Jane Campion Responds to Sam Elliott's Harsh' Power of the Dog' Comments: 'It's a Little Bit Sexist'

Jane Campion has choice words about Sam Elliott's comments concerning her movie's validity in the Western genre.

The filmmaker's The Power of the Dog is the most Oscar-nominated movie of the year, with Campion earning recognition as both a writer and director. Based on the 1967 novel by Thomas Savage, the film stars Benedict Cumberbatch as a repressed rancher who takes his frustrations out on his brother and new sister-in-law, played by Jesse Plemons and Kirsten Dunst.

On a recent episode of the WTF with Marc Maron podcast, Elliott — who is known for his Western movie roles and his current role on Yellowstone spin-off series 1883 — bashed the movie, saying how the characters, in his view, are "all running around in chaps and no shirts. There's all these allusions to homosexuality throughout the f---ing movie." (The story grapples with sexuality in an era and place that emphasizes binary gender roles and expectations.)

Elliott, 77, added that it "rubbed [him] the wrong way" that it was filmed in New Zealand, saying about Campion specifically: "What the f--- does this woman — 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?"

At the DGA Awards Saturday, Campion, 67, responded to his comments, telling Variety, "What can I say? I'm sorry, he was being a little bit of a B-I-T-C-H. Sorry to say it, but he's not a cowboy; he's an actor. The West is a mythic space and there's a lot of room on the range."

"I think it's a little bit sexist," she continued, "because when you think about the number of amazing Westerns made in Spain by [director] Sergio Leone. I consider myself a creator, and I think he thinks of me as a woman or something lesser first, and I don't appreciate that."

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Several Power of the Dog cast members have also responded to Elliott's comments, including Plemons, who told The Hollywood Reporter over the weekend, "I don't know why I reacted this way, but— I'm not going to say it made me happy, but it made me laugh. I don't know. People can have their own opinions about something. I know there are different layers to that ... but not everyone has to like it."

During a BAFTA Film Sessions event earlier this month, Cumberbatch said, "I'm trying very hard not to say anything about a very odd reaction that happened the other day on a radio podcast over here."

"Without meaning to stir over the ashes of that ... someone really took offense to — I haven't heard it so it's unfair for me to comment in detail on it — to the West being portrayed in this way," he added. "Beyond that reaction, that sort of denial that anybody could have any other than a heteronormative existence because of what they do for a living or where they're born, there's also a massive intolerance within the world at large towards homosexuality still and toward an acceptance of the other and anything kind of difference ... it's not a history lesson."

Additionally, Kodi Smit-McPhee responded toVariety last week when asked about Elliott's remarks by saying he has "nothing" to say "because I'm a mature being and I am passionate about what I do, and I don't really give energy to anything outside of that. If anything, I just had a little bit of a laugh. Yeah, good luck to him."

The Power of the Dog is now streaming on Netflix.