‘The Power Of The Dog’ Director Jane Campion Calls Sam Elliott A B*tch: “He’s Not A Cowboy, He’s An Actor”

Sam Elliott
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Sam Elliott made headlines last week when he tore into leading Oscar nominee, The Power Of The Dog, calling the movie a “piece of shit.”

And when I say tore into, I mean… he ripped it to pieces.

Based on Thomas Savage’s 1967 novel of the same name, and directed by Jane Campion, The Power Of The Dog is billed as a western psychological drama starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons, and Kodi Smit-McPhee.

The 1883 star recently sat down with Marc Maron for an episode of his WTF Podcast, and when they got to talking about the Academy Awards movies, Sam wasted no time telling Marc how much he hated it.

“You wanna talk about that piece of shit? Fuck no… I didn’t like it and I’ll tell ya why.

I didn’t like it anyway, but I looked at it when I was down there in Texas doing 1883, and what really brought it home was there was a fuckin’ full page out in the LA Times and there was a clip and it talked about the evisceration of the American myth.

And I thought, ‘what the fuck… what the fuck? This is a guy that’s done Westerns forever.’ The evisceration of the American West, I mean they made it look like… what are those dancers that wear bowties and not much else?”

To which, Marc said, “Oh, the Chippendales?”

“Yeah, that’s what all these fucking cowboys in that movie looked like. They’re all running around in chaps and no shirts, there’s all these allusions of homosexuality throughout the fucking movie.”

But more than the demeanor of the cowboys, Elliott even had a problem with the set… which was supposed to be Montana. But, it looked nothing like Montana…

“What the fuck does this woman, she’s a brilliant director by the way, I love her work, from New Zealand know about the American West? And why the fuck did she shoot this movie in New Zealand and call it Montana?

So that fucking rubbed me the wrong way pal and the myth is that they were these macho men out there with the cattle. I just come from Texas where I was hanging out with families, not men, but families.

Big, long, extended, multiple generations families that made their living, and their lives, all about being cowboys. So when I saw that I said ‘what the fuck?’”

The media was quick to call out Elliott as homophobic and sexist for his comments, and Twitter piled on as well, but I suppose a veteran Western actor like Elliott is entitled to his opinion.

Personally, I thought the movie was incredibly slow, and as I mentioned before, the setting definitely didn’t look like the American West at all, but to me it wasn’t a terrible movie.

I don’t know if it should have 12 Oscar nominations, but hey, I’m not a movie critic…

For the most part however, the cast has remined pretty civil in their reactions.

Lead actor Benedict Cumberbatch called Sam’s comments “odd,” Jesse Plemons said he just laughed at it, and Kodi Smit-McPhee also didn’t have to much too say about it.

However, director Jane Campion was a little more direct.

In an interview with Vanity Fair, she called Elliott a little bitch:

“I’m sorry, he was being a little bit of a B-I-T-C-H. He’s not a cowboy; he’s an actor. The West is a mythic space and there’s a lot of room on the range. I think it’s a little bit sexist.

When you think about the number of amazing Westerns made in Spain by Sergio Leone, I consider myself a creator. I think he thinks of me as a woman or something lesser first, and I don’t appreciate that.”

Based on Thomas Savage’s 1967 novel of the same name, and directed by Jane Campion, The Power Of The Dog is billed as a western psychological drama starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons, and Kodi Smit-McPhee.

However, despite Sam Elliott’s scathing review of the film, it’s still an Oscar darling leading the charge with 12 nominations this year.

The 94th Academy Awards are set for Sunday, March 27th.

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