Oher, who was an adult at the time of the negotiation, was left out of negotiation for the rights to his story. And if he was left out, by what legal mechanism? Did Sean Tuohy sign away his rights by way of the conservatorship which was supposedly created just so Oher could play for Ole Miss?
As for your description of the âboilerplateâ deal, it doesnât match what Sean Tuohy said about having script approval. (But admittedly Sean Tuohy has said a number of things about the deal that donât stand up to scrutiny.)
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The conservatorship was created way before the movie correct? And, given what is in the news, was not used or updated after he went to college. He had an agent that negotiated his NFL deal, perhaps the Tuohyâs helped navigate some of that for Michael as well as the book/movie. Nothing that has been reported by Michael or the Touhys indicate they made unilateral decisions on any of the âdeals.â It sounds like Michael knew what was happening, but now thinks maybe they were paid more than what he was told? The movie studio has backed up the Tuohys story so once the money trail is followed Michael will have a true accounting.
Incorrect. The conservatorship was granted in December 2004, less than two months before Oher committed to Ole Miss. The book (and NYTMag excerpt) came out less than two years later. The movie rights were negotiated shortly thereafter, in the fall of 2006. All this was well before Oher was drafted.
According to Oherâs Petition, this is also incorrect. Oher alleges that in late 2006 the Tuohyâs and/or their representatives negotiated movie rights/payment not only on behalf of themselves, but also used their status as his conservators to negotiate on behalf of Oher, with payment to family members to be paid through CAA, while payments to Oher were to be paid through the Tuohyâs attorney, a close friend who Oher knew as âAunt Debbie.â (The same atty who set up the trust and whose daughter received a credited role in the movie.) Oher also asserts that he did not willingly or knowingly sign the âLife Story Agreementâ giving Fox the rights to his story in perpetuity, without compensation.
In other words, among other things, Oher claims the Tuohyâs made unilateral decisions regarding the movie without his involvement/consent and without him having independent representation.
So far as I know, the Tuohyâs havenât denied unilaterally negotiating the movie deal on his behalf, or using the conservatorship to do so. Please correct me if I am mistaken about this.
At least as to the Tuohyâs initial story, this is also apparently incorrect, Sean Tuohy first claimed that they didnât making anything off the movie, except that the family and Oher got $14,000 each after the author (Michael Lewis) âgave us half of his share.â) He also said he would never profit off his kids, which presumably included Oher. Contrary to his initial claims there was not only a movie deal, the Tuohys received a back end percentage of defined net and Tuohy claims he had script approval, and they made (at least) over $700,000, so far. That, to my mind, isnât backing up the Tuohyâs story.
It is consistent with Oherâs petition, though, which indicated that the Tuohyâs negotiated a payment of $225K, plus a percentage of the backend based on defined net proceeds. (There also may have been an amended agreement entitling the Tuohyâs charity to receive additional payments.)
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What part is incorrect? The movie happened after Oher went to Ole Miss and the NFL.
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What sounds like red flags to me are that the Touhyâs charity has supposedly only disbursed less than 20% of what it collected to charity, and that Mrs. Touhy is still collecting 30-50K per motivational speech, assuming the subject is what they did for Michael, though they have been on bad terms for a decade. Donât know if any of that is true, thatâs what the People article that was just linked said.
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We were discussing the role the conservatorship played in the movie negotiations. While the finished movie wasnât released until 2009, according to Oher the pertinent movie negotiations took place when Oher was a Sophomore in college, without Oherâs involvement.
As for red flags, If you donât think it was âred flagâ that they allegedly negotiated the deal without his consent or even involvement, then weâll have to agree to disagree on that point.
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Guessing her motivational speaking money is starting to disappear LOL.
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Michael was an NCAA athlete from 2005 to 2009 and was limited in what he could sell of his Name/Image/Likeness and stay eligible. The book came out in Sept 2006, the movie in Nov 2009. He didnât have an agent while he was in college, and wouldnât have hired one until Jan 2009 when he entered the NFL draft eligibility. By then, the movie was ready to be released. I read that he rejected the attorney and agent the Tuohys recommended (not sure if that was Aunt Debbie) and picked his own, probably someone recommended by other players or coaches. A lot of pro athletes use the same agents.
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He can argue that the Tuohys lied to him about the conservatorship and needing it to get by the NCAA, that he never wanted to play football or at least play at Ole Miss so therefore he didnât need the conservatorship. Heâll be fighting an uphill battle as he has said in his 2011 book that it was his decision to play at Ole Miss. He really canât argue that the Tuohys hurt his career as he had a pretty good and long career for a lineman, played in two superbowls, and made a lot of money.
IMO, if the Tuohys had made millions off the book and movie deals and Oher had made nothing, heâd have a good argument that they cheated him as his conservators. We might not have heard of the Tuohys or Michael Oher if theyâd held out for millions and then the movie was never made or a flop, or if instead of a Hollywood movie it was a movie of the week or a Hallmark movie, if Oher had gotten hurt his first year at Ole Miss or flunked out and never made it to the NFL. We all wish we could perfectly predict how to make big bucks on books, movies, sports, career opportunities, but we canât.
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According to Oher. Ultimately its a he said/she said at this point and that may never change because not every conversation is memorialized in print to be used as proof decades laterâŠ
When Michael Oher was a college sophomore he had classes to maintain, a tutorâs schedule to uphold, a D1 athleteâs time commitment, and he was in a serious relationship with a single mother of a baby and toddler. This may very well have not been a priority to him at the time he was happy to let his family handle at the time. Now 20 years later from the perspective of a retired man who hates the movie and is estranged from his family, that could look more like âwithout his consent or involvement.â
Its also easy now to see these figures as unfair based on the ultimate success of the movie, but at the time no one would have predicted that, the book itself won no awards and wasnât on the NYT best seller list. The movie vaulting into blockbuster status and cementing itself amongst the timeless list of inspirational sports underdog movies was the payoff for the risk production companies take with every story they buy.
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