One last thing: if you're from here, it's pronounced "Apple AT-cha," not "Apple-AY-sha." It's a dead giveaway, Mr. Vance. You can't fool us. (13/13)

We have to break the idea that Appalachians are only worth a shit if they leave home and put on a suit. Every region deserves to exist. To count. To matter. Especially one as beautiful, old, and wild as Appalachia, and in particular my former home, the breathtaking Shenandoah Valley. (12/13)

If you lived in a place that had been systematically stripped of so many of its precious things, and then had to listen to latte-sipping city kids make cousin-fucking jokes about you, you wouldn’t take it well either. In fact, you might burn it down just to wipe the smirk off their faces. (11/13)

Our political class loves to drone on about how “divided” America is and how we all need “unity,” while it remains socially acceptable on both sides of the aisle to mock, dehumanize, and dismiss Appalachian people and those like them across the nation. (10/13)

Kingsolver, in contrast, lives on a farm in Washington County, Virginia, and when she talks about Devil’s Bathtub or high school football or buying rifles at Wal-Mart, you can tell she actually knows the place. And this is exactly why books like Demon Copperhead matter. (9/13)

J.D. Vance is now just another rich guy who uses his power to shut down Disneyland or raise river levels so he can kayak more easily . . . the exact type of person whose boot crushed Vance's own neck not so long ago. (8/13)

Kingsolver gets all of this because she fucking lives in Appalachia. Vance, meanwhile, skipped town at the earliest opportunity and reinvented himself as a cultural elite, which is why even conservative Appalachians have turned on him. (7/13)

Meanwhile, the they've been abandoned by an economy that used to depend on building and growing things, but has since mutated into a financial shell game where the only winners are stockbrokers and con artists. This reality, not laziness, is what fuels Appalachia’s distrust of institutions. (6/13)

Kingsolver also understands the cultural disconnect at play. Appalachians—historically farmers and miners—don’t speak the language of the city-based elites who dominate the cultural conversation on both the left and the right. That gap makes them an easy target for ridicule. (5/13)

Corporations strip the land of resources, flood communities with addictive drugs, and then walk away unchallenged. Once everything has been taken, welfare becomes the only option left, and people are demonized for using it. (4/13)

Vance’s version of Appalachia is full of intentional victims held back by laziness and government dependency. Kingsolver’s Appalachia looks starkly different: a place populated by fiercely independent people whose connection to their land and willingness to work make them easy to exploit. (3/13)

As a former Appalachian myself (who am I kidding, there's no such thing as a "former" Appalachian, only a "currently practicing" or "lapsed" one), it’s hard not to read "Demon Copperhead" as a direct rebuttal to J.D. Vance’s supposedly autobiographical "Hillbilly Elegy." (2/13)

But today, for the first time, I watched the cut and felt the fear loosen its grip. The film exists. It’s real. And due to the loyalty, toughness, and backbreaking work of my friends, it's mine.

And that alone feels like its own kind of victory.

If you're unlucky, you produce something stupid and broken, but it's the exact same amount of work either way. It’s also a terrifying thing to summon a small army of professionals and pour tens of thousands of dollars of other people’s money into a project that is basically me expressing myself.

Directing a movie, even a short one, is like painting a picture—if the canvas was size of a parking lot and the paintbrush required fifty people to lift. It is nothing short of war: an onslaught of logistics, financial stress, and exhaustion that might, if you’re lucky, turn out magical in the end.

That's not even mentioning that we did this right when our country's economy took a nose dive and paying production work skidded to a halt. I haven't gotten a full night's sleep in 5 months. I don't think I will any time soon.

Why am I saying all this? Because I’m a mess right now. This project has felt like cutting myself open and bleeding onto the screen, day after day. It's dredged up grief and trauma I didn't even know I had, as well as straining our production capabilities and our finances to the limit.

I’m usually executing someone else’s vision, and I pride myself on getting the shots I need, running a tight set, and finishing things on time and within budget. It's been 17 years since I've made something that was truly mine, and this one isn't just mine, it's as personal as it gets.

Also, Megyn Kelly is an attorney. You'd think she would know that "barely legal" means "a person who has recently become a legal adult," not "a minor who could pass as an adult." What the actual fuck?