Sam Elliott Is Wrong About ‘The Power Of The Dog’
The veteran movie cowboy went off on a western he just didn’t get
The Power of the Dog is not really about gay cowboys no matter what Sam Elliott says. It is a superb, harrowing drama about the cost of living a lie. Not that there is anything wrong with movies that explore the diversity of the American West, by the way. Personally, I want more movies about cowboys who aren’t white, straight, heterosexual men like me.
The veteran actor was critical of the Oscar-nominated Western starring Benedict Cumberbatch during a long, free-ranging interview with Marc Maron on his podcast “WTF.” Elliott was deeply critical of Netflix’s The Power of the Dog when Maron brought it up, calling the celebrated movie a “piece of s**t.” Both Elliott and his trademark mustache star in Paramount+’s 1883, a prequel to the hit rope opera Yellowstone.
He does offer up praise for the movie’s director and complains that a movie about Montana wasn’t shot there, which is fair-ish. He then wanders into a tirade about the myth of cowboys before comparing the ranch hands in The Power of the Dog to male strippers. “There are all these allusions to homosexuality throughout the f — movie,” he said.
Elliott really does come off fixated on the scenes in The Power of the Dog where…
