Said Jane Campion, quoted in "Jane Campion Says Sam Elliott is ‘Being a B-I-T-C-H’ With Slam Against ‘The Power of the Dog’" (Variety).
Here's my post from 10 days ago about what Sam Elliott said: "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?"
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48 comments:
Why isn't Campion guilty of cultural appropriation?
In America today, you can't play a role unless you are that. EX: the uproar over Gal Gadot playing Cleopatra because she isn't Egyptian.
IMO Sam Elliot, Robert Duvall and Kevin Costner are true to character. The rest are yuppie actors from West Hollywood and NYC. Those other actors are like the Village People playing "what if".
Dick Cavett, on finding John Wayne backstage reading and commenting on poetry, said you have to remember that he's an actor, not a cowboy.
Calling someone a bitch seems sexist to me.
She's absolutely right -- there is plenty of room on the range, where the deer and the antelope play -- enough space for anyone who wants to ride to the ridge where the west commences. We should be happy that foreigners see something there too! Even though Western stars can break your heart.
She's right about the geography thing. And the gay theme comes from the novel on which the film is based. But he's entitled to his opinion without being called the b word and her raising the sexism trope.
I listened to the Eliot interview on WTF and greatly enjoyed it. Eliot really does have a speaking voice that is a pleasure to listen to.
They were just shooting the shit, straight from the hip, and Eliot expressed his irritation with the film. I think it was the overuse of guys in chaps that bugged him the most. He also had a lot of praise for the Jane Campion as a director, he just didn't like this film.
Only one way to settle this... gun fight!
I'll ride with Sam.
Cultural Appropriation.
Sam Elliot's mustache has been in more Westerns than anyone in New Zealand. Sam himself, even more. He understands the mythic space of Westerns, and rejects the overlay of homosexual romance into Westerns. So what does the diva do? She starts calling him names and tosses out the sexism card, without realizing that by doing so she lost the argument.
Those old ways of shutting down criticism don't work any more.
Bravo! How do you say “they are both right” in New Zealandish?
As an aside, very sad to see that the people in NZ have become what they raise — sheep. Ditto (or dingo) for the Aussies and Canucks, two other English speaking peoples I formerly respected but will never view the same way after the way they accepted the fascism for you own good. Only saving grace are the Alberta truckers and those who supported them. Not that they care, but I will actively avoid travel to any of these countries. I’ve been to Canada dozens of times, never the other two, but won’t go back for a long while or ever.
So a NZ movie director critiques the American west. We can critique the current NZ culture and, like Director Jane, draw our own conclusions.
Campion can have any opinion she wants, but she's not entitled to credibility.
We donated my great-grandfather's diaries to the Society of California Pioneers years ago. He was a riverboat pilot between St. Louis and New Orleans (rumored to have been a Twain character) who decided in 1848 to try life in California. He walked beside wagons for 2000 miles over nine months, crossed rivers, fought raiders, thieves and bandits of all stripes, killed and buried, starved, saved men, women and children and a few months after arriving in San Francisco met and married a woman who had sailed from London via Australia, and borne a child enroute. They had nine more children. He became a successful rancher and judge and served until he was 94. Our family watches 1883, not because it's perfect, but because it reminds us the West was our great-grandfather's diaries and nothing like people like Campion think it was.
Awwww.... Her fewings are hurt. She even uses that feminist talk to express herself. Sam Elliot has no need for her opinion.
In the midst of the f-bombs and the open hostility and contempt, I love how Eliott inserted parenthetically, "she’s a brilliant director by the way, I love her work, previous work." Passive-aggressive mockery is a beautiful thing to behold. I may be wrong, but I doubt he values a single thing she has ever done. But she's a woman, so give her a participation trophy, and pay homage to her genius.
They both can be right.
