Jane Campion directed the Oscar-nominated film Power of the Dog. Photo / Getty Images
Actor Sam Elliott is known as a veteran of Western films - and he had something to say about Kiwi director Jane Campion's take on the genre set in Aotearoa.
Campion's The Power of the Dog is Oscar-nominated and has already won three Golden Globes, but Elliott wasn't impressed with the film, reports IndieWire.
Appearing on Marc Maron's WTF Podcast, the actor was asked what he thought of the movie - and he didn't mince words in his response.
"You want to talk about that piece of s***?" he replied.
"I'll tell you why I didn't like it anyway. I looked at when I was down there in Texas doing '1883' and what really brought it home to me the other day when I said, 'Do you want to f***ing talk about it?' There was a f***ing full-page ad out in the LA Times and there was a review, not a review, but a clip, and it 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? They made it look like those dancers, those guys in New York who wear bow ties and not much else.
"That's what all these f***ing cowboys in that movie look like," Elliott said. "They're all running around in chaps and no shirts. There's all these allusions to homosexuality throughout the f***ing movie."
Host Maron responded, "I think that's what the movie's about." In the film, it is heavily implied that rancher Phil Burbank, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, is a repressed gay man.
Elliott went on to say that New Zealander Campion was out of her depth in tackling the western genre.
"She's a brilliant director by the way, 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.' That f***ing rubbed me the wrong way, pal," Elliott said.
"The myth is that they were these macho men out there with the cattle. I just come from f***ing Texas where I was hanging out with families, not men, families, big, long, extended, multiple-generation families."
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