“You’ll have to ask Martha about Martha,” director R.J. Cutler shoots back when I ask him if, in retrospect, he thinks the very public war of words Martha Stewart dragged him into over his recent documentary, Martha, was really just a clever marketing ploy. After all, Stewart is undoubtedly one of the truly great marketing and sales people of the past fifty years.
Quickly, however, Cutler leaps to the defense of his subject.
“What I will say,” he adds, “is that I understand why Martha, upon first viewing the film, felt that she would have made a different film. I don’t think that’s so surprising. I mean, somebody wrote a book about the early days of non-fiction television, and there’s a chapter that deals with a lot of the work that I was involved in, and, yeah, I would have written it differently, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t great.”
Cutler is being generous but, in the weeks preceding our interview, Stewart’s war with the Emmy winning and Oscar-nominated director went from being hot to cold to full-on détente. In fact, the day before we spoke, Stewart appeared on CNBCs Squawk Box, and, while she seemed ready to dish about just about everyone, from dead journalists to Sam Waksal, after weeks of slamming Cutler everywhere from in the press to onstage during joint, post-screening Q&As, she had nothing but glowing praise for Cutler.
“She recognized the film’s virtues, saying it’s not what she thought it was going to be, it’s much better,” Cutler says, sounding more than a little relieved, after weeks of withering attacks from Stewart. “But really, why wouldn’t somebody like Martha Stewart view this film subjectively? Still, I think she now sees its many, many virtues. And again, I say, on the eve of Thanksgiving, we should all be thankful for her for sharing her story. Because, what a remarkable story.”
“Most of all, this is the story of the trials and tribulations, triumphs and defeats of an extraordinary woman,” he continues. “A survivor, a visionary, a person who was selectively prosecuted by the patriarchy, a person who lost a tremendous amount, but a person whose losses were our losses too. She’s a fascinating character—albeit an unreliable narrator—and a great person around whom to make a movie. What riches. And thank you to her for giving us all the gift of being able to experience her amazing and heartbreaking story.”
And with that, after weeks of Cutler defending his film and himself in the press to anyone who would listen, it seems as though there’s been a meeting of the minds.
In the filmmaker’s experience, which also includes documentaries centered around Anna Wintour, Billie Eilish and, next month, Elton John, subjects “all go through this.”
“I understand why Martha would have made a different film. But she didn’t make this film. I made this film,” he stresses. “But I will tell you, a film is not complete until the film is viewed by its audience. And there are tens of millions of people who have viewed this film now, which is an incredible number for any film, really, but certainly for a documentary. And I know for a fact that Martha’s had a chance to hear from the young women who have been inspired by it, from her fans, and from both people who have been familiar with her for decades and from people who are just becoming familiar with her.”
“You know what Pennebaker taught me?” Culter asks, after we make a side trip to discuss Albert and David Maysles’ Gimme Shelter and D.A. Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back, which he feels set the standard for authorized documentaries and have been unfairly maligned of late. “He taught me that all you have is trust. It’s all you have. Of course, when I say that, people ask me, ‘How do you earn trust?’ And my answer, which I’ve been saying for 35 years, you have to be trustworthy. I say it to my teams. ‘We have to be who we say we are.’ You can’t promise to be a certain way, and then show up, like, ‘Nah, I’m not really gonna be that.’ However it is we describe our process and our dynamic, that’s what we have to do. Ultimately, that’s the only thing that will truly earn a subject’s trust.”
As a result, he adds, “I can’t think of a movie I’ve made where I left feeling like my relationship with the subject did not result in the movie I was hoping to make.”
In addition to Martha, Cutler’s documentary chronicling Elton John’s farewell tour (which we also discussed at length for a forthcoming piece) is already generating Oscar buzz. The grind of promoting both films, he admits, has been exhausting, especially with the kerfuffle over Martha, but it’s also forced him to reflect on the work, and his process, in meaningful ways.
“I think that every film is its own unique set of riddles, and the great joy of the work I get to do is that you enter the world of the person whose story you’re telling, because you’re creating a work of art about it,” he says. “It’s a narrative piece of cinema. And so I had to decide, what was the piece of cinema—what was the work of art—that was going to tell the story of Martha Stewart that is most truthful and resonant and is going to explore themes of American womanhood, but also this complex character who is driven by vision, in large part, because of a need to satisfy an impossible father, and the pain of whose relationship, and, in a way, unrequited love, she carried with her through her life?”
His conclusion after spending so much time with Stewart was that it “drove her to greater and greater heights, but it also seemed to undo her in ways, because there seemed to be an inability to embrace imperfection and her own human flaws,” adding, “As a filmmaker, that’s a wonderful set of facts and themes to be dealing with.
“How do you make that movie?” he continues, rhetorically. “Again, it’s Thanksgiving time, so I’m giving thanks to Martha Stewart for trusting me to make the film, and for engaging in the process, in spite of how hard it was for her. And she fully did. I mean, fully did, if not always through interviews, then certainly through access to an unbelievable archive that was more revealing, more forthcoming, and interesting. Those letters [she shared], her prison diaries, the footage from the Easter just after she got out of prison? All of that is a result of my relationship with Martha, Martha’s trust in me and my team. That’s where everything I do hinges.”
