Native Michael Lewis sees his nonfiction book The Blindside on the big screen

The real Michael Oher. AP photo/Craig Ruttle

New Orleans native, Michael Lewis, author of books such as Liar's Poker, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, and Home Game was in New Orleans last night. He joined actress and New Orleans home owner Sandra Bullock for the premier of her movie, The Blind Side, which opened in theaters today. The movie is based on a Lewis's book by the same name.

While the movie is being criticized by some black bloggers as one more unrealistic tale of white saviors for black people, the story is true. It's Lewis's narrative of the life of Michael Oher, a young African-American man who faced a bleak future on the streets of Memphis, Tenn., until he was adopted by a wealthy white family. That family educated him and sent him on to college at the University of Mississippi. Oher, a talented football player who is 6 ft 4" and 310 pounds, was recently drafted by the NFL's Baltimore Ravens this year.

Although Oher is known for his athletic prowess and blocking skill, he also has received acclaim for overcoming several obstacles off the football field.

The son of a drug-addicted mother and a father who was murdered, Oher was essentially homeless in Memphis before Leigh Anne Tuohy offered to make him part of their family.

The Tuohys took him in and cared for him. Now, eight years later, Oher is on the brink of making millions of dollars playing professional football.

"Just to make it to the NFL and get drafted, I never saw it coming," Oher said. "Where I'm from, nobody makes it out. I'm definitely blessed." (Penn Live)

In a 2006 NPR interview, while Oher was still a student at the University of Mississippi, Lewis said of his story:

It was such freakish, odd story because he was someone who had not really played football much in his first 15, 16 years on Earth, and not played much in the way of any organized sports. And he had been discovered in a way most football players are not.

By the time most football players are 17 or 18 years old, if they're that good, everybody knows about them. He was a kid who no one knew about until there's this moment when he's discovered. And then suddenly everybody knows about him. (Lewis on NPR, 2006)

NPR's Robert Siegel, speaking of all the resources the Tuohy family applied to have Oher tutored and to get him into college, resources most inner city families lack, said the story caused him to wonder how many other Ohers are out there. Lewis said it's this juxtaposition of inner city life challenges and the life and social capital Oher gained through the Tuohy family that interested him in the story:

You don't think, when you think of the problems of inner city America, you don't think that the path, if you're a gifted athlete from a poor urban environment, is that cluttered, but the truth is that it's extremely cluttered.

The Memphis Public School System ... did a study in which they discovered that of every six kids who had the gifts to play college sports and get a full scholarship to college as an athlete, only one of them qualified academically, and the other five just didn't go. That's not because the athletes are dumber. It's because they've been failed by both the public school system and family.

So, to me the heart of this story is that: What happens if your gift is for playing the violin or for trading bonds on Wall Street or for being a radio announcer? I mean there can't be too many more conspicuous characters on the street than Michael. If this kid can be missed, and he would have been missed, first had he not crossed out of poor black Memphis into rich white Memphis and gone to this Evangelical Christian school and been taken in by them and then second been adopted by this family who then drowned him in nurture, he would have been completely written off. (Lewis on NPR, 2006)

Michael Lewis on Charlie Rose, 2009

The author then relays to Siegel how the head of the Memphis gang, the Gangster Disciples, that ran the housing project where Michael once lived had its eyes on Michael to be the body guard for the gang leader. Young men groomed for such positions rarely live long.

At The Griot, blogger Christopher Chambers examines some of the objections African-Americans have about the movie The Blindside and compares it to objections to the movie Precious, of which Oprah Winfrey and New Orleans native Tyler Perry are executive producers. He makes the observation that Michael Oher, played by actor Quinton Aaron, is not the star of the film adaption of The Blindside. Sandra Bullock is the star.

According to Wikipedia, Lewis was born October 15, 1960, in New Orleans, attended Isidore Newman School, and eventually went to Princeton University. He is currently a contributing editor for Vanity Fair and is also known as a financial reporter. Lewis has a masters degree in economics from the London School of Economics.

Bullock and her husband Jesse James decided to premiere the film in New Orleans because they own a home here, Lewis grew up here, and the patriarch of the Tuohy family is from the city.

Lagniappe:

Charlie Rose's June 2009 interview with Lewis on his latest book, Home Game ,about his feelings on becoming father. Press play to see video.

• From the original 2006 New York Times book review:
  

  But parts of this book feel like prefabricated movie moments, even if they accurately represent the facts. It’s not that Mr. Lewis is maudlin or unoriginal; it’s just that he prefers buoyant details to the bleak ones that are implicit here.

  So when Michael Oher, the book’s jumbo-size subject, is finally turned loose on a football field, Mr. Lewis paints a wonderfully lively picture of brawn gone wild. He describes Mr. Oher’s running up to an opponent, lifting him off the ground and carrying him well past the end of the football field. Why? Because Mr. Oher won’t stop unless a referee’s whistle blows. “He takes that real literal,” one of his coaches explains.

  “The Blind Side” is a careful amalgam of “Moneyball,” Mr. Lewis’s counterintuitive look at baseball strategy and economics, and the human-interest angle of Mr. Oher’s strange Cinderella story. (NYT, 2006)

• Michael Lewis in awe at New Orleans premiere.
• Bloggers review Push, the book on which the movie Precious is based.
• Comparisons of white savior movies such as The Blindside and the black movie Precious at The Griot
• Two Films, Two Routes From Poverty, at the New York Times, Precious and The Blindside
• Shaniya Davis, Dead at 5: A Story Nearly As Ugly As Precious Movie
• Sandra Bullock's Blindside Premiere Helps Local High School

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