The Important Detail Martha Stewart Strived For When Writing Her First Book On Hosting

Martha Stewart, the doyenne exemplar of aspirational domesticity, the ur-monetized trad wife, the media mogul (even in times of declining empires) is, unsurprisingly, the subject of a new Netflix documentary. Our Lady of the perfect porterhouse steak has done enough to merit a whole limited series, for goodness' sake. A little more surprisingly, "Martha" the flick begins with an erstwhile clip in which Martha the Magnificent suggests making "more than one kind of turkey" for Thanksgiving crowds. Stewart has, at times, danced with a kind of Everywoman's excellence.

In her first book, simply called "Entertaining," for example, Stewart wanted her guidance to be easily replicable. "I wanted to provide education and information and inspiration," she says, following a cascade of not-super-nice characterizations about her disposition in the film. "Not too expensive, not too lavish. Just common enough so that the lady in the diner serving your coffee could go home and make the same thing at her house that my friends in Greenwich in their big mansions could make." In other words, celebrity chef Thanksgiving leftover sandwiches for all!

In another unexpected twist, Stewart hates the documentary! Just as she set a standard of approachability for her first publication, so too did she have a standard for the streamer that would bear her name. But while mere mortals might expect to be felled by a documentarian's unflinching lens, it follows that someone with Stewart's tremendous dominion might have enjoyed more influence over the final product, journalistically unethical as that might have been. Not so, for the better. And between this and Ina Garten's book release, it's been a delicious year for food world star drama.

In an interview with The New York Times, Stewart calls the filmmaker's music choices lousy after having explicitly requested rap (Snoop Dogg is a friend) and ended up with an irrelevant classical score. She criticizes what she feels are ugly camera angles. She mourns lost details like a decades-old flirtation with Alan Dershowitz. She laments all the lingering on that pesky insider trading unpleasantness. And she asserts that they got her magazine all wrong, noting that "Nobody ever showed puff pastry the way I showed it." In reply, filmmaker R.J. Cutler tells The Times, in part, "It's a movie, not a Wikipedia page." Guess that's one less bird Stewart will have to baste this Thanksgiving. At least it's relatable.