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The Blind Side

Quinton Aaron, Sandra Bullock, Tim McGraw

"F#@k Rudy. Football is for starters." – Bob Stoops, Oklahoma University Football Coach

The only thing that shocks me is how fast they got it to the silver screen. On April 25^th, I blocked out the entire Saturday to watch the National Football League draft, maybe the most-hyped and least interesting day in a fan’s year. Lots of camera shots of doughy, middle-aged, white guys in war rooms talking to other doughy, middle-aged, white guys and 22-year-old, no-neck kids, who survived the last four years because their coach found the thirty easiest professors on campus. This show was interrupted every few minutes by an NFL official announcing the latest pick, with the kid holding up the team jersey like he is a teenage girl showing off her prom dress, and a couple of former jocks talking about how much they like the choice as some video highlights play on the screen. My favorite part is always the kid who is supposed to be an early first round pick and then slips through the cracks. With each pick the camera goes back to the kid sitting there with his parents, his agent, and his girlfriend, who will be thrown out the airlock when he gets his first big check, and friends as the talking heads speculate that he should go with this pick, and then he does not. This is public humiliation at its greatest. Matthew Stafford, Jason Smith, Michael Crabtree, Mark Sanchez, the names fly by. Then with the 23^rd round, the Baltimore Ravens, with a pick they had received from the New England Patriots in a trade, selected Ole Miss offensive tackle, Michael Oher, a 6’6 (really 6’4), 322 pound first-team all-SEC lineman, and a mountain of an individual. As the ESPN announcers told his story, I remarked that it is only a matter of time until I am watching his tale at a multiplex near you. Who knew that it would not even take half a season for it to happen? The young man has not even gotten the lion’s share of his five year, $13 million contract. For all the makers knew he could have been one of the biggest busts in NFL history.

I don’t know if you have noticed, but real life inspirational sports movies are kind of popular. Such movies have been with us for generations, Gentleman Jim, The Pride of the Yankees, The Jackie Robinson Story, Somebody Up There Likes Me, The Stratton Story, The Winning Team, The Pride of St. Louis, Fear Strikes Out to name a few. Yet, over 95 percent of these films have come out since the mid-1970s. I can personally list, off the top of my head, at least 100 such projects in less than five minutes, not including made for television movies. The most famous of these films include Miracle, Cinderella Man, Hoosiers, Invincible, Rudy, The Rookie, Remember The Titans, Radio, We Are Marshall, Grid Iron Gang, Chariots of Fire, The Final Season, The World’s Fastest Indian, Seabiscuit, Phar Lap, and The Hurricane. Football films in general have seen an explosion in popularity. Before 1974, Hollywood only turned out six football films including the classic comedies Horse Feathers, The Freshman, and Martin & Lewis’ That’s My Boy. Since then, forty-nine gridiron flicks have been produced. Is it because football is more popular now? No, even sports like curling, handball and sumo have gotten their inspirational films. (Yes, a sport, where fat men wear diapers, has been splashed across the silver screen. I do not know about you, but that is something I do not want to see in high def. You could fall asleep one night in front of the television, wake up to what you think is a documentary on the moon until your wife informs you that you are really looking at Shuhei Yamamoto’s backside.)

Much of the popularity of such films is due to them being like shooting fish in a barrel. Audiences love them and want to leave the theater feeling good. They are techno-color motivational speakers. A surround sound Mike Ditka, John Wooden, rah-rah, you can do it fare. Everyone in the audience identifies with the character having the odds stacked against them. If the protagonist can achieve, then you can too. (You can’t. You’re destined to be middle management, married to a partner that cannot understand you, with whom you will contemplate divorce on several occasions, with 2.5 children who disappoint you and fail to call when they get older. There will be days you long to swing your car into oncoming traffic until your body falls apart and death is a sweet relief. It’s the American dream. Enjoy it.)

Like romance novels, producing an inspirational sports movie is as formulaic as anything Rachel Ray has made in the kitchen. Choose a sport, any sport, it does not matter, just as long as the basic rules for how you win are easy to understand. Everyone likes to believe that life has rules and is fair like sports. (It is not.) Find an inspirational story. Don’t worry, the words “based on a true story” still allows you to keep the broad strokes and inject melodrama that will make the story more powerful. Make sure to cast an actor that audiences recognize and like, preferably someone on the downside of their career. You do not want that paycheck to be too big. This actor will be an authority figure, probably a coach or teacher, who will be stern and endearing. He or she will see the greatness and possibilities that no one else sees and use guru-like methods to get them out. Most important, they will be the focus of the marketing campaign. Insert a plot device for an emotional roadblock that must be overcome, maybe a death or injury. The movie must end with the big win or feel good moment. It does not matter if we have seen the same movie a hundred times before.

Michael Oher is one of those feel good stories that we would like to believe could only happen in America. His mother was a crackhead. His father, who was murdered when Michael was a junior, had almost nothing to do with his child’s upbringing. In turn, the young boy had almost no structure or guidance. Moved from foster home to foster home, he repeated both first and second grade and attended eleven different schools before finishing ninth grade. It was not until he was living with Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy, that he lived in anything resembling a home. A big kid, with great athletic ability, the only question was whether the young man could handle any academic workload at all. Enter Leigh Touhy, whose daughter was attending Briarcrest Christian School, along with Oher. The Tuohys took Oher into their home and began to help him overcome his difficult background and academic problems. They a hired tutor (Kathy Bates) to work with him for as many as 20 hours a week and gave him moral guidance. The Tuohys work paid off as the young man raised his grade point from 0.9 to 2.65. More importantly, Oher became one of the top high school prospects in the country and with hundreds of scholarship offers, including places like Alabama, LSU, and Tennessee, decided to go to Ole Miss, the Tuohys’ alma mater, and the place his high school coach, Hugh Freeze, recommended. Freeze became assistant athletic director for external affairs twenty days later. (The NCAA investigated both the Tuohys and Freeze’s hiring but could find no smoking gun that indicated a quid pro quo (something for something) arrangement. Although Freeze was nailed on some minor infractions.) Of course, Oher started all but two games his freshman season and was named to the freshman All-American team. He followed these accomplishments up with numerous All-American and All-Conference honors. Oher’s story was so impressive that as far back as 2006, author Michael Lewis, started a book called The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game. which detailed what the young man had been through and was excerpted in New York Times Magazine.

Is it good? Director John Lee Hancock, who also made The Rookie, knows how to do these paint-by-numbers sports biopics. Audiences cannot help but like Bullock, who a decade ago was the go-to actress, if Meg Ryan turned down a role, and is now just trying to find work. She plays pushy and loving well. I hate to say this, but I like this film. I smiled and felt good.

Verdict: A Good, Feel Good Film