"Martha, why do so many people hate you?" asked Barbara Walters in a pre-trial interview with business-tycoon, writer, television personality and homemaking queen Martha Stewart.
This is the exact question at the heart of the new Netflix documentary "Martha," which tries to reconcile the visionary Martha "who made the world a more beautiful place and democratized fashion, taste, and style," with the unlikable, controlling, contradictory, perfectionistic (signing her books perfectly perfect) Martha. She's called the original influencer, but also a bitch.
Filmmaker RJ Cutler tries to explain the paradox by charting her life's journey from a difficult childhood to media mogul to her current status as the cool grandma, who roasted Justin Bieber on Comedy Central, posed at age 81 for the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue, and co-hosted a dinner party show with Snoop Dogg. We're presented with an invincible, scathing Martha loved and feared, who remains an enigma, just more candid.
Morphed
Her background was not a privileged one as one of six children growing up as Martha Kostyra in New Jersey. She was her salesman father's favorite, but he was cruel and a perfectionist. She became a semi-successful teenage model to support her family.
Enrolling at Barnard, she met lawyer Andy Stewart, marrying him at 21, despite her father's objection. He slapped her when he found out her fiancé was Jewish. She had a daughter Alexis.
She became a stockbroker, unusual for women in the 1960s.They restored an old farmhouse (Turkey Hill) in Westport, Connecticut, where she developed her homemaking skills. She started a catering company.
A publisher acquaintance of her husband suggested she write a book on "Entertaining." It was a hit and eventually she morphed into appointment television, creating her own female-run company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, becoming the first woman billionaire.
Along the way, her marriage fell apart and she divorced her husband, claiming he cheated on her repeatedly (culminating in a fling with Martha's floral designer on their Connecticut property), though she also was unfaithful ("a very brief affair with a very attractive Irish man; it was nothing").
She defines the world as she sees it, inconsistencies and all. He wanted the divorce, which made her miserable. "I have to go to San Francisco and talk about weddings and my wonderful life. I hope you are enjoying your freedom. And I hope my plane crashes."
Charged
Then there was all that unpleasant insider trader business, where her broker instructed Martha to sell her ImClone stock after CEO Sam Waksal tipped her off. In 2004, she was found guilty of conspiracy, obstruction and lying to federal investigators after a media circus.
She was sentenced to five months in prison at Alderson, West Virginia ("Camp Cupcake"). "It was horrifying. I had to be a trophy for these idiots in the U.S. Attorney's Office. Those prosecutors (including James Comey, later FBI Director) should've been put in a Cuisinart and turned on high."
She was thrown into solitary confinement for accidentally touching a guard, but also taught business courses for the inmates. However, her boyfriend Charle Simonyl (a software developer who built Microsoft Office) of 13 years, only visited her once in prison ("I don't think he liked hanging out with somebody in jail"), though he did send a plane for her when she was released.
Two years later he dumped her in bed with post-sex banter, "I'm gonna get married to Lisa and her parents don't want me to ever speak to you again."
She lost over a billion dollars, with advertisers pulling out of her magazine. Her "Martha Stewart Living" TV show was canceled. She had to resign from all her corporate boards, including her own company. Executive producer Mark Burnett ("The Apprentice") rescued her with a new program, "The Martha Stewart Show."
"He wanted a talk show with variety guests, and I really wanted my old format of how-to." She was disappointed with a show in which she had virtually no control, but it ran for eight seasons. "It felt more like prison than being at Alderson."
Obsessed
Much of the documentary is a long interview with Martha, interspersed with archival footage and audio interviews with friends, colleagues, and family members, plus excerpts from her diaries and letters. Her body language and facial expressions reveal someone uncomfortable, wrestling to maintain her composure. She's not into sharing her feelings, especially when discussing her marriage and personal relationships (especially with Alexis).
One clip during a break filming an Easter brunch episode shows her upset about being asked about her trial, resulting in an icy stare, yet when the camera rolls, she switches on the smiling, calm, assured expert. Is it all an act? Overall, she doesn't come across as happy or fulfilled, just work/task-obsessed.
"A New York Post woman wrote horrible things about me during the trial. She's dead now, thank goodness and nobody has to put up with that crap she was writing all the time," might serve as insight into the "real" Martha.
A colleague pipes up, "She treated her staff like shit." She's seen scolding her kitchen helper about using the wrong knife to cut an orange and ridiculing the incompetence of an employee who designed a too-small handle for a teacup, saying to the camera, "I'm supposed to pussyfoot around such a nitwit?"
Martha has been vocal in her disapproval of the film, which is one indication why this documentary is so riveting. Her basic complaint is that she had no control over the final cut. She hates the unflattering camera angles, resents the final scenes of her as a lonely old lady walking hunched over in her garden (her safe space). Scenes with her grandchildren weren't included, and the film spends too much time on her 2004 trial and prison sentence.
"It was not that important...less than two years out of an 83-year-old life. Even the judge was bored and fell asleep. I considered it a vacation, to tell you the truth."
We have a strong woman standing up for herself and overcoming obstacles, yet sometimes deserving the title the Queen of Mean. The second half feels like a marketing tool at times. But Cutler manages to prod Martha into revealing more than what she intended, particularly that she doesn't see the irony of building her career on the fantasy of a perfect home, when her life was anything but perfect.
Yet the public has exonerated and embraced her. She's smart, complicated, witty, demanding, impenetrable, ahead of her time, everything we love in a diva. Ultimately, nothing can defeat her and despite all her flaws, that's a good thing.
www.netflix.com
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