{"id":151424,"date":"2025-08-16T21:01:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-16T21:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/151424\/"},"modified":"2025-08-16T21:01:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-16T21:01:09","slug":"hillbilly-elegy-director-ron-howard-reveals-last-text-to-divisive-jd-vance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/151424\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Hillbilly Elegy’ director Ron Howard reveals last text to ‘divisive’ JD Vance"},"content":{"rendered":"

The director of \u201cHillbilly Elegy,\u201d the movie<\/a> about Vice President\u00a0JD\u00a0Vance\u2019s\u00a0fraught upbringing, time as a Yale Law student and Appalachian hometown roots, said that he didn\u2019t anticipate Vance\u2019s rhetoric to be as \u201cdivisive\u201d as it has become.<\/p>\n

During a\u00a0conversation with Vulture<\/a>\u00a0published Wednesday\u00a0titled, \u201c\u2018You\u2019re Only As Good As Your Last Film\u2019 Ron Howard has worked with everyone from Bette Davis to J.D. Vance. He has stories about all of them,\u201d director\u00a0Ron Howard was appeared perplexed by Vance\u2019s public persona.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Howard also revealed the last time he texted Vance and the content of the message.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bilge Ebiri, a film critic for \u201cVulture,\u201d asked Vance, \u201cYou obviously spent a lot of time with J.\u2009D. Vance back then; you did press together. Are you able to reconcile the person you knew and the character in the movie with the person you see now?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt remains a bit of a surprise to me,\u201d Howard said. \u201cI would not have seen it coming, and I wouldn\u2019t have expected his rhetoric to be as divisive as it sometimes is. By the way, I\u2019m not following him or listening to every word.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ron Howard, director of \u201cHillbilly Elegy,\u201d reveals his thoughts about Vice President JD Vance\u2019s persona. Getty Images<\/p>\n

The veteran film director revealed that he had one recent interaction, via text, with Vance.<\/p>\n

\u201cI did one text,\u00a0after the election, which was just sort of \u2018Godspeed. Try to serve us well,\u2019\u201d Howard said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHillbilly Elegy,\u201d\u00a0released in 2020<\/a>, is an adaptation of Vance\u2019s 2016 memoir of the same name.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI did one text,\u00a0after the election, which was just sort of \u2018Godspeed. Try to serve us well,\u2019\u201d Howard said about his text to Vance. AP<\/p>\n

\u201cHillbilly Elegy,\u201d\u00a0released in 2020, is an adaptation of Vance\u2019s 2016 memoir of the same name, and was\u00a0directed by Ron Howard, with stars such as Amy Adams and Glenn Close in the film. Netflix<\/p>\n

HILLBILLY ELEGY: (L to R) Haley Bennett (Lindsay), Gabriel Basso (J.D. Vance), Amy Adams (Bev). Lacey Terrell\/NETFLIX<\/p>\n

Howard stated that he was unsure about his film\u2019s legacy<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI know it\u2019s a mixed bag and probably quite culturally divided,\u201d Howard said. \u201cI also know that reviews were bad and the audience-reaction rating was pretty good.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Howard, Vance was \u201cfrustrated\u201d by the response to the film.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember reading that the response to the film had really shocked him,\u201d Ebiri asked Howard. \u201cDid you get that sense at the time?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, I did,\u201d Howard said. \u201cHe was frustrated by that. He loved Glenn Close\u2019s performance and Amy Adams\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The director of \u201cHillbilly Elegy,\u201d the movie about Vice President\u00a0JD\u00a0Vance\u2019s\u00a0fraught upbringing, time as a Yale Law student and…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":151425,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[22047,171,2066,398,53,18995,67,132,68,88828],"class_list":{"0":"post-151424","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-directors","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-jd-vance","11":"tag-media","12":"tag-movies","13":"tag-texting","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-vice-presidents"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115040464939104851","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151424\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}