I spoke with John Hancock last week. The DVD of “The Blind Side” is now available in stores.
Congratulations on the success of Blind Side. You must be thrilled.
Beyond thrilled. It’s been a wild ride.
Tell me what the Oscars were like for you.
I’d never been before. I told my wife that I’d never go unless I had a good reason to. This was certainly a good reason. As much as I’ve been here a while, you go to different award shows and stuff. All the pageantry, it becomes old hat a bit. But it was pretty cool, I have to say.
What was it like seeing Sandra win?
I was really happy for her. Really happy for her. I thought the job she did on this….the degree of difficulty I felt was so high…that she made it look so effortless was a real tribute to her and her talents. And also she’s just such a good person. It was great.
What was your interaction like with the Touheys?
I love the Touheys. I feel like I’ve known them forever now. It takes a long time to get a movie made. I met them three, four years ago. My family has gone down and spent Thanksgiving with them. It feels like they’ve been a part of my life forever now. They’re wonderful, wonderful people.
One of the things I loved about this movie was that you kinda wanted to be Touhey. You wanted to join that family. It looked like a lot of fun. Are they really that fun?
They really are. I wanna be a Touhey too. My kids love em. You’d think you’d go, ‘We’re going to go down to Memphis Tennessee and visit this family that you don’t know that don’t have any kids your age.’ You’d think a 9 year old would go “Oh.” But they just wanted to be a Touhey. My daughter would jump in the back seat with Leigh Anne and they’d head off somewhere exciting.
Were you prepared did you expect to have the enormous reaction to this movie, the boxoffice, the Oscars and everything?
Oh no. It’s hard to get a movie made. I was so happy it was getting made. Once we finished it I thought the movie worked and the movie was good. And that if people saw it they would like it. And hopefully like it enough to tell their friends to check it out. But I had no expectation for this degree of financial success. It’s unbelievable and great and it’ll never happen again so I’m enjoying it.
I’m sure people are asking you what the magical formula is. What would you say has led to the success of it?
I don’t know after the fact you can look at a lot factors, I’m sure. But after that, it’s all guessing. Job one is to make a really good movie. It’s hard. It’s hard to get a movie made. It’s almost impossible to make a really good movie. I think first and foremost is that people really enjoy the movie. Beyond that, I think a PG 13, kind of a soft PG13 I would say, it is an opportunity for families to go. I think also a key factor is that it came out during football season. We got an enormous amount of free advertising every Sunday when Michael Oher was playing with the Ravens. They would talk about the movie. And I think coming out at Thanksgiving, which is a family time, it seems like this is a movie about family and they took Michael in around Thanksgiving. So all those things I think probably helped. That said, there’s no way to predict success to this degree.
In the movie, you’re very respectful toward but not really focused on faith, can you talk about walking that line in a movie?
Well, I kinda felt like this. If you consider who the Touheys are, it would be disingenuous of me to strip them of that. I also thought that at its heart, this is a movie about a charitable act and about how you always get more than you give. I think the story is still a great story of charity even if the Touheys aren’t Christian. A charitable act is a charitable act. But the fact that they are Christian means you have to respect that. And you want to present that in a way that isn’t your stereotypical Hollywood think inside a box way of stereotyping someone. Certainly when you meet her, Leigh Anne defies description or stereotype. I thought all that was good. It makes for a very interesting character. One we haven’t seen before.
Although I know a few, I’ve never seen one on the big screen before.
I know some Leigh Anne Touheys as well. But yeah I don’t think they’ve been portrayed quite the way this Leigh Anne was.
The other sweet spot you seem to have hit, you seem to have attracted both white audiences and African American audiences
Yeah, which is really wonderful.
How did you walk that line of race portrayal in a movie like this?
Well, I think you pretty much just tell the story. I knew there would be some people…you know the Touheys came under fire for bringing an African American kid into their house saying that hey had ulterior motives. Michael Lewis came under fire when he wrote the book. He told me, “the haters of this story are so rabid that it’s as if they wish it had never happened, this charitable thing had never happened.” He warned me. There are some that are just going to hate. It’s just what it’s going to be. They won’t allow themselves to watch the movie. That said, to me this wasn’t really a movie about race. To me this was a movie about haves and have nots, and nature vs nurture and a kid who had been thrown on the waste heap of society, and how when place in a family where he’s nurtured and loved and a premium is placed on things like education, he succeeds. I think that is a strong vote for nurture. So I took that as the more important message of it. As Leigh Anne Touhey told me, she was talking about people saying, you just took in a black kid because you thought that made you look holier than thou, better than everybody. She said I didn’t stop and put him in a car because he was black, I put him in a car because he was cold. I thought yeah that’s a pretty good answer, that’s kind of it.
I walked out of that movie just loving it when I screened. I lived for ten years in DC, transitional, that the newspaper articles you have at the end of the kids that just kind of disappear, you know, we saw those every week and it was just so true. What part of the movie just kinda hits you the most?
It’s hard because you’ve seen behind the curtain. If you put together things and think about them for the maximum ability to move someone, you know, you’re responsible for putting this together. I do think that is something that has an impact on me, when you see those faces, when you go these are wasted lives, these are someone’s son. There are lots and lots and lots of Michael Ohers out there.
Do you have any other projects you’re working on that you’re talking about?
It’s really difficult to get movies made in Hollywood. You’d better have six going. Chances are none of them will get made. I’v e got a bunch of stuff I’ve written, a bunch I’m attached to. I’m writing something now for Sony and Overbrook, Will Smith’s company, which is based on the life of John Keller, five days in the life of John Keller, an ordinary guy in extraordinary circumstances during Hurricane Katrina. It should be inspirational and cool.
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