I do find it kinda dumb they filmed it in New Zealand.
— Alan
I’m thinking Sam Elliott didn’t watch all the way to the end.
-Tom
Maybe he meant illusions?
Jane Campion, no! Shut up!
https://twitter.com/Variety/status/1503361050741198848
“It’s absolutely stunning to be here tonight among so many incredible women,” Campion said, holding her first of the Netflix movie’s four trophies, while the audience clapped and cheered.
“Halle Berry, you have already done my speech … and really killed it. I loved it. You’re absolutely brilliant,” she continued, praising the evening’s SeeHer Award winner before turning her attention to “King Richard” subjects Venus and Serena Williams.
“What an honor to be in the room with you,” Campion said with a hearty laugh, adding, “I’ve taken up tennis — I truly have — and Will [Smith], if you want to come over and give me lessons, I would truly love it. I actually had to stop playing because I’ve got tennis elbow.”
Campion then saluted her “fellow, fellow, fellow” nominees — or “the guys,” as she called them — referring to the male directors in her category: Paul Thomas Anderson (“Licorice Pizza”), Kenneth Branagh (“Belfast”), Guillermo del Toro (“Nightmare Alley”), Steven Spielberg (“West Side Story”) and Denis Villeneuve (“Dune”).
“Venus and Serena, you’re such marvels,” she said, circling back to her earlier talking point. “However, you don’t play against the guys, like I have to.”
Well it is war then. /s
This seems to be a little blown out of proportion, but hey, internet.
It’s never smart to play the “you think you’ve got it bad…” game. That’s always tacky. That she said it directly to people there with her, and it wasn’t just some abstract comparison is an even bigger gaffe. But that’s all it was, and she apologized. “Biggest unforced PR error in award show history?” Absurd.
I think it’s pretty telling that an old white guy like Sam Elliott can mouth off with nonsense like “what does some little lady from the other side of the world know about cowboys, who aren’t supposed to even be gay?” and there’s no blowback. No one even cares. I mean, I certainly didn’t.
But Jane Campion makes an offhand comment about the difficulty of being a female filmmaker that could be misconstrued as dismissive of a couple of sports celebrities and she promptly apologizes. And it gets enough media coverage to get up in my face as if it somehow mattered.
This is the world we live in.
-Tom
I read Sam Elliott’s comments seeing him as a drunken cowboy in a salon somewhere.
Anyways Jane Campion’s next movie should star Sam Elliott.
But only if he plays a gay cowboy called Mr Pudding.
Drunken cowboys should never go into salons. They might come out with cute haircuts and fancy nails!
It certainly made the news. What exactly defines blowback? To me, someone who browses google’s news feed for my daily news, they were sort of similar. Sam Elliott dumbly criticizes movie, and I saw several stories about that, and Jane Campion makes dumb statement, and I saw several stories about that. Both were headlines in the daily feed I skim and seemed somewhat equivalent.
Eh, retracted, I was channeling John Many Jars there.
Agreed. 100%. And it sucks how these things garner feedback sometimes. It isn’t fair at all.
Jane Campion felt compelled to apologize. Sam Elliott didn’t. Women working in male-dominated industries have to behave very differently than the men in those industries.
Maybe blowback wasn’t the best word. Fallout? Result? Outcome? Eventuality? My point is that Sam Elliott can just speak his mind about the women and the gays and he doesn’t have to worry about how people react. But Jane Campion lets slip a slightly awkward analogy and then goes on a public apology tour. I just think the difference is telling.
-Tom
I don’t think Sam Elliot wants to apologize because those are his genuine old man cowboy thoughts. (Hee-ha! YOLO, 360 no scope!)
Jane apologized because she didn’t really mean what she said. The words didn’t come out right. A gaffe.
Am I missing something here?
No. That’s how I perceived it as well. Campion said a thoughtless thing and didn’t mean how it came out. I’m sure once she realized it, she wanted to really apologize to Serena and Venus. Elliot, in contrast, meant exactly what he said and doesn’t think he needs to apologize for anything.
He couldn’t even compliment Brokeback Mountain in 2006 without slipping in a little stinger.
Scott Holleran: Have you seen Brokeback Mountain?
Sam Elliott: I did. I went with my wife and I didn’t really get what all the to-do was about. It is a beautiful film and I was thrilled for Ang Lee, but it isn’t a Western. For one thing, it’s about a couple of sheepherders, not cattlemen. The whole homosexual thing was interesting—they stepped over the line—but Katharine and I both looked at it and thought, ‘what’s the big deal?’
Scott Holleran: Some conservatives claim it denigrates the cowboy. What do you think?
Sam Elliott: I do not think it’s anti-cowboy. I have tremendous respect for Ang as a filmmaker.
Bolding mine.
“First of all, they’re not cowboys if they don’t have cows and sheep don’t count! Second of all, being gay is over the line but otherwise no big deal.”
I love Sam Elliott, but he’s as old, white, and male as they come. And he’ll never have to apologize for it!
-Tom