{"id":67260,"date":"2025-08-13T19:55:06","date_gmt":"2025-08-13T19:55:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/67260\/"},"modified":"2025-08-13T19:55:06","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T19:55:06","slug":"hillbilly-elegy-keeps-coming-up-on-ron-howards-latest-press-tour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/67260\/","title":{"rendered":"Hillbilly Elegy keeps coming up on Ron Howard’s latest press tour"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ron Howard surely didn\u2019t expect that he\u2019d still be answering for JD Vance\u2019s sins after adapting his memoir Hillbilly Elegy in 2020. Sure, there were criticisms of the book well before Howard took it on, but he couldn\u2019t possibly have seen the \u201cDonald Trump\u2019s vice president\u201d twist coming. Now all anyone wants to talk about is one of the most critically panned<\/a> films of Howard\u2019s career, much to his apparent chagrin. In a recent profile of his upcoming film Eden for Vanity Fair<\/a>, the director said evasively, \u201cLook, I don\u2019t want to say a lot about it\u2014the film is what it is, made [five] years ago\u2014but I will say I am surprised and disappointed by the rhetoric that I\u2019m hearing.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Howard doesn\u2019t clarify what that rhetoric is, though we can assume it\u2019s Vance\u2018s rhetoric he takes issue with. That\u2019s based on a similar answer he gave in September of last year, telling <\/a>Deadline<\/a> he was \u201csurprised and disappointed by much of the rhetoric that I\u2019m reading and hearing\u201d in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election. \u201cPeople do change, and I assume that\u2019s the case\u201d about Vance, he said. \u201cWell, it\u2019s on record. When we spoke around the time that I knew him, he was not involved in politics<\/a> or claimed to be particularly interested.\u201d He concluded with a rousing civics lessons that he would repeat, almost word-for-word, to Vanity Fair months later: \u201cI think the important thing is to recognize what\u2019s going on today and to vote. And so that\u2019s my answer. It\u2019s not really about a movie made five or six years ago. It is, but we need to respond to what we\u2019re seeing, hearing, feeling now, and vote responsibly, whatever that is. We must participate. That\u2019s my answer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unfortunately for him, it\u2019s not the last answer Howard would be required to give on Hillbilly Elegy. Vulture managed to get more out of him in an interview published today<\/a>, asking what he thought about the legacy of the film now: \u201cI don\u2019t think about it,\u201d he responded, somewhat unbelievably. \u201cI know it\u2019s a mixed bag and probably quite culturally divided. I also know that reviews were bad and the audience-reaction rating was pretty good.\u201d<\/p>\n

Offering a bit of behind-the-scenes insight, Howard conceded that Vance was \u201cfrustrated\u201d by the reception to the film, \u201cAnd 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.\u201d As to whether the negativity around Hillbilly Elegy pushed Vance further<\/a> into conservative politics (he allegedly declared himself<\/a> \u201cdone with Hollywood\u201d out of embarrassment), Howard said, \u201cI can\u2019t speak to that. When I was working with him, all his quotes about the administration were very public. He was trying to run an investment fund. So the run for Senate and the strategy he\u2019s chosen to follow are not what I would\u2019ve expected.\u201d The filmmaker confessed he did send Vance a text message after the election, \u201cwhich was just sort of \u2018Godspeed. Try to serve us well,’\u201d Howard recalled. Hopefully things with Eden go a little better than they did with Hillbilly Elegy, and with Vance\u2019s vice presidency.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ron Howard promises a shockingly accurate survival tale in Eden trailer<\/a>Ron Howard takes Glen Powell back to Backdraft with a new firefighter drama<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ron Howard surely didn\u2019t expect that he\u2019d still be answering for JD Vance\u2019s sins after adapting his memoir…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67261,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,361,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-67260","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-celebrities","11":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67260\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}