Movie Project Paper
Brittany Yantis, Rivers Jones, Pyper Ribble, Casey Tignor
Sandra Bullock’s role in The Blind Side has cultivated many awards for her individual
performance. Some of these prestigious awards include the Academy award for best actress, the
Hollywood Foreign Press Association award for best actress in a drama, and lastly a Screen Actor’s Guild
Award for best actress. In the movie Sandra acts out the life of Leigh Anne Tuohy, a rich interior
designer that adopts homeless high-school student Michael Oher after finding him wandering the
streets. In this role Bullock portrays a strong, independent woman that sets a positive example for the
rest of us. As she establishes this character she displays a plethora of leadership values that we have
been learning about this year in LDRS 1015. For this project we chose The Blind Side because we believe
that Sandra Bullock’s representation of Leigh Anne Tuohy displays strong examples of transformational
leadership, charismatic leadership, while also signifying Lao-Tzu’s outline of a proper leader.
For the first scene we chose the scene in the movie where Leigh Anne Tuohy is out to lunch with
her friends and when they question her decision of having Michael live with them, she stands up for
herself and protects Michael as well as admits that Michael is changing her life. We chose this clip
because we felt that Mrs. Tuohy’s actions express transformational leadership. Leigh Anne shows
transformational leadership in this scene by being a role model for Michael and her children and
because it shows that she changed as part of her interactions with Michael. She is a role model because
she stands up to her friends when they are making fun of Michael and what she is doing. She doesn’t
care what they think of what she’s doing, because she knows that it is right. When her friends say that
she is changing Michael’s life she replies that he is changing hers. Part of transformational leadership is
that the leader experiences a change because of his/her interactions with the follower. In The Blind
Side, Leigh Anne changes and becomes a better person because of what she is doing for Michael.
The second scene that was chosen for the presentation was the scene that shows Michael’s first
football practice. In this scene Sandra Bullock’s character takes control of practice in order to get
Michael to learn how to play. She does this by relating the idea of protecting his teammates to
protecting his family. This clip shows charismatic leadership as Bullock is envisioning, energizing, and
enabling. Sandra envisions by knowing that Michael can be a great player by recognizing his potential.
She tells SJ to tape the next play because she knows that Michael is starting to grab hold of the concept
after her speech to him. Secondly, Sandra Bullock energizes Michael by relating his teammates to their
family. She tells him to pretend like she is the quarterback and SJ is the running back, so he has to
protect them by blocking. Finally, she enables Michael to success by giving him the tools to becoming a
better football player. While leading Michael in all of these ways, she speaks to him with confidence in
him and ends their conversation by asking him questions, inspiring him to answer her. After this little
pep-speech he pushes the defensive line backwards, doing way more than just protecting his family.
The third scene that we chose was one of the final scenes in the movies, the laundry mat scene.
Michael has run away from home after thinking about the possibility of Mrs. Tuohy taking him in for the
sole purpose of getting him to play football at Ole Miss. She then arrives at the laundry mat to calm
down Michael and talk to him. This scene exemplifies Lao-Tzu’s leadership style because Leigh Anne
(Sandra Bullock) and everyone else at first pushed Michael to go to Ole Miss. Then, after many problems
arose of whether or not this is what he really wanted Leigh Anne changed. Leigh Anne proves to be
selfless and trustworthy because she allows Michael to choose where he wants to attend college. She
put the follower’s needs first and did not complain about whatever decision he wanted to make. She
even decided not to be judgmental when he mentioned “flipping burgers” for the rest of his life,
although she hesitated for a slight second. She decided to let his decisions be for his own self and not be
beneficial for herself.
The last scene that we chose was actually a representation of Michael Oher’s leadership,
exemplifying Lao-Tzu’s ideal leader model. We thought that this scene can show how Leigh Anne’s
leadership qualities have rubbed of onto Michael. During this car-crash scene Michael throws his arm in
front of SJ, and deflects the speeding air bag. Lao-Tzu said, “By being selfless, the leader enhances self”.
