Jane Campion calls Sam Elliott a 'B-I-T-C-H' over his 'The Power of the Dog' comments

The battle over who gets to tell and critique the traditionally hyper-masculine stories portrayed in American Westerns is still going on, and it's annoyingly sexist.

On Saturday, March 12, Academy Award-winning director Jane Campion put actor Sam Elliott on blast for derogatory remarks he made recently about her new cowboy movie The Power of the Dog. During an interview with Variety, Campion walked the red carpet at the Directors Guild Awards.

The Big Lebowski star, who may be best known for his brief appearance in the movie, derided the Oscar contender as a piece of shit for centering on gay themes. The actor continued with other questionable justifications for his dislike of the New Zealand director's take on an American Western, which earned Campion one of the top awards at Saturday's ceremony and which also seems like a shoe-in to win at least some of the awards.

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She told Variety that Sam was not a cowboy and that he was being a bit of a B-I-T-C-H. He is an actor.

Campion went on to say that the underlying sexism of Elliott questioning her right to subvert the American myths embedded in the Western genre rubbed him the wrong way because she is a foreigner who shot the movie in her home country of New Zealand.

The West is a mythic space and there is a lot of room on the range. I think it's a little bit sexist.

There is a double standard when it comes to gatekeeping Campion from the genre because she is a foreigner. She points out that renowned Italian director Sergio Leone, architect of the Spaghetti Western, famously shot some of the genre's most celebrated classics in Spain.

The genre's history has been defined by a global exchange of perspectives on this American mythos, as evidenced by the mutual inspiration shared between Western directors and Japanese Samurai movie directors. Ang Lee won an Oscar for his 2005 movie, Brokeback Mountain, which was explicitly gay.

The disrespectful dismissal of Campion's take on the genre sounds more like grasping for slightly less bigoted excuses explaining why he thinks American Westerns shouldn't be directed by women.

I consider myself a creator, Campion said. I don't appreciate that.