‘Power of the Dog’ Director Jane Campion Reacts To Sam Elliott’s Potshots: “He Was Being a B-I-T-C-H”

On the red carpet for Saturday night’s DGA Awards, The Power of the Dog director Jane Campion didn’t hold back when asked for her response to some recent bitter and homophobic remarks made by veteran actor Sam Elliott about her Netflix original Oscar contender.

“I’m sorry, he was being a little bit of a B-I-T-C-H. He’s not a cowboy; he’s an actor,” Campion told Variety before the ceremony. “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 is best known for his work in Westerns like Yellowstone 1883, criticized aspects of Campion’s approach to the hit Western thriller while appearing as a guest on on Marc Maron’s “WTF” podcast. Elliott brazenly referred to the Netflix drama “a piece of shit” and pondered “where’s the Western in this Western?” He also wasn’t too thrilled with how the film’s star Benedict Cumberbatch approached his role either.

“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,” Elliott said. “It’s like, what the fuck?”

Campion told Variety that she has a wide-ranging approach to the Western genre, and that she feels Elliott’s crude comments were influenced by the fact that she is a female artist.

“When you think about the number of amazing Westerns made in Spain by (director) Sergio Leone,” she said. “I consider myself a creator. I think he thinks of me as a woman or something lesser first, and I don’t appreciate that.”

Michael is a music and television junkie keen on most things that are not a complete and total bore. You can follow him on Twitter — @Tweetskoor