Hollywood fail

 They call 'em fairy tales for a reason, it turns out. And feel free to curse the loss of innocence that comes with that.

They call 'em fairy tales because  -- like Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and, yes, fairies -- they exist only in the minds of forever 5-year-olds. And of course in the boardrooms of the movie studios, where fantasy is the business model and innocence (or at least a willful suspension of disbelief) the coin of the realm.

Which brings us, in the usual meandering way, to the 2009 film "The Blind Side," and the unraveling fairy tale on which it was based.

If you haven't seen it you've probably at least heard of it, if only because Sandra Bullock's scenery-gnawing performance in it earned her a best actress Oscar. She played Leigh Anne Tuohy, a former Ole Miss cheerleader and matriarch of a rich white family who welcomed a young black man into their home because the kid was something of a lost soul whose birth mother was a junkie.

It's a heartwarming tale, albeit with some uneasy undertones of white paternalism. The private school the Tuohy kids attend takes him in only because the football coach drools over his size and athleticism. The Tuohys take him in because they're goodhearted people who see in him a way to "give back", as people say. A multi-tissue story ensues.

Except ...

Except, as with all such Hollywood creations, this one is not quite true. And now it's coming apart at the seams.

Michael Oher is now suing the Tuohys because he claims they lied to him about adopting him -- he was 18, but in Tennessee, where they lived, legally they could have -- and tricked him into signing a conservatorship that made them millions off the film of his story. While he, Michael Oher, got nothing.

The Tuohys say they made zippo off the film, only a pittance off the book on which it was based. And they split it evenly among the family members, including Oher.

Their attorney goes further than, accusing Oher of trying to shake down the Tuohys for $15 million by threatening to go public with his allegations if they didn't pay up.

So either Oher is turning on the quasi-family who took him in (out of the goodness of their hearts!), or the Tuohys cashed in on his rags-to-riches tale. And it's all mixed up somehow with the film, which backed up the falsehood that the Tuohys adopted him and, according to Oher, portrayed him as something of a dummy when he was actually quite intelligent.

That still wounds him, Oher says. And finding out the Tuohys didn't actually adopt him was the last straw.

And so this becomes a very human story, full of anger and hurt feelings and, let's face it, naked greed. Oher feels betrayed. The Tuohys feel, no pun intended, blindsided. But at the bottom of it all, per usual, is money - large sums of which will now go into the pockets of their respective attorneys. 

Some fairy tale.