Renowned actor Sam Elliott– recognized for his deep, down-home voice, signature mustache, as well as new starring role in “1883”– let loose with pointed, profane objections to the Oscar-nominated film “The Power of the Dog” in an interview on Marc Maron’s “WTF” podcast.
What Did Sam Elliott Say?
Consequence Film characterized supervisor Jane Campion’s initiative as a “deconstructed Western” that “stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Phil Burbank, a self-styled macho man whose insistence on presenting himself in the most manly way possible hides deep insecurities about his sexual identity.”
After Maron asked Elliott his viewpoint of “The Power of the Dog,” he responded, “You wanna talk about that piece of s**t?”
The 77-year-old raised a Los Angeles Times ad for the motion picture including a blurb that ““talked about ‘the evisceration of the American myth.’ And I thought, What the f***? What the f***? This is the guy that’s done Westerns forever. The evisceration of the American West.”
Elliott after that said the “f *** ing cowboys” in movie looked like Chippendales dancers: “They’re all running around in chaps and no shirts. There’s all these allusions of homosexuality throughout the f***ing movie.”
He then turned his interest to Campion, who’s from New Zealand: “What the f*** does this woman from — she’s a brilliant director, by the way, I love her work, her previous work — but what the f*** does this woman from down there know about the American West? And why in the f*** did she shoot this movie in New Zealand and call it Montana — and say this is the way it was? So that f***ing rubbed me the wrong way, pal.”
Elliott included, “I mean, Cumberbatch never got out of his f***ing chaps. He had two pairs of chaps, a woolly pair and a leather pair. And every f***ing time he’d walk in from somewhere … he never was on a horse, maybe once, he’d walk into the f***ing house, storm up the f***ing stairs, go lay in his bed in his chaps, and play his banjo. And It’s like, what the f***? What the f***, you know?”
He also wondered, “Where’s the Western in this Western?”
How did people react?
As you may picture, leftists really did not appreciate Elliott’s tirade, as well as claimed so on Twitter:
- U.S.A. Today columnist Michael J. Stern opined, “Sam Elliott can stuff his homophobia in his moustache and hopefully never work again in Hollywood.”
- Tami Sawyer, a commissioner in Shelby County, Tennessee, responded, “I mean most movies about the American West don’t know anything about the American West, including the ones Sam Elliott has been a part of. They erase the presence of anyone who isn’t white or male when the West was mostly built by Indigenous, Black, Mexican & Chinese people.”
- The Huffington Post quipped, “No one tell Sam Elliott about ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ because he already has his chaps in a twist about Jane Campion’s ‘The Power of the Dog’ over its ‘allusions of homosexuality,’ among other concerns.”
Actually, Elliott knew everything about “Brokeback Mountain” and stated in relation to its gay motifs at the time of its launch,”The whole homosexual thing was interesting — they stepped over the line — but [my wife] Katharine and I both looked at it and thought, ‘What’s the big deal?’”
Various other viewers weren’t letting Elliott off the hook, though:
- “Nah man, Sam Elliott being from Sacramento and cussing out Jane Campion for ‘not knowing about the Old West’ — incredible just incredible,” one user said.
- “More like Sham Elliot, amirite?” another user quipped.
- “Sam Elliott is a homophobic old man with old man smell emanating from every aspect of him, both physical and metaphorical,” another user opined.
- “This is some pretty gnarly homophobia,” another user said in regard to Elliott’s words. “I’ve seen the movie & if the characters honestly remind him of Chippendales (?), then that just sounds like he’s got some personal issues with gay people.”
Right, here’s one more viewpoint for you to consider:
Sam Elliott Slams ‘The Power Of The Dog’ As ‘Item Of S ** t’
