Revisiting Hillbilly Elegy, the memoir and film that turned Trump vice presidential nominee JD Vance into a hero
“I will be the first to admit that I have not achieved anything great in my life,” JD Vance wrote in the introduction to his 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis“There’s certainly nothing that would justify a complete stranger paying to read about it.” But with the news that Donald Trump Vance has been exploited became his running mate, interest in the Ohio senator’s life and career—as well as the poorly received film adaptation of his memoir, which is believed to have pushed Vance to the right—certainly skyrocketed.
Vance first gained national attention when he published his book in 2016, shortly before Trump was elected. In it, Vance recounts his childhood in Middletown, Ohio, a community sometimes ravaged by poverty and opiate addiction, as well as his self-described “country bumpkin identity” through his Appalachian grandparents in Jackson, Kentucky.
Although at that time he has declared itself “Never Trumper,” Vance’s memoir is intended to decode how Trump won the vote of poor white Americans. “Anyone who wants to understand the rise of Trump or inequality in America should read it,” tweeted Larry Summerformer finance minister of Bill Clinton and president of Harvard. But others were upset by Vance’s tendency to describe Appalachia in generalized terms. New Republic‘S Sarah Jones refers to Vance is the “False Prophet of Blue State America,” also known as “the liberal media’s favorite white trash explainer.” Trump’s inauguration week in 2017, The Elegy of the Mountain People sit on top the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list.
As Probationer do Trump easy to listen to for American audiencesHis companion was given his own Hollywood car when The Elegy of the Mountain People was adapted into a film in 2020. Directed by Ron Howard (Apollo 13, A beautiful soul) and written by Vanessa Taylor (Shape of water), the film follows Vance (played by Gabriel Basso And Owen Asztalos at various ages) as he travels from Yale back to his humble hometown amid family conflict between his grandmother Mamaw (Glenn Close) and mother Bev (Amy Adams).(Vanity Fair Representatives for Howard, Taylor, Adams and Close have been contacted for comment.)
Though the film was released on Netflix just a week after the 2020 presidential election, it omitted much of the political context of Vance’s book, from his own right-of-center leanings to the fact that Mamaw and Papaw were union Democrats (except for when Papaw voted for Ronald Reagan in 1984). It also ends with a local-boy-made-good story that focuses on Vance’s ability to escape the Rust Belt, start a family, and graduate from Yale Law School. There’s no mention of his future as a venture capitalist under the auspices of Silicon Valley Billionaire Peter Thiel, who donated $15 million for Vance’s Senate campaign.
“I hope the film does well in Middle America, the Rust Belt and the South,” American conservative journalist Rod Dreher said Hollywood Reporter before the film was released. “I’m not so sure about coastal audiences… I feel that enough time has passed since the book was published that a lot of people in the Blue State will intuitively associate the story with Trump, and be angry, if they do.”
In the same story, WME partner Anna DeRoy“If you’re going to make a family movie and you’re going to cast movie stars, you’re going to make a character movie. There’s a political element to it, but it’s very subtle,” said Vance’s agent. It looks like DeRoy is no longer representing Vance..)
