Acting Legend Sam Elliott is now going live, and some of the things that he has to say about wokeness will make you stop and think!
This is because Sam Elliott appeared on Marc Maron’s “WTF Podcast” and had a conversation where the gloves were totally off. The veteran actor shocked many when he slammed a foreign female director who has an excellent reputation within the industry. Elliott is still one of the western genre’s leading actors, and he had some harsh words for Director Jane Campion and her flick The Power of the Dog.
The New York Post described the Power of the Dog as a tale that starring Benedict Cumberbatch as a “closeted gay rancher in 1925 Montana who’s abusive toward his new sister-in-law and her son.” Elliott was asked for his thoughts about this provocative Netflix movie that won a Golden Globe for Best Picture, and he didn’t mince words. “You want to talk about that piece of sh-t?”
Eliott took some serious issue with the characters of the film, who he compared to Chippendale dancers who “who wear bowties and not much else.” He added, “That’s what all these f—king cowboys in that movie looked like. They’re all running around in chaps and no shirts. There are all these allusions to homosexuality throughout the f—king movie.”
“I think that’s what the movie’s about,” Maron said, playing Devil’s Advocate in regards to the film.
Although the movie is not quite as implicit as Brokeback Mountain, it is more than heavily iimplied that the fictional rancher character Phil Burbank, a role played by Benedict Cumberbatch, is a man who is intensely repressing his homosexuality. Elliott was unimpressed, and he wasn’t even finished yet. Jame Campion was the director of the movie, and she hails from New Zealand and Elliott felt that she was out of her element tackling this particular genre.
“I love her previous work, but what the f—k does this woman from down there, New Zealand, know about the American West?” Elliott fumed, and he was even more critical of Campion’s decision to shoot the Western in her home country. However, what had really “chapped” Elliott’s hide was the film’s overall depiction of the American West and cowboy culture. The We Were Soldiers star blasted Campion saying, “Why in the f—k does she shoot this movie in New Zealand and call it Montana and say, ‘This is the way it was.’ That rubbed me the wrong way, pal.”
Elliott wasn’t finished with his critique, reminding listeners that his western, 1883, was filmed in the Lone Star State. “The myth is that they were these macho men out there with the cattle. I just come from f—king 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,” Elliott declared in his attempt to bolster the case that Campion got the cowboy lifestyle completely wrong. “And, boy, when I saw that movie, I thought, ‘What the f—k? Where are we in this world today?’”
Elliott has always been known as a rugged actor who is best known for his roles as cowboys, and he slammed how the main character, a Montana rancher, was portrayed. “Where’s the Western in this Western?” Elliott asked. “I mean, Cumberbatch never got out of his f—king chaps. He had two pairs of chaps — a woolly pair and a leather pair. And every time he would walk in from somewhere — he never was on a horse, maybe once — he’d walk into the house, storm up the stairs, go lay in his bed in his chaps and play his banjo,” he said.
Many took issue with Elliott’s explicit-laced criticism, including Shelby County Commissioner Tami Sawyer. “I mean most movies about the American West don’t know anything about the American West including the ones Sam Elliott has been a part of. They erase the presence of anyone who isn’t white or male when the west was mostly built by Indigenous, Black, Mexican & Chinese people,” she posted on Twitter.
Elliott’s comments didn’t sit well with others on social media. One person tweeted, “Holy s— do I like Sam Elliott a lot less now. This is some barely even trying to hide it homophobic, misogynistic, xenophobic s—,” they added while another wrote, “Just in! Sam Elliott reinforces the whole message of the film in accidental endorsement of Power of the Dog. Which is that cowboy culture hasn’t changed one bit and is still rife with toxic masculinity/homophobia.”
Most Americans appear to align with Elliott on this theme, however. These “woke” themes that are evident throughout recent shows and films are not sitting well with everyone, because the ratings for Hollywood’s award ceremonies have plummeted, with the 2021 Academy Awards only having a viewership of 9.85 million, a 59% drop from the 23.6 viewers in 2020. What was their excuse? It certainly wasn’t the pandemic, because everyone was staying home. Could it be that Americans simply don’t like these “woke” views being forced upon them?