Hillbilly Elegy director Ron Howard claims JD Vance has changed as he reveals who he is voting for

Hillbilly Elegy director Ron Howard said the J.D. Vance running for vice president is a different person than the one he knew when he directed the film adaptation of the Ohio senator’s famous memoir.

Howard, an Oscar-winning director and longtime Hollywood fixture, directed the film adaptation of Vance’s best-selling novel, which was released on Netflix in 2020 to mixed reviews.

Speaking at the Toronto International Film Festival, Howard said he was “very surprised and disappointed by a lot of the rhetoric that I’m reading and hearing” and that he believes Vance has changed.

“People change, and I suppose they do. Well, that’s for sure. When we spoke, around the time I knew him, he wasn’t involved in politics or professed to be particularly interested in it. So that was then.”

In a separate interview, he made it clear that, aside from his relationship with Vance, he is in a relationship with Kamala Harris, adding that “there is no version of me who ever voted for Donald Trump for president, no matter who the vice president was.”

Speaking at the Toronto International Film Festival, Howard said he is “very surprised and disappointed by a lot of the rhetoric that I read and hear” and that he believes Vance has changed.

Howard said that when they talked about the movie, his conversations with Vance weren’t about politics.

“Well, we didn’t talk much about politics when we were making the film because I was interested in his upbringing and that survival story,” he said Term.

He added to Variety that he is “concerned” about the positions Vance has taken since entering politics.

Howard said people should participate in the political process instead of worrying about his old films.

“I think it’s important to acknowledge what’s happening today and vote. And that’s my answer. It’s not really about a film that was made five or six years ago. It is, but we have to respond to what we see, hear, feel now and vote responsibly, whatever that is. We have to participate. That’s my answer.”

The Netflix film, an adaptation of the 2016 memoir of the same name, has been panned by critics for what they call an insensitive portrayal of poverty in rural Appalachia.

Still, the film received critical acclaim and an Oscar nomination for Glenn Close as Vance’s grandmother.

The book Vance wrote painted a vivid portrait of a troubled upbringing in a forgotten American. He was perfectly placed to explain why those rust belt towns had turned to Trump, while warning that the man himself was like an opioid, an “easy escape from the pain.”

Howard said people should participate in the political process instead of worrying about his old movies

The Netflix film, an adaptation of the 2016 memoir of the same name, has been panned by critics for what they call an insensitive depiction of poverty in rural Appalachia

It could have made him a permanent member of the chattering class of pundits, called upon to explain the appeal and meteoric political rise of a loudmouth New York developer who bewildered establishment figures left and right.

What changed, said a friend who knew the couple at Yale, was the way prestigious institutions railed against Brett Kavanaugh — for whom Vance’s wife worked as an administrator — during his confirmation and when Trump was in office.

A friend who knew Vance and his future wife in law school said it was one of the factors that pushed him toward Trump and politics, after previously being highly critical.

“There were two things that I think were frustrating for JD,” he said. “One was watching Yale, sort of our Yale community — professors, alumni — go after Brett Kavanaugh and the gross bias that was shown in that.”

Another point, he added, was the way the mainstream media, which had raved about his book, bashed the film when it came out. It felt like an attack on the America he had written about.

Vance was always conservative, but the story goes that his partisan stance led him to embrace Trump and his Republican movement.