Director Jane Campion has some choice words for Sam Elliott regarding his scathing critique of her film, Power of the Dog.
“I think it’s really unfortunate and sad for him because he’s really hit the trifecta of misogyny and xenophobia and homophobia. I don’t like that. I think he was being a little bit of a b-i-t-c-h. Plus he’s not a cowboy, he’s an actor,” she said of Elliott while speaking with Deadline on the DGA Awards red carpet on Saturday night.
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Elliott made headlines after his appearance on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast, where he ripped the film to shreds in his review complaining that the film didn’t accurately capture the American West with the director’s female and New Zealander perspective.
“What the f––k does this woman — she’s a brilliant director, by the way, I love her work, previous work — but what the f––k does this woman from down there, New Zealand, know about the American West?” he asked, per IndieWire. “And why in the f––k does she shoot this movie in New Zealand and call it Montana and say, ‘This is the way it was.’ That f––king rubbed me the wrong way, pal.”
He continued, adding that his Texas upbringing led him to find Campion’s interpretation of the male figures to be untrue. “The myth is that they were these macho men out there with the cattle. I just come from fucking Texas, where I was hanging out with families, not men, families, big, long, extended, multiple-generation families,” he said.
“They’re all running around in chaps and no shirts. There’s all these allusions to homosexuality throughout the f––king movie,” he continued.
Campion joked about how to handle the situation in traditional western fashion. “When [Elliott] gets out of hair and makeup, I’ll meet him down at the OK Corral on the set with Doctor Strange, and we will shoot it out,” she said, mentioning the Power of the Dog star Benedict Cumberbatch. She closed by saying, “Look, the West is a mythic space and there’s plenty of room on the range.”
