Sam Elliott criticizes the movie “Woke” and defends the American cowboy culture.
Sam Elliott, known for his roles in westerns, called a cowboy movie that Hollywood loves a “piece of s—.”
Elliott went on a rant defending cowboy culture and said that the foreign director “knew nothing” about the American West.
Sam Elliott talked about anything and everything on Marc Maron’s “WTF Podcast.” The veteran actor shocked many people when he said bad things about a female foreign director who is very popular in Hollywood. Elliott is one of the most important people in the western genre, but he didn’t like The Power of the Dog by Jane Campion.
According to the New York Post, Benedict Cumberbatch plays a closeted gay rancher in 1925 Montana who is abusive to his new sister-in-law and her son in the much-praised The Power of the Dog.
Elliott was offended by the movie’s characters, which he compared to Chippendales dancers “who wear bowties and not much else.” He added, “That’s what all the f—king cowboys in that movie looked like. They are all running around without shirts on and wearing chaps. All throughout the f—ing movie, there are references to homosexuality.
Maron said of the movie, “I think that’s what it’s about.” It’s more than just a strong hint that Benedict Cumberbatch’s character Phil Burbank, a fictional rancher, is a gay man who hides his feelings. Elliott didn’t like what he heard, so he talked about the New Zealand-born director Jane Campion. He thought she was out of her depth when she tried to write in this genre.
“I love her other work, but what does this New Zealander woman know about the American West?
Elliott got angry and said Campion was wrong to film the Western in her home country. What really “chapped” Elliott’s hide was how the movie showed the American West and cowboy culture as a whole. The star of “We Were Soldiers” criticized Campion by saying, “Why the hell does she shoot this movie in New Zealand and call it Montana and say, ‘This is how it was?'”
Elliott didn’t stop criticizing and reminded people that his western, 1883, was shot in the Lone Star State. “According to the myth, they were these tough men out with the cattle. “I just got back from f—ing Texas, where I hung out with families, not men, but big, long, extended, multi-generational families… and their lives were all about being cowboys,” Elliott said, trying to prove that Campion was wrong about the cowboy way of life. “When I saw that movie, I was like, ‘What the f—k? Where do we stand in the world right now?'”
The tough actor, best known for playing cowboys, also didn’t like how the main character, a Montana rancher, was portrayed. “Where is the Western in this Western? “Elliott asked. “I mean, Cumberbatch never got out of his f—ing chaps. He had two pairs of chaps: one made of wool and one made of leather. “Every time he came home from somewhere—he never rode a horse, maybe once—he’d walk into the house, storm up the stairs, lay down in his chaps on his bed, and play his banjo,” the man said.
Elliott’s harsh criticism was taken the wrong way by many, including Shelby County Commissioner Tami Sawyer. “I mean, most movies about the American West, including the ones Sam Elliott has been in, don’t know anything about the American West. “They erase the presence of anyone who isn’t white or male, even though the west was mostly built by Indigenous, Black, Mexican, and Chinese people,” she wrote on Twitter.
Some people on social media didn’t like what Elliott said. Someone tweeted, “Holy s—, I don’t like Sam Elliott nearly as much as I used to. This is some homophobic, misogynistic, and xenophobic s— that doesn’t even try to hide it,” they said. Another person wrote, “Just in! Inadvertently, Sam Elliott backs up the whole point of the movie when he says that Power of the Dog is a good movie. This means that cowboy culture hasn’t changed and is still full of homophobia and toxic masculinity.”
On the other hand, most Americans don’t seem to like the new “woke” themes that have been popping up in movies and TV shows lately. In fact, the number of people watching Hollywood’s award shows has gone down in recent years. For example, in 2021, only 9.85 million people watched the Academy Awards. This dropped nearly 59% from 2020 when 23.6 million people watched the show. The American people clearly message Hollywood and those who make movies.