Sam Elliott Calls Netflix’s Oscar Darling ‘The Power of the Dog’ a ‘Piece of S**t’

Actor Sam Elliot is no fan of Netflix’s Oscar-nominated The Power of the Dog and isn’t afraid to say it, calling the movie a “piece of shit” while blasting the gay subtext and director Jane Campion’s decision to shoot the Montana-set western in New Zealand.

Elliot — who has starred in numerous westerns, including the Yellowstone prequel series 1883 on Paramount+ — blasted The Power of the Dog in an interview on Marc Maron’s “WTF Podcast.”

“You want to talk about that piece of shit?” Elliott said

“You didn’t like that one?” Maron replied.

‘“Fuck no. I’ll tell you why I didn’t like it anyway,” Elliott said. The actor said he was appalled by a recent ad for the movie describing it as an “evisceration of the American myth” — presumably a reference to the movie’s critique of frontier masculinity.

“And I thought, what the fuck?” Elliot said.

Watch below: 

He also said the movie’s male characters reminded him of The Chippendales 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.”

Listen below (Warning: Graphic language):

 

Elliott claimed Jane Campion wasn’t the right director for a western.

“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?” he 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.’ So that fucking rubbed me the wrong way, pal,” Elliott said.

He added: “The myth is that they were these macho men out there with the cattle. I just come from fucking Texas where I was hanging out with families, not men, but families, big, long, extended, multiple-generation families… and their lives were all about being cowboys.”

Sam Elliott also expressed displeasure with the movie’s protagonist, played by Benedict Cumberbatch.

“Cumberbatch never got out his fucking chaps,” he said. “He’d walk into the fucking house, storm up the fucking stairs, go lay on his bed in his chaps, and play his banjo. What the fuck? What the fuck? Where’s the western in this western?”

“I took it fucking persona, pal,” he said.

Elliot said that his favorite western movie is John Ford’s The Searchers.

The Power of the Dog received 12 Oscar nominations, including nods for best picture and director. The movie stars Cumberbatch and Jesse Plemons as rancher brothers whose lives are shaken up when they meet a young widow (Kirsten Dunst) and her son (Kodi Smit-McPhee).

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