By Movieguide® Staff
Director Ron Howard recently shared the text he sent Vice President J.D. Vance following the 2024 election, as well as his thoughts on why Vance’s biopic, which Howard directed, flopped with critics.
“I don’t think about it,” he said of the negative critical response to 2020’s HILLBILLY ELEGY, based on Vance’s memoir of the same name in an interview with Vulture. “I know it’s a mixed bag and probably quite culturally divided. I also know that reviews were bad and the audience-reaction rating was pretty good.”
He continued, “[Vance] was frustrated by that. He loved Glenn Close’s performance and Amy Adams’s performance and liked the film. And he felt that, just as reviews had kind of turned on the book, his involvement was in some way tainting or coloring the critical response, and he resented it.”
Movieguide® reviewed HILLBILLY ELEGY favorably, praising the movie’s “phenomenal” cast, as well as Howard’s “sensational” work as director.
When asked if he had spoken to Vance following the movie’s release, Howard said, “I did one text, after the election, which was just sort of ‘Godspeed. Try to serve us well.’”
HILLBILLY ELEGY is “the true story of what a social, regional and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck,” per an official description of the memoir.
In a 2017 interview with the Journal-News, Vance spoke about his life story being made into a movie.
“I’m a pretty private person and felt uncomfortable by it,” he shared. “It was hard enough for me to write the book, but a movie is a much bigger stage. It’s a much larger invasion of privacy.”
Vance continued, “You write a book and you have complete control over it, over what goes into it, over how you present your family … and then a movie is really somebody else’s project. You’re sort of necessarily trusting a complete stranger to tell a story that you think needs to be told.”
He called Howard “this incredibly kind and thoughtful guy,” adding, “He also was doing something that I was trying to do with the book, which was tell a story about a group of people who don’t get stories told about them very often and he seemed very interested about approaching the project carefully and thoughtfully and compassionately and really just revealing … what he thinks is an important story and I obviously think is an important story, too.”
While opinions might differ, it’s important to pray for our political leaders as they work for our country and, as Howard did with Vance, wish them well as they serve the nation.
Read Next: HILLBILLY ELEGY Views Skyrocket After Trump Picks J.D. Vance as VP
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