'What Are You Talking About?' Sam Elliott on His 'Power of the Dog' Comments

When Sam Elliott was asked recently by the Daily Mail about his comments on "The Power of the Dog," in which he complained about shirtless cowboys in chaps in citing the film's homoerotic tone, he played dumb. "What are you talking about? Sam said when asked about his thoughts on the film. "I don't know anything about it."

Elliott quickly came under fire for his comments on Marc Maron's podcast "WTF" podcast last week, including pushback from the film's director Jane Campion (who called him a "bitch"), and actors Benedict Cumberbatch and Jesse Plemons.

In pointed comments to Variety, Campion said, "I'm sorry, [Elliott] was being a little bitch of a B-I-T-C-H. He's not a cowboy; he's an actor."

Campion made her remarks a the Directors Guild of America awards on Saturday. "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.

Elliott, who is known for his work in Westerns, criticized aspects of Campion's take on a Western thriller during his recent guest appearance on Marc Maron's "WTF" podcast. Elliott flatly called the Netflix drama "a piece of shit" and questioned "where's the Western in this Western?" Elliott asked. He took aim at star Benedict Cumberbatch as well.

"I mean, Cumberbatch never got out of his fucking chaps. He had two pairs of chaps – a woolly pair and a leather pair. And every fucking time he would walk in from somewhere – he never was on a horse, maybe once – he'd walk into the fucking house, storm up the fucking stairs, go lay in his bed in his chaps and play his banjo," Elliott said. "It's like, what the fuck?"

In a rewatch of the film, which won Best Film at the BAFTAs and Critics Choice Awards this weekend, it appears that Elliot exaggerates the "shirtless cowboys in chaps" meme. As a group, they appear in the film once dressed that way, while Cumberbatch only goes shirtless in chaps during the scene in which he masturbates in the woods.

But, as Collider points out, "While roundly criticized for these regressive comments, as well as other ridiculous comments about where the film was shot and how much director�Jane Campion�actually knows about the American West, Elliott accidentally proved the film's central theme as to how gay people are often erased entirely from the mythos of the Old West."

In the film, Cumberbatch plays a mean cowboy who doesn't take it when his younger brother (Plemons) takes a wife (played by Kirstin Dunst) in 1925 Montana. Dunst has a teenage son, played by Kodi Smit-McPhee, whose effeminate manner offends Cumberbatch. But the film posits Cumberbatch as a self-hating gay who still grieves over his relationship with his mentor, the late Bronco Henry.

"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," Cumberbatch told People Magazine.

"Without meaning to stir over the ashes of that ... someone really took offence 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."

"Beyond that reaction," he added, "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."

Plemons said on Friday that Elliot's comments "made him laugh." Talking to the Hollywood Reporter, Plemons said "that people can have their own opinions. "I know there are different layers to that," he added. "Not everyone has to like it, I'll say that. That's fine."