Which documentary has stayed with you, and what did it change for you?

Zack Canepari & Drea Cooper's "California Is A Place" showed me how independent doc shorts for online were possible, and also that they could be quirky, stylized and emotionally resonant. This, along with MediaStorm's short multimedia pieces, opened my world to that wonderful blurry space between film + journalism on the web.

"Fourteen Days in May" by Paul Hamann opened my eyes to the power of documentary and "Portrait of Jason" remains my favorite documentary of all time. The exploration of performance and representation of reality and storytelling is still very powerful to me.

What's your favorite documentary? I'm glad you asked. It's Errol Morris's film Fast, Cheap & Out of Control I saw this film at a festival in college, and in a single viewing it completely changed my perception of what a documentary could be. Since then, I've had an unrelenting obsession with documentary film.

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.

I’ve actually got a huge, huge list of documentaries that I’ve been meaning to watch, many of them collected from the guests in your Tools of Titans book. The one I did watch and enjoy is actually a series rather than a documentary; the remake of Cosmos. ... The topics he covered in those episodes was so stunning, and it was a great education for my son who is very, very into science himself. So that’s the documentary that stands out in my mind, probably the most interesting thing in the last five years, anyway.

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?

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.

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

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.

I love ESPN’s 30 for 30. I adored the one on Andre Agassi. I love the story, the documentary on Ray Mancini’s life. This is food for my soul. I love the inside story because that’s kind of the world I live in. And a lot of the stories I can’t tell, but I have such deep appreciation when the honesty and authenticity of an athlete is out there.

My favourite documentary, that’s lovely and everyone should watch, is called Water: The Great Mystery. It changed my perception of the whole planet more than maybe anything ever. Dr Masaru Emoto’s water research is very profound.