Sam Elliott Slams ‘Power of the Dog’ as ‘Piece of S—,’ Criticizes Its ‘Allusions of Homosexuality’

https://variety.com/2022/film/news/sam-elliot-slams-the-power-of-the-dog-homosexuality-1235192840/

[Actor] Sam Elliott railed against Jane Campion’s “The Power of the Dog” during his visit to Marc Maron’s “WTF” podcast (via Insider)... Elliott called the film a “piece of shit” and seemed bothered by how the film deconstructs classic Western archetypes such as cowboys. Elliott compared Campion’s cowboys to Chippendale dancers who “wear bow ties and not much else.” “That’s what all these fucking cowboys in that movie looked like,” Elliott said. “They’re running around in chaps and no shirts. There’s all these allusions of homosexuality throughout the movie.”

“Where’s the Western in this Western?” Elliott asked. “I mean, Cumberbatch never got out of his fucking chaps. He had two pairs of chaps — a woolly pair and a leather pair. And every fucking time he would walk in from somewhere — he never was on a horse, maybe once — he’d walk into the fucking house, storm up the fucking stairs, go lay in his bed in his chaps and play his banjo. It’s like, what the fuck?”

Elliott said of Campion, “What the fuck does this woman from down there know about the American West? Why the fuck did she shoot this movie in New Zealand and call it Montana? And say this is the way it was? That fucking rubbed me the wrong way.”

Elliott, who earned an Oscar nomination a few years back for his performance in “A Star Is Born,” added, “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 living and their lives were all about being cowboys. And boy, when I fucking saw that [movie], I thought, ‘What the fuck? Where are we in this world today?'”