Jane Campion on Being ‘Emboldened’ by #MeToo and Overcoming a Loss That Left Her ‘Broken’
thewrap.comA version of this story about Jane Campion first appeared in the Down to the Wire issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine.It has been nearly three decades since Jane Campion was nominated for an Oscar, an extraordinary span of time that evaporates instantly when the writer-director starts to talk about why she was drawn to the story of tortured masculinity in “The Power of the Dog” — and whether she was the right person to tell it.
Ultimately, she said, she felt “emboldened” by the #MeToo movement to take on the project that she admitted was “not a woman’s story.” And now she has Oscar nominations for Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture, along with four of her main actors — an impressive tribute to the impact the film has had. “The Power of the Dog” has enjoyed near-universal praise, save for a recent jolt of vitriol from actor Sam Elliot, who took issue with “this woman from down there” making a film set in the American West.
Over the weekend at the Directors Guild Awards, Campion (who is from New Zealand) shrugged off his comments (“I’m sorry, he was being a little bit of a B-I-T-C-H,” she told Variety) before winning the DGA Best Director prize.
I spoke with Campion a few days before all that, and our conversation was a kind of capstone for me. As a young reporter, I interviewed her at the Cannes Film Festival in 1993, when the deep emotion of “The Piano” took the Croisette by storm, before sweeping Campion to prominence on the global stage, leading to a rare Best Director nomination and a Best Original Screenplay win at the Oscars.
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