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.
What is your favourite documentary, and what did it change for you?
Question
What purchase of $100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months?
Money & investment
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.
Tim Ferriss, The Tim Ferriss Show podcast, 30 May 2018 source ↗
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Jim Loehr
Performance psychologist; co-founder of the Human Performance Institute
Brian Koppelman
Screenwriter and showrunner; co-writer of Rounders, co-creator of Billions
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
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?
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.
More from Michael Gervais
View profile →Yeah, two things pop up. One is this $11.99 book that my wife bought my son and he won’t put it down. I have an eight-year-old son. ... Any little book that I give my son feels like the greatest gift in the world because he becomes mesmerized by the imagination and the stories inside of it.
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Jim Loehr, Pete Adeney, Ricardo Semler, Brian Koppelman, Dan Harris, David Heinemeier Hansson
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