Southern DISCOMFORT
Sorry, early interview… I don’t have soundbites down yet,” apologises Ron Howard, as he freestyles an involved answer about his new movie Hillbilly Elegy. It’s understandable. This adaptation of J.D. Vance’s best-selling memoir about his life growing up in Appalachia is not the sort of movie that can be boiled down to bite-size throwaways. A complex family saga about addiction, adversity and ambition, its arrival during US election month makes it timely to say the least.
When Vance’s book was published four years ago, many took it as a window into the disaffected white working-class who swept Donald Trump to power. “Anyone wanting to understand Trump’s rise or American inequality should read it,” said one commentator. Certainly, the Republican-supporting Vance is the epitome of the American Dream: after a hardscrabble upbringing in Ohio, he was accepted into Yale and, later, a Silicon Valley biotech firm.
Vance was initially “reluctant” to let his family memoir be turned into a movie, says Howard. “He said that several
