Rediscovering Hillbilly Elegy. Just about immediately after Donald Trump named Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his vice presidential running mate, his bestselling 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy and its 2020 movie adaptation (directed by Ron Howard) respectively soared to the top of the book charts on Amazon and soared in viewership on Netflix. 

Here’s the film synopsis Netflix put out at the time of the film’s original release:  J.D. Vance (Gabriel Basso), a former Marine from southern Ohio and current Yale Law student, is on the verge of landing his dream job when a family crisis forces him to return to the home he’s tried to forget. J.D. must navigate the complex dynamics of his Appalachian family, including his volatile relationship with his mother Bev (Amy Adams), who’s struggling with addiction. Fueled by memories of his grandmother Mamaw (Glenn Close), the resilient and whip-smart woman who raised him, J.D. comes to embrace his family’s indelible imprint on his own personal journey. 

I reviewed  the when it first came out and, regardless of current politics, I can straight up tell you it’s one on of the best and most-honest movies I have ever seen.

In the skillful hands of Ron Howard, Hillbilly Elegy is far more than a gritty version of Mayberry R.F.D. From writing to directing to acting, it renders a very believable, compelling and compassionate account of one real-life family’s struggles through poverty, psychological trauma, bad decisions and drug addiction to arrive at a place of forgiveness of the past, personal responsibility in the present and hope for the future.  There’s not a false or overly sentimental note in the entire movie. The acting, as noted, is beyond first rate – especially from Glenn Close and Amy Adams who really lose themselves in their complex but relatable characters. It is now, as it was then, Highly Recommended. 

If you go Rotten Tomatoes you will see that elite critics and the viewing audience are quite divided over the film. The critics gave it a measly 25% score while the audience awarded it a far more robust 82% grade. What else is new?

So, why the disconnect between ordinary viewers and the generally Woke critic class? Perhaps it’s because, while ordinary people connect to its universal story, the critics see a daisy cutter missile exploding the deliberately-divisive myth that privilege in America is a function of racial identity and not class identity. J.D. Vance’s family is certainly white and just as certainly are not among the privileged. There is, to be sure, plenty of unfair privilege in our country but its foundation is built on wealth and access to the levers of information, communication and power. That power is concentrated in the hands of a few globalist corporations who much prefer that the poor and working classes squabble with each other over history and identity than focus on present-day policies that enrich the lever pullers while throwing American workers under the proverbial bus.

On the bright side, the public embrace of Hillbilly Elegy demonstrates that a strong audience exists for quality storytelling that enlightens and honestly sows hope that, through good choices and, yes, a little government help (based on circumstance, not identity), individuals can be empowered to seize control of their destiny. We are not prisoners of history but students of it. We learn from our past (the good and the bad). One consistent lesson of the human saga is that enemies seek to confuse and divide their prey. From Aesop to The Bible to powerful modern-day books and films like Hillbilly Elegy, through the ages good storytelling has clarified the basic truths that help us survive and move forward. Unfortunately, for the past several years most of our stories have been filtered through the globalist gatekeepers. That, as they say, has been a game changer. But the game isn’t over.

How the movie impacts the upcoming election, if at all, is anybody’s guess but, as rich and meaningful storytelling, Hillbilly Elegy is hard to beat.
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VS: I do not have children but I know of people with families where one of the parents – or both parents – are sick or disabled. It truly impacts the family. It’s not just the individual. It’s the spouse. It’s the children. It’s the pets. Everybody’s affected. I wanted to sort of normalize for families what it means to have somebody who’s disabled and not make it so huge that they are put on a pedestal. They’re just regular people that have to deal with this challenge.

So, we worked with the gentleman who wrote The Thursday Night Club, Steve Manchester, who is a very beautiful spiritual writer. They call him the Nicholas Sparks of New England. We worked with Steve and with Erik to write this story for children – not babies, but 11 or 12-year-old kids. What is is like to have a parent with a disability – and how can they help other people? It’s called Officer Erik and the Very Special Dad. Officer Erik meets this father and is very blown away by the fact that he is challenged and says “How can I help you?” He says “I don’t need help but I do know of some neighbors who are elderly and could use some work in the house.” That’s just the high concept of the book. We’re going to be giving a portion of the proceeds to an MS charity. We want to really make it a message about disability, about awareness for disability families – that people, no matter what their challenges are,  can still do things for other people and can still improve the lives of other people.Our entire mission for the company, John, is Just Do Good. It’s like Nike, right? Just do it!  Just do good – whatever that is!

John W. Kennedy is a writer, producer and media development consultant specializing in television and movie projects that uphold positive timeless values, including trust in God.