The J.D. Vance Biopic “Hillbilly Elegy” and How to Watch It
American venture capitalist, lawyer, and best-selling author James David Vance, best known as JD Vance, has just stepped into the international spotlight by becoming Republican candidate and former US President Donald Trump’s choice as his running mate for the upcoming November US Presidential election, it was announced on Monday.
The 39-year-old retired US-Marine-turned-politician, who will be named US Vice President if Donald Trump wins the election, described his difficult childhood in Appalachian Ohio and detailed the challenges he faced as part of the white working class of modern-day America in the 2016 best-seller memoir Hillbilly Elegy.
Although it met with controversy in the region, the book’s nationwide publishing success led to a drama movie adaptation by Imagine Entertainment, released in 2020, currently available for streaming on Netflix, which owns the international distribution rights.
The biopic describes JD Vance’s childhood troubles amidst his mother’s substance abuse problems, his years of service in Iraq and university studies, and his personal happily-ever-after with his girlfriend.
J.D. Vance movie receives mixed reactions
Directed by Oscar winner Ron Howard, starring Amy Adams, Glenn Close, and Gabriel Basso, Hillbilly Elegy received mixed—if not contrasting—reviews, as many critics thought the movie reinforced stereotypes.
It received three nominations at the Golden Raspberry Awards: Worst Director for Howard, Worst Screenplay for Taylor, and Worst Supporting Actress for Close, who played the role of Vance’s grandmother, Bonnie.
Paradoxically, it also earned Close nominations for Best Supporting Actress at the Academy Awards, the Golden Globe Awards, and Screen Actors Guild Awards, while Adams’ performance earned her a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role.
This made Glenn Close the third performer in history to be nominated for an Academy Award and a Golden Raspberry Award for the same performance.
Several books have attempted to rebut the negative image of the region painted by Vance in Hillbilly Elegy. The same year as the movie’s release, the memoir received a bold response from Vance’s childhood community in the form of another book under the title Appalachian Reckoning; A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy.
Hillbilly Elegy‘s success led to JD Vance’s accession to US politics
As viewers might observe, Vance’s memoir and movie narrative ends where his political career begins with the one somehow leading to the other.
A former critic of Trump, Vance became sought after as a lecturer and political commentator following the release of Hillbilly Elegy. This is because the memoir served as insight into the lives of working-class whites living outside major cities. It offered an explanation as to why this group of Americans supported a political outsider like Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential elections.
Often rumored as a potential political candidate, he reportedly considered running for the US Senate in 2018 but declined to enter the race. He eventually did so when Ohio’s junior US Senator Republican Rob Portman announced he would not seek reelection when his term came to an end in 2022.
Entering the race to replace Portman, Vance publicly apologized for his past criticism of Trump, aligned himself with the former President’s policies, and even repeated the latter’s claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election. Whether there were motivations for doing so is unknown.
Upon defeating Democratic candidate Tim Ryan, Vance was sworn in as junior Senator of Ohio in January 2023.
Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance is accompanied by his wife Usha Chilukuri Vance at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, July 15, 2024.
PHOTO: Reuters
PUBLISHED ONJULY 16, 2024
NEW DELHI – Just who is Mrs Usha Chilukuri Vance, wondered many Indians as yet another Indian connection surfaced in the ongoing US presidential election campaign.
The 38-year-old lawyer was thrown into the media spotlight not just in the US but also in India after her husband, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, was chosen as the Republican vice-presidential candidate.
Wearing a khaki-coloured dress, Mrs Vance, who is of Indian origin, stood proudly by her husband’s side at the Republican National Convention in Wisconsin, in the US, where he was confirmed as the nominee on July 15.
Former US president Donald Trump announced on his Truth Social platform that he chose Mr Vance as his running mate after “lengthy deliberation and thought”.
In India, interest was focused more on Mrs Vance as another instance of the Indian-American immigrant success story, which has continued to captivate Indians.
Her impressive education and professional credentials were amply highlighted in Indian media reports.
Mrs Vance graduated from Yale Law School, where she met her husband. Their romance, according to a 2022 New York Times profile of the couple, was encouraged by Yale law professor Amy Chua, author of Battle Hymn Of The Tiger Mother, which gave rise to the tiger mum phenomenon.
She went on to do a Master of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge, and then clerked for US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh while he was an appeals court judge. She started in 2015 as an associate, and later became a corporate litigator at Munger, Tolles and Olson, a progressive law firm from which she resigned on July 15.
All aspects of the couple’s personal lives that highlighted the Indian connection were amply reported in India.
Mr Anand Mahindra, chairman of the Mahindra Group, posted a picture of the couple on X wearing Indian clothes at their 2014 wedding, with the tweet “another great Indian wedding”. The couple had both Indian and Christian ceremonies.
The reference to “another” was related to the recent lavish, star-studded wedding of Mr Anant Ambani, the son of Asia’s richest man, Mr Mukesh Ambani, to Ms Radhika Merchant.
“Trump’s V-P pick J.D. Vance and Usha Chilukuri’s Hindu wedding picture goes viral,” said The Times of India in a headline.
Indian newspapers also highlighted how the couple gave the second of their three children an Indian name, Vivek. Their other children are Ewan and Mirabel.
A clip of the Vances talking about how they had different religious beliefs was also widely shared on social media in India, a Hindu-majority country.
“I did grow up in a religious household. My parents are Hindu, that was one of the things that made them good parents, made them good people,” Mrs Vance told the Fox & Friends show on Fox News in June.
Her husband said that her religious grounding had helped him in his own religious journey as a Christian. “Usha was actually raised non-Christian... I remember when I started to re-engage with my own faith, Usha was very supportive,” he said.
While not much has been written about her parents, a mechanical engineer and a biologist, and their immigrant roots, Mrs Vance was brought up in an upwardly mobile suburb of San Diego, said the 2022 New York Times profile.
“The family was part of a small, close-knit community of Indian-American academics and professionals, and their children,” the NYT said.
While Mrs Vance’s political views and how they reconcile with her husband’s political position are matters of debate in the US, over in India, the focus remained for now on her Indian roots. The NYT noted she was a registered Democrat in 2014.
Indians have had a lot to be proud about when it comes to Indian-origin politicians making it big overseas, said Mr Robinder Sachdeva, co-founder of the US India Political Action Committee.
Most recently, a frenzy arose over Mr Rishi Sunak, who is of Indian descent, when he became the British prime minister in 2022. He lost in elections earlier in July.
US Vice-President Kamala Harris is also being closely watched in India to see if she might replace US President Joe Biden as the candidate in the upcoming election against Trump. Ms Harris, 59, was born to an Indian mother and a Jamaican father, both of whom migrated to the US to study.
“The excitement in India is part national pride and part of it is the sense of succeeding in America,” said Mr Sachdeva.
“And given that the Democratic ticket has Harris and now the Trump ticket can also be said to have an Indian connection, that means that irrespective of who wins, the vice-president house will have a person of Indian origin.”
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