Courtesy of Netflix
R.J. Cutler has entered the chat.
After the Netflix documentary “Martha” hit the streaming platform on Oct. 30, Martha Stewart accused the director of using unflattering camera angles and leaving out massive parts of her life.
But Cutler isn’t bothered by the 83-year-old’s feedback.
“It wasn’t surprising to me that she would’ve made a different film that I made, of course,” the 62-year-old said on the Wednesday episode of “The Town with Matthew Belloni” podcast. “She gave me her feedback, and she was upset that I didn’t make the changes that she wanted to make. But this is the process.”
Cutler continued, “It takes a tremendous amount of courage on her part to trust me. I respect that. And in return, I share the film with her and have conversations with her about the film. If she has ideas that I think are good ideas and will help the film that I’m making, I’ll take a good idea from anybody. Believe me.”
He also joked that he fantasizes about “publishing the text messages that she’d sent me,” adding, “I will tell you that Martha expressed herself fully to me in her text messages.”
Despite her harsh feedback about the doc, the filmmaker understood her concerns. “It’s very, very hard to be a subject in one of these films and to look at it with any sort of objectivity,” Cutler shared. “And so, this is a process I understand and you have to be empathetic to the subject. But that doesn’t mean that she’s in control of the movie.”
Cutler said Stewart “understood that there was a process, and we engaged in that process. And Martha would have liked me to have a different response to that process, but I didn’t have a different response.”
He claimed Martha was not a fan of “how the film changed over time.”
“I have to say, the subjectivity of being Martha Stewart in this situation, the vulnerability that you’re in, has to be responded to with empathy and support. That doesn’t mean it has to be responded to with changes to the film. And that’s what I did. Martha felt the whole thing should be scored differently, the score is extraordinary.”
Cutler’s comments came the same day that Stewart said she was keen on making a second film.
“Yeah, the documentary is fine. It left out a lot, so I’m going to talk to them about maybe doing version 2,” she said during a Wednesday appearance on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.”
“There’s a lot more to my life. I’ve lived a long time, and I just thought maybe we’ve left out some stuff, so. Good stuff,” added Stewart.
Fallon, 50, asked the mogul if she enjoyed “the process” of filming.
“No, I didn’t like it,” she stated. “I don’t like going to psychiatrists and talking about your feelings and all that stuff. And the director was so intense on delving.”
Fallon replied, “Yes, but that’s what we wanna see,” to which Stewart quipped, “I know, but that came out. So good stuff came out. He got some juice.”
The TV personality made her comments after she revealed how she truly felt about the doc during an interview with the New York Times.
“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,” confessed Stewart. “But again, he [R.J.] doesn’t even mention why — that I can live through that and still work seven days a week.”