So Jane says that Elliot is not an expert on the American West from the 1800’s because he’s an American actor but she is because she is a New Zealand director? And she is taking it as sexist just because she is a woman who got called out by a male actor. Elliot has played many old West characters in his career and probably has done a lot of research on the subject of cowboys. Yeah, I think he knows more about the old West than Campion. I am presuming Campion did this movie as a way to inject homosexuality into cowboy culture just because she can and to downplay the mythos Americans have of that period. I took Elliot’s criticism of Campion on technical details in the movie such as cowboys removing their chaps before going to bed. It irritates me when I watch a period movie and the movie’s producers, writers, and director get obvious historical details wrong. Those little details are what should give the movie an air of authenticity, even if it is fictional.
Is this a cat fight?
It was a mistake for her to argue that she was a girl damaged by a sexist homophobe. She should have gone after him as an equal and defended her choices.
The West is a mythic space and there’s a lot of room on the range.
Sure, there's a lot of room to lie, or to take 1 in a million stories and pretend they're normal
He’s not a cowboy; he’s an actor
That's true. now, what are Jane's qualifications that make her a better voice?
"I’m sorry, he was being a little bit of a B-I-T-C-H. 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."
Some people can't take criticism. She is right in that he isn't a cowboy but then again she isn't a cowgirl. She wants to create her myths which is fine but she should get off her high horse.
OK, who had "sexist" in the pool?
Jane Campion assumes Sam, because he has acted in so many Westerns, will live by the “Code of the West” and accord her female privilege. That is, he won’t punch her hard in the mouth, as she richly deserves. If he really was “a little bit of a B-I-T-C-H” she’d be at much greater risk of physical retaliation, and I am quite certain she knows it, and that Althouse knows it, too.
Sam Elliot's first big movie was "Lifeguard" and he was offered a series of roles as a sex symbol. He turned them down to play the cowboy roles he liked.
One good way to destroy a nation and people is to destroy their myths. I think that is called cultural genocide when it is done to one of the Left's pet cultures; when it happens to Americans or others like them it is called "those bitches had it coming".
I Love when commenters throw in a piece of family history! Thanks Milo.
She did pull the played-out wrinkled woman card--SEXIST! Defend yourself with your intelligence or don't defend at all.
These days I am more surprised by the lack of a gay character (or a gay theme) in a new movie or TV show than I am at its inclusion.
She should know…
hollywood catfight
yawn
The West is a mythic space, but there's hardly any room on the range for a western that wants to get academy award nominations. If Elliot is a B-I-T-C-H then Campion is a W-H-O-R-E for making a predictable version of that mythic space that just happens to fit the very narrow range of Oscar love.
It's bottom of the triangle stuffand Elliot is actually being the more artistically astute here in calling her out, with his accompanying praise of her talent making it clear he thinks better of her than this work indicates to him.
"The West is a mythic space." So, it's not an historic place? Maybe she meant film is a mythic medium.
And I suppose this B-I-T-C-H was being sexist by noticing that she is a womyn. LOL.
"but what the fuck does this woman from down there, New Zealand, know about the American west?"
"Yojimbo" One of the best westerns ever made.
Jane, what a bore you are dahling
Two things most critics miss.
In Texas culture, one simply does not insult a Lady in public as was done in this film. Indeed, when I watched the film, I assumed it was about Australia for that reason.
Second, no one noticed that the hatred of women was from repressed sexuality of the closeted gay man: not from hypermasculinity, which the critics claimed was the cause.
The hatred of women by some gay men is sort of a taboo subject nowadays...
Elliot campaigned for Biden and praised that gay sheep herder movie. So either he is letting his real opinion out NOW after a lifetime of towing the Left’s line for employment or he just thinks her movie sux and New Zealanders don’t necessarily know anything about the American West and should be more circumspect in appropriating OUR cultural heritage to tell their stupid story. Why not have it set in NZ? There are ranches there, why not set it there?
the reviews all attributed the abuse/hatred of women to hypermasculinity, but it was a more common reason: The hatred of women by a closeted gay man.
Isn't that a taboo subject in today's world?
