Quincy Jones, Martha Stewart, Ina Garten (Didn’t Walk Into a Bar Together)

Quincy

In 2018 Quincy Jones did interviews with GQ and Vulture that have since lived rent free in my head, so when the news broke of his death and people mentioned his Netflix documentary I sought it out to watch.

I was expecting Quincy to be a focus on his accomplishments—which certainly would not fit into a documentary film because to say he is a legend is insufficient, and I can’t imagine his influence will ever stop being felt—and it is, but that’s not what stayed with me. It’s clear that his daughter Rashida Jones, co-director, had a vision of how to show him and I think it succeeds in being tender, showing vulnerability, and highlighting Jones as a person striving to do better—he doesn’t shy away from owning his mistakes and accepting help. Between his joyous spirit, goal to live life to its fullest, and genius level of creativity, it felt like an inspirational doc, especially in a world that feels so dark and heavy lately.

Be Ready When the Luck Happens by Ina Garten

I knew very little about Ina Garten: Roxane Gay’s adoration of her always made me smile, I’d made some of her recipes, and people really seemed invested in her marriage to Jeffrey. The rest were assumptions that were proven wrong in her memoir.

Her path to success, and all its roadblocks, are interesting but Garten’s memoir is moving in her introspection. Garten is from the generation where women didn’t have real choices because legally women couldn’t get loans or credit cards in their names. She married Jeffrey because she loved him, and after a childhood of emotional abuse he counteracted much of what she’d been told, but she never thought about what she really wanted until she’d find herself deeply unhappy, frustrated, or questioning the role of women in the house and that’s where she started carving out her own life, on her own terms. I also appreciated the popping of the perfect marriage fantasy as she explained times where the work they wanted to accomplish was going to put them in different places and create huge challenges in their relationship but they still supported each other and found ways through.

I love being surprised by a book and with the holiday season upon us this memoir would make an excellent gift for many people.

Martha

The lifestyle Martha sold was huge when I was growing up and when I saw that she participated in the Netflix documentary I thought she would have a lot to say as a woman, now in her ‘80s, who had built an empire, saw it crumble, and then built it again. Aside from the beginning of the doc—a look at her childhood, tying how lack of money and an abusive father created her green thumb—I walked away feeling mostly sad and frustrated.

The doc has tons of archival footage and interviews with people from her life but Martha Stewart, who is central in a sit down interview, seemed mostly unwilling to participate in any kind of introspection. Her diary passages are read by a narrator but they were the kinds of things you say when you’re devastated and angry and have yet to process any feelings and there was no followup, even though the events happened decades ago.

She was called out in moments, like pointing out that she too had had an affair but she brushed this off as not mattering, only her husband's affairs counted. And no one owes anyone their trauma but she seemed uninterested in any emotional depth beyond calling someone “stupid” or a “piece of shit”. Fair, but that is where she would stop talking. At one point in the doc she makes a comment about having zero interest in talking about feelings when in a relationship. She doesn’t care about how you’re feeling, she wants instead to talk about what you’re doing, working on (accomplishments).

To each their own, she can write “feelings are stupid” on her gravestone for all I care, I just find an unexamined life uninteresting, no matter how many accomplishments it boasts.

Are there any documentaries or memoirs that have stayed with you that you recommend?