| Sources |
- [S104] Cocke County, Tennessee, and its People, Cocke County Heritage Book Committee, (Walsworth Publishing, 1992), 282.
- [S24] The Newport Plain Talk, (http://www.newportplaintalk.com), 25 Dec 2009.
Newport native appears in movie "The Blind Side"
Author: Duay O'Neil
ATLANTA-Movie lovers currently enjoying the hit movie "The Blind Side" might do a double take when one of players portraying an assistant coach football coach appears on the big screen.
The tall, blond coach is Newport native Marty Wild, son of Bobby Wild of Newport and the late Loretta Balch Wild.
In real life, Marty is a physical education teacher and assistant head football coach at Westminster School in Atlanta's prestigious Buckhead area, where most of the movie was filmed.
The movie, starring Sandra Bullock and Tim McGraw, who play Leigh Anne and Sean Tuohy, an affluent Memphis couple who noticed Michael Oher, a 6 foot 4 inch teenager, walking along the road one winter night, wearing only a t-shirt and shorts.
Leigh Anne recognized the young man from her daughter's school. Learning that he was homeless, the Tuohys took him in as their third child.
With their help, encouragement, and determination of his own, Oher, an offensive lineman, was a first round draft pick of the Baltimore Ravens in 2009.
"The movie people came to our school last January," said Marty on Wednesday morning. In Tennessee for holiday visits with families in Newport and Athens, he said school officials agreed to allow the movie to be filmed on the campus.
"All of the football scenes and so forth were filmed on campus," said Marty. "Our head football coach Jerry Romberg and another assistant coach Kevin Horne (who played on UT's national championship team) and I appear as assistant coaches in the movie."
"We served as consultants to the movie's football director about calling the plays."
Because they were classified as "consultants," rather than "extras," the pay was "a little better."
The movie people took over the campus for nearly two months, starting in early June and wrapping up the project in mid-July.
"It was quite an experience seeing how they did everything," said Marty. "I was surprised at how much work was involved."
Because of the movie's small budget, only $30 million, Marty and his fellow coaches appear in non-speaking roles. "They couldn't afford to let us talk," he laughed, "because they had already spent their budget."
Marty worked twelve-hour shifts during his movie career, sometimes starting at 6 a.m. and ending at 6 p.m. and sometimes ""flipping the days" and reporting for duty at 6 p.m.
"The first time we did that we knew we were in trouble when they said 'Good morning' to us at six o'clock in the evening. It was pretty wild to see the stadium full of people at 4 o'clock in the morning."
Working with such big show business names as Bullock and McGraw was "great," according to Wild.
"Tim McGraw was unbelievable. He'd hang out and eat with us. His wife, Faith Hill, came down, too. They're just normal people."
During the filming, Bullock remained rather aloof. "She hardly spoke to anyone during the movie, but as soon as it was wrapped up, she talked her head off to us. She just let loose. We heard that when she's working on a project, she is intensely focused on her work."
An impromptu action by Marty drew the director's attention in a positive way.
"In one scene Sandra Bullock comes out onto the field during a game. As she walked away, I leaned over and sort of checked her out," Marty said. "When I did that, the director yelled, 'Cut!' I thought, 'Boy, I'm in trouble now.'"
But instead, the director said, "No, I like it. I want everyone to do that!"
Ironically Wild's "day job" as a football coach interfered with his chance to attend the Atlanta premier of the movie at the famed' Loew's Theatre, which once hosted Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh for the premier of "Gone With the Wind."
"They had it in October on a Wednesday night at 6 p.m. and we were practicing football for the play-offs," said Marty, "and we couldn't go. Some of the other people from the school and told us how visible in the movie."
When the movie was later released to the public, Marty was again on the job as a football coach during the playoffs and missed that opening night, too.
"We didn't get to see it until the second week," said Marty, who took his wife Karen and their two daughters Bailey, 19, and Lindsay, 17, with him.
"It wasn't until I saw myself up on the screen that it really hit me what I'd done," said Marty. "As we left the movie, people recognized me and came up to make sure I was the same person they'd just seen in the movie."
"It was a great deal of fun," said Marty, "but after the first three days, it was just like another job."
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1964 - (60 years)
(Age 84 years)