Susan Granger’s review of “Martha” (Netflix)
Martha Stewart is not happy with the Netflix documentary “Martha” and – quite frankly – I don’t blame her: the lifestyle guru emerges as a stern, humorless bitch.
Is she? I don’t know. But documentarian R.J. Cutler does her no favors.
As Martha told The New York Times: “Those last scenes with me looking like a lonely old lady walking hunched over in the garden… I told him to get rid of those, and he refused. I hate those last scenes. Hate them.”
“Martha” reflects on the rise and fall of the stoic 83 year-old businesswoman, including her five-month stint at Alderson Federal Prison Camp in West Virginia in 2004.
Beginning as a child in the working-class Kostra family in Nutley, New Jersey, her life and career revolved around the impossible goal of being ‘perfectly perfect.’
Martha admits she and her book publisher husband, Andrew Stewart, not only cheated on each other while raising their daughter Alexis but also that she had a passionate interlude with a stranger in Florence, Italy, on their honeymoon.
The Stewarts married in 1961, when Martha was a 19 year-old college student. A few years later, working as a stockbroker, Martha had her first extra-marital affair. Practically perfect, she was not. The Stewarts separated in 1987 and divorced in 1990.
Meanwhile, Martha launched a catering company on Turkey Hill Road in Westport – “Nothing store-bought; everything homemade” – that became the stimulus for aspirational books about homemaking and entertaining.
The U.S’s first self-made female billionaire as CEO of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Martha was the original ‘influencer.’
Filmmaker Cutler notes: “She democratized fashion, taste and style. She saw the future before others saw it and she always had to overcome enormous obstacles that were in her way.”
From 1993 to 2008, Martha was romantically linked with Charles Simonyi, a Hungarian software developer. Fame and fortune were fleeting, however, when James B. Comey (another Westport resident), U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, seemingly targeted her for ‘insider trading’ of ImClone Systems stock, a charge she still denies.
“It was so horrifying to me that I had to go through that to be a trophy for those idiots in the U.S. attorney’s office,” Martha asserts, adding, “Those prosecutors should’ve been put in a Cuisinart and turned on high.”
Three years after Martha was released from prison, she and Simonyi broke up; shortly after, he married Lisa Persdotter, a Swedish heiress 32 years his junior.
Then came the TV debacle when Mark Burnett (“The Apprentice”) produced her ill-fated “Martha Stewart Show” (2005-2012): “A live audience, crummy music – that was more like prison than being at Alderson.”
According to Martha, her mojo was severely damaged, even as she cultivated her new 153-acre, orchard-studded property in Bedford, New York.
Redemption came when Martha shamelessly participated in “The Comedy Central Roast of Justin Bieber” (2015), igniting an improbable friendship/collaboration with rapper Snoop Dogg.
“I have two mottos,” she concludes. “One is: learn something every day. And the second one is: when you’re through changing, you’re through.”
On the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “Martha” is a callous, self-empowered, spicy 6, streaming on Netflix.
