There are three. The documentary about Apocalypse Now that Francis Ford Coppola’s wife made is amazing. You should find it and watch it because Apocalypse Now, which is clearly more and more of a masterpiece every year and incredible because it’s still an unfinished work
What is your favourite documentary, and what did it change for you?
I love—I’m a sucker for a rock doc. So I will watch pretty much any rockumentary that comes out. So I’ve—obviously, the king of them is The Last Waltz, which is a Martin Scorsese movie about the final concert put on by The Band. There actually is a new documentary called Once Were Brothers, I believe, and it’s also about The Band, Robbie Robertson.
Tim Ferriss, The Tim Ferriss Show podcast, 19 November 2020 source ↗
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Brian Koppelman
Screenwriter and showrunner; co-writer of Rounders, co-creator of Billions
Ricardo Semler
Chief executive and later chairman of Semco Partners, Brazil
My favorite documentary is one called Up. ... For your listeners, it’s a guy, Michael Apted who in 1964 decided to follow about a dozen or actually more kids from very different backgrounds and from the UK and some in orphanages, and some very well off to try and establish how much people are stuck to their context, to their social context. ... It’s quite an extraordinary way to look at humanity and see can people really escape their social constraints and their initial lay of life?
Michael Gervais
Performance psychologist; host of the Finding Mastery podcast
I love documentaries. I really do. I think documentaries – I’m much more interested in non-fiction than fiction; just the way that I think about things. I can’t remember a documentary that I said, “That’s a bad documentary.” ... But as far as titles of documentaries? You know what was good was Amy. ... It was really good. The beauty and tragedy of an artistic genius.
David Heinemeier Hansson
Creator of Ruby on Rails; chief technology officer of 37signals
Let’s see. I like The Big Short. I’d read the book already. That was a good one. ... I find more than documentaries – I get a little impatient with documentaries because I find the point they’re trying to make could be made in ten minutes and we’re stretching it to an hour and 45 with pictures and unless those pictures are amazing, there’s a lot of other things I’d rather do.
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Brian Koppelman, Jim Loehr, Ricardo Semler, Michael Gervais, Pete Adeney, David Heinemeier Hansson
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