Jane Campion certainly got the last word after Sam Elliott criticized her new film The Power of the Dog. The director was asked about Elliott’s comments on the red carpet of this year’s Director’s Guild of America Awards on Saturday night. “I think Sam — look, what can I say? — I’m sorry, he was being a little bit of a b-i-t-c-h,” she said, spelling out the word. “And I’m sorry to say it, but he’s not a cowboy, he’s an actor. And the West is a mythic space, and there’s a lot of room on the range.”
After a good laugh, Campion continued, saying, “And, you know, I think it is a little bit sexist. Because if you think about the number of amazing Westerns that were made in Spain by Sergio Leone…I mean, I consider myself a creator. And I think he sees me as a woman or something less at first and, you know, I don’t appreciate that.”
The Kiwi director’s proverbial dropping of the mic comes after the A Star is Born actor slammed her latest, Oscar-nominated movie for its “allusions to homosexuality,” likening its characters to Chippendale’s dancers because “they’re all running around in chaps and no shirt.”
Elliott also took issue with Campion’s directorial eye as a New Zealander, saying, “What the fuck does this woman — she’s a brilliant director, by the way, I love her work, her previous work — but what the fuck does this woman from down there, New Zealand, know about the American West? 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?'”