This means that by leaders can gain from putting the concern of others first. Michael displays this
selflessness when the car crashes as he extends his arm in front of SJ. This little act prevents the airbag
from being deployed onto the meek little boy, and thus saves SJ from a broken face. However, this also
shows the courage and sacrifice that Michael displays as his arm is lacerated. By protecting SJ instead of
himself Michael gains a sense of tender love and belonging as a family even though he totals his new
car. This showed Michael that his family “had his back” no matter what the situation was.
To end our presentation we broke down Sandra Bullock’s complete role as a transformational
leader. The four factors of transformational leadership are idealized influence, inspirational motivation,
intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration. Leigh Anne shows intellectual stimulation
because she specifically challengers her followers to have creativity. A great example of her doing this is
when she interrupts football practice to talk to Mike. She uses an analogy of his family, using SJ and
herself as a way to interpret his blind side in football. This challenges him to be creative and proves to
be successful with football! Secondly, Leigh Anne shows inspirational motivation because she definitely
has high expectations for the “team,” has pride, and inspiration. She expects success from the football
team, especially from Michael. She also wants Mike to have pride and inspires him to improve his
grades so that he can receive an athletic scholarship and have a great life! Leigh Anne has idealized
influence because she proves to be a strong role model and to be charismatic. She is a role model for
her daughter, SJ, and Big Mike because she stands up for what she believes in and gives a promising life
to Big Mike. She is also charismatic because she has such an inspiring influence over Big Mike and gets
him pumped up at his football practice and games. Lastly, Leigh Anne has individualized consideration
because she focuses on the follower’s needs, creates a personal relationship, and promotes uniqueness
of followers. She definitely focuses on the follower’s needs because she brings a stranger into her home
and gives him a better life. She provides everything that he needs and helps him pursue dreams that he
never thought he would have. She creates a personal relationship with him be legally adopting him and
making him her son. She also promotes uniqueness to Mike because she tells him not to change who he
is for anyone and to always be himself. Although Mike is different from the average high schooler, she
teaches him that it is a great thing to be unique.
Each person in our group had a specific role in the completion of our movie project. Based on
our individual strengths and characteristics, we were all given tasks in order to get the project done
efficiently and successfully. Pyper’s strengths include communication and achiever so she was given the
role of helping complete the powerpoint presentation. Being very familiar with powerpoint, she used
that skill to put together a strong presentation. Two of Casey’s strengths are achiever and responsibility.
She took on the role of a leader in the beginning, sending out a message to all the group members to set
up meeting times and ideas. She also helped put together the powerpoint presentation. Rivers’
strengths include focus and responsibility. He was given the responsibility to find the movie for the
presentation and write a section of the paper. Finally, Brittany’s strengths include achiever and
communication. She also helped communicate with group members about information. She was also
given the task to write a section of the paper. Each group member was also given a specific clip from
The Blind Side to discuss during the presentation. All in all our group worked very well together, getting
everything done in a timely manner and being well prepared for the presentation.
The movie The Blind Side contains many examples of leadership values that we have learned
over the semester. From transformational to charismatic to Lao-tzu, Sandra Bullock’s award winning
performance as Leigh Anne Tuohy embodies them all. She displays transformational throughout the
entire movie, but especially in the clip where she’s eating lunch with her friends and proclaims Michael
is changing her life. She illustrates charismatic when interrupting one of Michael’s football practices to
show him how to protect his teammates, his family. Finally, she exemplifies the selflessness of Lao-tzu
when telling Michael he can choose whatever path in life he feels is best for him, even if he chooses to
go to the school the Tuohy’s are rivals with. Overall, this movie really brings to life many leadership
qualities we have learned this year. Each person in our group did an equal part in order to put together
this presentation to show this to the rest of the class.