The businesswoman and TV personality Martha Stewart has taken issue with a major new documentary about her life and work, which has premiered on Netflix.
Stewart, 83, one of the highest-profile media personalities in the US, criticises the production, focus and editing of RJ Cutler’s Martha. She cooperated in the making of the film, and contributed extensive contemporary interviews.
In an interview with The New York Times, Stewart poured scorn on the product she was nominally promoting, saying that while Cutler was given “total access” to her archive, he “really used very little. It was just shocking.”
She took particular issue with the closing segment of the film, which she unsuccessfully lobbied the director to change. “Those last scenes with me looking like a lonely old lady walking hunched over in the garden?” she said. “Boy, I told him to get rid of those. And he refused.
“I hate those last scenes. Hate them. I had ruptured my achilles tendon. I had to have this hideous operation. And so I was limping a little. But again, he doesn’t even mention why – that I can live through that and still work seven days a week.”
Cutler’s previous work includes biographical studies of Billie Eilish, Elton John, John Belushi, Dick Cheney and Anna Wintour. His first film credit, The War Room, about Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, was nominated for the best documentary Oscar.
Stewart’s other criticisms of Martha included the “lousy” score and unflattering cinematography.
“I said to RJ,” she said: “‘An essential part of the film is that you play rap music.’ Dr Dre will probably score it, or Snoop or Fredwreck. I said, ‘I want that music.’ And then he gets some lousy classical score in there, which has nothing to do with me.” (Stewart co-presented a TV series with Snoop Dogg, Potluck Dinner Party, between 2016 and 2020.)
The director also refused to take her instruction on cameras, she said, despite using three of them. “He chooses to use the ugliest angle,” she said. “And I told him, ‘Don’t use that angle! That’s not the nicest angle. You had three cameras. Use the other angle.’ He would not change that.”
Meanwhile, Stewart felt that Cutler chose to focus disproportionately on her high-profile 2004 trial, which led to her conviction on felony charges relating to stock trading.
“It was not that important,” she told the New York Times. “The trial and the actual incarceration was less than two years out of an 83-year life. I considered it a vacation, to tell you the truth.”
However, Stewart did say she liked the first half of the film, as it “gets into things that many people don’t know anything about” and said she had received some cheering feedback from young female viewers.
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“So many girls have already told me that watching it gave them a strength that they didn’t know they had,” Stewart said. “And that’s the thing I like most about the documentary. It really shows a strong woman standing up for herself and living through horror as well as some huge success.”
“That’s what I wanted the documentary to be,” she added. “It shouldn’t be me boasting about inner strength and any of that crap. It should be about showing that you can get through life and still be yourself.”
The director responded to his subject’s criticisms by telling the publication: “I am really proud of this film, and I admire Martha’s courage in entrusting me to make it. I’m not surprised that it’s hard for her to see aspects of it.”
In 2021, Alanis Morissette disowned a documentary about her life and career, Jagged, which premiered at the Toronto film festival and accused director Alison Klayman of betraying her trust.
“I was lulled into a false sense of security and their salacious agenda became apparent immediately upon my seeing the first cut of the film,” said Morissette. “This was not the story I agreed to tell.”
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