The Oscar-winning director of the film version of Ohio Sen. JD Vance’s memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” says he’s “very surprised and disappointed” by how the Republican vice presidential candidate has changed.
Ron Howard told Deadline that he and Vance “didn’t talk a lot of politics when we were making the movie because I was interested in his upbringing and that survival tale.”
That’s “what we mostly focused on,” he said in an interview, according to a transcript posted online Saturday. “However, based on the conversations that we had during that time, I just have to say I’m very surprised and disappointed by much of the rhetoric that I’m reading and hearing.”
Howard didn’t elaborate, but added: “People do change, and I assume that’s the case.”
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The book “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis” sold about 3 million copies and topped the New York Times best seller list after it was published in 2016.
Netflix turned it into a 2020 movie starring Amy Adams as Vance’s troubled mother, Glenn Close as the grandmother who helped raise him, and Gabriel Basso as Vance, who cowrote the screenplay.
The freshman senator also enjoyed another surge in sales of his book after being picked as former President Donald Trump’s running mate in July.
Howard, who won two Academy Awards for 2002’s “A Beautiful Mind,” said Vance was “not involved in politics or claimed to be particularly interested” when they were making “Hillbilly Elegy.”
“So that was then. I think the important thing is to recognize what’s going on today and to vote,” he said.
Howard, interviewed while promoting his new movie “Eden” at the Toronto International Film Festival, also told Variety that he’s been “surprised and concerned by a lot of the rhetoric” from the Trump-Vance campaign.
“There’s no version of me voting for Donald Trump to be president again, whoever the vice president was,” he said.
Howard also seemed to suggest that voters shouldn’t be swayed by his work bringing Vance’s life story to the screen.
“Listen to what the candidates are saying today, that’s what’s really relevant. It’s who they are today. And make a decision, an informed one,” he said.