But Eliott is right about getting the culture of West Texas wrong: No cowboy would insult a Lady in public like that. Traditional masculine men protect women, and would have defended her.
Indeed, that is why I assumed the film was about Australia.
The west is a mythic place with a lot of space and room for everybody, but not so much Hollywood. Sam Elliot don't let the sun set on you in Hollywood when Jane Campion's in town. She claims his remarks are sexist and, although she doesn't quite say it, homophobic, and he didn't smile when he said them. Jane Campion knows how to deal with ornery critters. No role in her next movie.....Speaking of mythic places and homosexuals, when is Hollywood going to out Achilles?
'He’s not a cowboy; he’s an actor'
Maybe he's both.
Elliott was born in Sacramento, CA in 1944.
Sacramento was definitely what one would call a cow town back then.
If he wasn't an actual cowboy, I'm sure he was more than familiar with the lifestyle.
So, the Power of the Dog is really a mythic fantasy akin to The Hobbit?
Dick Cavett, on finding John Wayne backstage reading and commenting on poetry, said you have to remember that he's an actor, not a cowboy.
Cowboys enjoy poetry too, probably more than most do. Solitude is the stockman's lot.
Quaestor, as to cowboys and poets, here's a wonderful example: www.baxter-black.merchmadeeasy.com
Only one way to settle this... gun fight!
They're not doing that anymore ... Alec Baldwin and all that ...
It's hard to have a definite opinion about this without seeing the movie. Does it work or is the gay theme obtrusive and overworked? The "he said, she said" is tedious. Everybody has an opinion. People say stupid things and react to things said in stupid ways, and remarks that once might have caused a stir are now everyday commonplaces.
Porter Rockwell was born in Massachusetts, and he’s about as authentic a Westerner as there was.
"Little bitch"? That sounds like she's channeling Cumberbatch's macho misogynistic character. And to be fair to Cumberbatch and his character, if I had to spend all day with Jesse Plemmons and Kirsten Dunst I would probably give them a hard time too, and if I'd gone to a top British public school I would be all the more insufferable.
“He’s not a cowboy; he’s an actor”
True. But there aren’t enough real cowboys left to make that many movies with them. Elliott is far closer to those roots than most others in Hollywood. His father did predator (mostly coyote) control in the west for the federal government for ranchers. And given the time frame, that probably meant that much of his work was done on horseback. He comes from a very large west Texas farm and ranch family, and has an Elliott ancestor who was a surgeon with Sam Houston at the Battle of San Jacinto, and was later appointed by Houston as the TX state surgeon. His voice is far more authentic here than most anyone else in that community.
My problem, and I expect his, with openly gay cowboys is that it isn’t the way things ever were in the west. It’s a very live and let live part of the country. We say of Wyoming - it’s where the men are men, and the sheep are nervous. But it’s also religiously fairly conservative. Flaming gays just draw too much attention to their sexual proclivities. That means that gays tend to either move to a big city, or don’t draw attention to their sexual identity. They hunt, fish, own guns, drive snowmobiles, etc, just like everyone else. I might not know who was gay in our town in NW MT if my partner didn’t have such good gaydar, from her various careers in creative industries (dance, modeling, floral and interior design).
Campion is treated like a goddess in New Zealand on account of her little gold statue that she won nearly thirty years ago. She is not used to being told that she is anything less than amazing. It's clearly a shock to her to be criticized. But the Piano, which is technically a Western set in New Zealand, is not that great a movie either. If I had to pick who knew more about Westerns, it wouldn't be Dame Jane.
Well looky here. The con-tree-tomp between the little bimbo from the Antipodes and the hirsute hangdog himbo from Hollywood shore has sparked a lot of peppery language!
It hain't penetrated the think-tanks of some regulars here that moving-pitcher shows are no way to learn about the realities of the American West of yore. The lady wants to show cowboys riding high on the saddle and Sam has forgot to "Take the high ground."
I'ma pop some Injun corn.
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