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Jane Campion had a few choice letters in response to Sam Elliott’s criticism of her film “The Power of the Dog” during the DGA Awards Saturday night.
The director, who was asked for her response about the actor’s shocking comments, refused to hold back.
“I’m sorry, he was being a little bit of a B-I-T-C-H,” the 67-year-old told Variety before the ceremony. “He’s not a cowboy; he’s an actor. The West is a mythic space and there’s a lot of room on the range. I think it’s a little bit sexist.”
Elliott, who has made his mark in Westerns, criticized Campion’s take on the genre during his recent appearance on Marc Maron’s “WTF” podcast. Campion noted that she viewed the 77-year-old’s crude criticism as a slight against her as a female filmmaker.
Jan Campion held nothing back when she was asked to respond to Sam Elliott’s criticism about her film, ‘The Power of the Dog’.
(Getty Images)
“When you think about the number of amazing Westerns made in Spain by (director) Sergio Leone,” she explained to the outlet. “I consider myself a creator. I think he thinks of me as a woman or something lesser first, and I don’t appreciate that.”
A spokesperson for Elliott didn’t immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
When Elliott was asked if he had seen the film, the star replied, “You want to talk about that piece of s—?”
Elliott referenced a full-page ad in the Los Angeles Times that featured a review blurb that described the film as “an evisceration of the American myth.” The film is also nominated for 12 Academy Awards.
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Actor Sam Elliott previously called ‘The Power of the Dog’ a ‘piece of s—.’
(Photo by Vincent Sandoval/Getty Images)
“I thought, what the f—?” Elliott said of the adaptation from the 1967 novel by Thomas Savage. “This is a guy who has done Westerns his entire life. ‘The evisceration of the American myth.’ It looked like — what are all those dancers, those guys in New York that wear bow ties and not much else? Remember them from back in the day?”
“Oh, the Chippendales?” Maron asked.
“That’s what all these f—ing cowboys in that movie looked like,” Elliott replied. “They’re all running around in chaps and no shirts. There’s all these allusions to homosexuality throughout the f—ing movie.”
Maron replied, “Yeah, I think that’s what the movie’s about,” speaking to the fact Benedict Cumberbatch’s character, Phil Burbank, is homosexual and has yet to come out of the closet.
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Sam Elliott, seen here with Jane Russell, has made his mark in Westerns during his decades-long career.
(Photo by NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images)
It was then that Elliott fixed his crosshair on Campion, who is nominated for three Academy Awards this year.
“[Jane Campion’s] a brilliant director, by the way,” Elliott insisted. “I love her work, previous work. But what the f— does this woman from down there, New Zealand, know about the American West? And why in the f— does 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.”
“I mean, Cumberbatch never got out of his f—ing chaps,” Elliot maintained of the film. “He had two pairs of chaps — a wooly pair and a leather pair. And every f—ing time he would 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. It’s like, what the f—?”
Meanwhile, Netflix appeared to have heard Elliott’s remarks, and a day after the interview was sent into the ether, the streaming giant tweeted a scene that showed Kodi Smit-McPhee’s character telling his mother, who is played by Kirsten Dunst, “He’s just a man. Only another man.”
(L-R) Jane Campion and Kirsten Dunst as they celebrate the 27th Annual Critics Choice Awards at Fairmont Century Plaza on March 13, 2022, in Los Angeles, California.
(Photo by Michael Kovac/Getty Images for Champagne Collet & OBC Wines)
Elliot doubled down on his sentiment by the end of the back and forth, adding, “Where’s the Western in this Western?… I took it f—ing personal, pal.”
Fox News’ Julius Young contributed to this report.
