Martha Stewart Pans Her Own Netflix Documentary
Martha Stewart has been on one lately. Spilling tea to The New Yorker about what went down with her and Ina Garten. Then doubling down on her recollection of events on WWHL. Now giving a scathing review of Martha, the new Netflix doc about her, to the New York Times. Per the NYT, Stewart went on a rant of “roughly 30 almost uninterrupted minutes” about what she didn’t like about R.J. Cutler’s take on her life. “R.J. had total access, and he really used very little,” she said. “It was just shocking.” Among the things she had beef with were the music choices, the framing of her today as a frail old woman, and overemphasis on her 2004 insider trading trial and prison sentence. “It was not that important. 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,” Stewart said. “The trial itself was extremely boring. Even the judge fell asleep. R.J. didn’t even put that in. The judge was asleep at the bench. I wrote it in my diary every day.”
Maybe we can forgive someone fixating on that trial. It is many people’s top-of-mind thought when they think of Martha Stewart. But the other big thing — her friendship with Snoop Dogg — was given short shrift in the soundtrack. “I said to R.J., ‘An essential part of the film is that you play rap music,’” she said. “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.” There is a Snoop song over the end credits, but it’s not enough for Martha!
Stewart also criticized how Cutler filmed her. “He had three cameras on me. And he chooses to use the ugliest angle,” Stewart 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.” She also objected to the last scene, where Stewart is kind of hobbling in her garden. Turns out, she’d just had an operation on her Achilles’ tendon. “Those last scenes with me looking like a lonely old lady walking hunched over in the garden? Boy, I told him to get rid of those. And he refused,” she said. “I hate those last scenes. Hate them.” But other than that, pretty cool flick.
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