Jane Campion Calls Out Sam Elliott for Trashing ‘The Power of the Dog’
“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 Power of the Dog has swept awards season, earning Golden Globes, BAFTA Awards, and 12 Academy Award nominations, with New Zealand director Jane Campion favored to win at the Oscars. But the film had a notable detractor in veteran actor Sam Elliott. During an appearance on the podcast WTF With Marc Maron, Elliott slammed the film as a “piece of shit” and lobbed homophobic and sexist insults at Campion and her movie.
Campion responded during an interview on the red carpet at the DGA Awards, where she said “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.” She added, “The West is a mythic space and there’s a lot of room on the range. I think it’s a little bit sexist.” Campion also responded to Elliott’s claims that as a New Zealander, she couldn’t relate to the American West. “When you think about the number of amazing Westerns made in Spain by (director) Sergio Leone,” she remarked, “I consider myself a creator. I think he thinks of me as a woman or something lesser first, and I don’t appreciate that.”
The film’s star Benedict Cumberbatch also had choice words for Elliot, saying “Beyond that reaction, that sort of denial that anybody could have any other than a heteronormative existence because of what they do for a living or where they’re born, there’s also a massive intolerance within the world at large towards homosexuality still and toward an acceptance of the other and anything kind of difference. No more so than in this prism of conformity of what’s expected of a man in the Western archetype mold of masculinity. To deconstruct that through Phil, it’s not a history lesson.”
Cumberbatch noted that the homophobia Elliott displayed was very much the attitude that kept his character Phil so repressed and so tortured. “This is a very specific case of repression, but also due to an intolerance for that true identity that Phil is that he can’t fully be. The more we look under the hood of toxic masculinity and try to discover the root causes of it, the bigger chances we have of dealing with it when it arises with our children.”
The film’s co-star Jesse Plemons (who earned an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor) laughed off Elliott’s insults, saying “I don’t know why I reacted this way, but — I’m not going to say it made me happy, but it made me laugh. I don’t know, … People can have their own opinions about something. I know there are different layers to that … but not everyone has to like it.”
After responding, Campion went on to win the DGA award for The Power of the Dog. I’ll admit I did not have “Jane Campion calls Sam Elliott a bitch” on my 2022 bingo card, but I’m honestly happy to see it.
(image: screencap/Film at Lincoln Center)
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