‘The Power of the Dog’ Was Inspired by the True Story of a Gay Man In the 1920s

Warning: This article contains The Power of the Dog spoilers. Save this article until after you’ve watched the movie!
Jane Campion‘s The Power of the Dog, which began streaming on Netflix today, is a brutally tragic tale of life on a Montana ranch in the year 1925. It’s a story of a specific sort of love, hurt, and loneliness that will likely leave viewers wondering whether The Power of the Dog is a true story. In fact, while it’s hard to say how much is true and how much is fiction, The Power of the Dog was at least in part inspired by the life of Thomas Savage, who wrote the 1967 novel of the same name.
The film stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Jesse Plemons as wealthy ranch owners, Phil and George Burbank, in 1925. Though they are brothers, the two men couldn’t be more different. George Burbank (Plemons) is gentle and sweet, while Phil Burbank (Cumberbatch) is cold and cruel. When George falls in love and marries an inn owner named Rose Gordon (Kirsten Dunst), Phil tortures his new sister-in-law and her effeminate teenage son, Peter Gordon (Kodi Smit-McPhee). But, as those who have seen the film know, Peter eventually gets his revenge on Phil.
Director and screenwriter Jane Campion, who adapted the book, visited the ranch where author Thomas Savage, a gay man, grew up in Montana and met with his living relatives. Read on to learn more about Savage’s life, and The Power of the Dog true story.

IS THE POWER OF THE DOG BASED ON A TRUE STORY?

Not entirely—but sort of. The 1967 novel, The Power of the Dog, was semi-autobiographical, based in part on Savage’s time growing up as a teenager on a ranch in Montana.
At a press conference for the film following a screening at New York Film Festival in October, Campion told audiences she felt Savage at least partially based the character of Peter, played in the film by Kodi Smit-McPhee, on himself. (Savage died in 2003, at the age of 88.)

Campion said. “He came to the ranch in a similar manner as Peter—his mother married a brother, at that time, Ed Brenner, who is actually the inspiration for Phil Burbank.” Campion and her team got to see photos of the real people who might have inspired the story, including someone that Savage’s living family believed was the inspiration for Bronco Henry, the mentor that Cumberbatch’s character, Phil Burbank, was in love with.
Campion expanded on the similarities she found between Savage and Peter in an interview for RNZ, New Zealand’s public broadcast radio station. “I think [Savage] really did have an uncle who bullied him and who did die from anthrax poisoning, though apparently not from him but on a splinter from a pole.”

“Savage was a gay man who was at that time, not openly gay. He actually married,” Campion explained at the NYFF press conference. “I imagine he thought of himself as Peter in a way.”

That said, Campion added that the real Savage was not known to be quite as feminine and clueless about ranch life as Peter was. “He rode horses and the first thing he wrote about was breaking broncos. But he certainly did have a much more complex relationship to western literature than others.”

Watch The Power of the Dog on Netflix