Martha Stewart Has a Lot of Issues With Martha

Brooks Barnes at the New York Times says Martha Stewart, possibly with "no more you-know-whats left to give," was a lot more forthright than he expected when he asked her about Martha. He says she delivered "30 almost uninterrupted minutes of sharp critique" of the documentary directed by RJ Cutler, which arrived on Netflix Wednesday. The "lousy" music, she said, was one issue. "I said to RJ, 'An essential part of the film is that you play rap music.' Dr. Dre will probably score it, or Snoop or Fredwreck," Stewart said. "And then he gets some lousy classical score in there, which has nothing to do with me."

Stewart also complained that Cutler chose unflattering camera angles, failed to mention her grandchildren and used "very little" from her archive, despite having "total access." She said she loved the first half of the documentary, but found the second half "lazy," with "way too much" time spent on her 2004 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," she said. "The trial itself was extremely boring. Even the judge fell asleep. RJ didn't even put that in."

Stewart said she hated the last scenes, with her "looking like a lonely old lady walking hunched over in the garden," but Cutler refused to get rid of them. "I had ruptured my Achilles' tendon. I had to have this hideous operation. And so I was limping a little," she said. "But again, he doesn't even mention why—that I can live through that and still work seven days a week."

• Cutler tells the Los Angeles Times that it took "incredible courage" for Stewart to trust him with her story and he's not upset by the criticism. "Of course, Martha would have made a different film than I made," he says. "On some level. I'm grateful that she pointed out that this is my film, and I have final cut." He tells the New York Times: "It's a movie, not a Wikipedia page. It's the story of an incredibly interesting human being who is complicated and visionary and brilliant."

(More Martha Stewart stories.)