Sam Elliott didn’t hold back his anger—or blatant homophobia—for Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog. In an interview for Marc Maron’s “WTF Podcast,” Elliott decried the Western as “a piece of shit” and compared the male characters to Chippendale dancers. “That’s what all these fucking 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 fucking movie.” Maron then pointed out that’s “what the movie’s about,” as the film’s main character, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, is a closeted gay man. Elliott, who’s starred in many a Hollywood western, also wasn’t shy about his feelings toward the film’s celebrated New Zealand director. “What the fuck does this woman—she’s a brilliant director by the way, I love her work, previous work—but what the fuck does this woman from down there, New Zealand, know about the American west?” Elliott said. “And why in the fuck does she shoot this movie in New Zealand and call it Montana and say, ‘This is the way it was.’ That fucking rubbed me the wrong way.”
