‘They’re all running around in chaps and no shirts’: Veteran actor Sam Elliott slams Oscar-nominated Power of the Dog over its ‘allusions to homosexuality’ and failure to portray true American culture by making cowboys look like ‘Chippendales’
- Famed western actor Sam Elliott, 77, called Jan Campion’s Power of the Dog a ‘piece of s**t’ and said he took offense to its portrayal of the American West
- Elliott said Campion, of New Zealand, was out of her depth directing a western and said implications of gay cowboys hurt his image of the American myth
- Campion’s Power of the Dog, nominated for best picture, stars Benedict Cumberbatch as a repressed gay cowboy
- Elliott compared Cumberbatch and the men in the film to Chippendale dancers
Popular western actor Sam Elliott, who stars in the Yellowstone prequel 1883, went on a rant over New Zealand director Jane Campion’s Power of the Dog because of its implications to homosexual cowboys in the West.
Speaking with Marc Maron on the WTF podcast on Monday, Elliott, 77, referred to Champion’s Oscar-nominated film as a ‘piece of s**t’ and said he took personal offense to its portrayal of the American West.
‘What the f**k does this woman from down there, New Zealand, know about the American west,’ said Elliott, whose career began with minor roles in The Way West and Butch and Cassidy and the Sundance Kid before coming a stable in the genre with roles in The Quick and the Dead and Conagher.
‘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**cking rubbed me the wrong way, pal.’
Elliott said his main gripe stemmed from the implications that the character Phil Burbank, played by English actor Benedict Cumberbatch – of Sherlock and Marvel fame, was a closeted gay man and that the movie over-critiqued the masculine image of the west.
‘They’re all running around in chaps and no shirts,’ Elliot said of the movie’s characters, comparing them to Chippendales dancers. ‘There’s all these allusions to homosexuality throughout the f**king movie.’
The film centers around Burbank’s anger over his repressed feelings as he torments his new sister-in-law and her son at their Montana ranch until he learns to love his family. It was filmed in New Zealand because Campion wanted to direct it close to her native country.
The film is nominated for best picture and Campion, 67, is nominated for best director. She is the first woman to ever receive two nominations for best director after she was nominated for The Piano in 1993.
Veteran actor Sam Elliott (above), whose career is engrained in the western genre, called Jane Campion’s Power of the Dog a ‘piece of s**t’ and said he took personal offense to its critique of the West through the film’s main character, a repressed gay man
Elliot said Campion (pictured) does not know enough about the West and that the myth that cowboys were ‘macho men’ was real
The Oscar nominated film stars Benedict Cumberbatch, above, playing a closeted gay man. Elliot said Cumberbatch spent too much of the movie shirtless and wearing chaps
Elliott complained that the movie over-critiqued the ‘macho men’ of the west that he has portrayed for years. He compared the cowboys in the film (above) to Chippendale dancers
When Maron chimed in to tell Elliott that that was the point of the movie, the veteran actor said it was ruining his image of the cowboy as he was shooting 1883.
‘The myth is that they were these macho men out there with the cattle,’ Elliott said.
‘I just came from Texas where I was hanging out with families – not men – but families. Big, long, extended, multiple-generation families that made their livings… and their lives were all about being about cowboys.
‘And boy, when I f**king saw that [movie], I thought, ‘What the f**k,” he said.
‘Where’s the western in this western?’
Maron noted that Elliott’s critique carried weight because of his close connection to the western genre.
In recent years Elliott served as a guest star on the western TV show Justified, which earned him a Critics Choice Television award, and in 2016, he starred in the Netflix series, The Ranch.
He also received a Oscar nomination for best supporting actor in the Bradley Cooper-Lady Gaga musical drama, A Star is Born in 2018.
Campion (left, pictured with Cumberbatch) was nominated for best director
He added that he was also angry that Cumberbatch’s character never seemed to remove his chaps.
‘Every f**cking time he would walk in from somewhere – he never was on a horse – he’d walk in to the f**cking house, storm up the f**cking stairs, go lay in his bed, in his chaps and play the banjo.’
Ellliott, however, did call Campion a ‘brilliant’ filmmaker and said he just did not agree with her direction in The Power of the Dog.
Campion’s previous works include The Piano, which won her the Academy Award for Best Original Screen play in 1993.
She also created, wrote and directed the TV mini-series Top of the Lake, which won Elisabeth moss a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress.
She won the Silver Lion Award at the 78th annual Venice International Film Festival last year for directing The Power of the Dog.
Source: Read Full Article
