Now that he's running for Vice President on the Republican ticket with Donald Trump, JD Vance's life is for all to see. He told his story in his 2018 book Hillbilly Elegy, which was adapted for the screen by Ron Howard in 2020 (read our review here). The movie received poor reviews and was called "poverty porn," even though Glenn Close received Academy and Golden Globe nominations (as well as an American Raspberry, for worst performance).
Vance repeated a story he likes to tell during his accepetance speech on July 17 at the Republican National Convention. It's about his deceased maternal groundmother Bonne, known as Mamaw, whom he grew up with in MIddletown, Ohio in the area called Appalachia. She was mean to him as was his drug-addicted mother Beverly (played by Amy Adams), but those wounds inflicted by Mamaw have long been forgetten. That same story's told in the movie. It goes like this:
Despite the closing factories and the growing addiction in towns like mine, in my life, I had a guardian angel by my side. She was an old woman who could barely walk but she was tough as nails. I called her “Mamaw,” the name we hillbillies gave to our grandmothers.
Mamaw raised me as her own, as my mother struggled with addiction. Mamaw was in so many ways a woman of contradictions. She loved the Lord, ladies and gentleman. She was a woman of very deep Christian faith. But she also loved the F word. I’m not kidding. She could make a sailor blush.
Now, she once told me, when she found out that I was spending too much time with a local kid who was known for dealing drugs, that if I ever hung out with that kid again, she would run him over with her car. That’s true. And she said, “JD, no one will ever find out about it.”
Now, thanks to that Mamaw, things worked out for me.
That may play well in a movie, but on stage in Milwaukee Vance's folksy story fell flat. The jovial crowd could probably care less that Vance's grandmamaw had a violent temper and said she'd harm his friends with her vehicle, and Vance had no qualms about retelling it.
In the film, Vance, unhappy at home, starts hanging out with a bunch of juvenile delinquents. It begins when they move into a house with Beverly's new boyfriend. HIs son is growing pot plants in the basement and immediately asks JD if he "wants to get high." At first JD demurs, calling it a "gateway drug." But then he joins the group. One time they go on a joyride, break into a warehouse, trash stuff and then get into a car accident. JD faces no real consequences.
Vance on Mamaw: "She once told me, when she found out that I was spending too much time with a local kid who was known for dealing drugs, that if I ever hung out with that kid again, she would run him over with her car."
When Mamaw catches him and a friend hitting a bong in his bedroom, she scowls: "I don't give a rat's fart what you're smoking, kid. If you think you're hiding it, you'r as dumb as a bag of hair." Lovely dialog.
While Vance admitted to NPR in 2016 he "started to experiment myself" with drugs (presumably marijuana and alcohol) when he was 13 and 14 years old, Marijuana Moment reports Vance has not "discussed any personal experience with marijuana or other substances."
Vance praised Beverly's 10 years of sobriety at the convention. She started popping pills when she as a nurse at a hospital. The opioids' habit followed, taking her to the depths of chemical dependence. In one scene in the movie, Bevelry locks herself in a motel batthroom. JD kicks open the door and pull a needle out of her calf. Beverly hit and abused JD. Mamaw did the same to her two children, JD's older sister Lindsay tells him at one point to try to explain their mother's awful behavior.
Now, Beverly works at a substance abuse recovery faciltity in Southern Ohio. The worst of her problems appear to be behind her.
Vance's ability to navigate these complicated issues at a young age is now on the national stage.
"I was at ground floor of the opioid epidemic," he has said. "I saw it happening with my mom before it had really reached crisis proportions. But in a lot of ways, she was just responding to the things that cause people to go and search for drugs in the first place."
Let's hope Vance will be equally sensitive to others dealing with similar issues rather than lock them up and throw away the keys.
