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Becoming Warren Buffett - HBO Documentary 1/30/2017


valuebull

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HBO is airing a new documentary on Warren Buffett on 1/30/17.

 

Here is the trailer:

 

http://www.marketwatch.com/video/documentary-trailer-becoming-warren-buffett/BF8DA321-428E-4A0A-8B14-D494DF827CF3.html

 

I've heard there will not be a lot of new insights for long time Warren Buffett fans, but I won't let that stop me!

 

I like the trailer where Warren Buffett is picking up his order at a McDonald's drive thru!!!

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Guest longinvestor

Not expecting much, there's not much more for me after attending all those annual meetings, watching youtube videos, media interviews etc.

 

I got a lot more out of Cunningham's Berkshire Beyond Buffett; Some really rare and distilled insights from him interviewing board members, big shareholders, subsidiary chiefs etc. The pre-BRK histories of the subs is really good. Everyone will draw their own conclusions as to the future, but it's been laid out very well by Cunningham.

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KinAlberta -

 

Your cable company may let you turn on HBO just for a day (I do that with some ESPN channels and it is inexpensive to do)

 

 

We pay for the bare minimum cable. (And aim for that goal on most other things.) Will there be other ways to watch this?

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  • 2 weeks later...

Just finished watching the film.

 

Nothing in there than anyone who's read Snowball or is a respectable member of this board wouldn't already know. However it is video and there's a lot of access to him and family and friends. It may be just me but it is nice to see the stories come from the actual people. Feels nicer than the book.

 

I should say it also seems a bit sad. At least to me. If feels like an ending. Much more backward looking than Warren's usual forward looking tone. Recapping everything that's happened so that it can be archived.

 

I would recommend it to everyone on this board. Though I suspect most of you are way ahead of me.

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Guest longinvestor

Just finished watching the film.

 

Nothing in there than anyone who's read Snowball or is a respectable member of this board wouldn't already know. However it is video and there's a lot of access to him and family and friends. It may be just me but it is nice to see the stories come from the actual people. Feels nicer than the book.

 

I should say it also seems a bit sad. At least to me. If feels like an ending. Much more backward looking than Warren's usual forward looking tone. Recapping everything that's happened so that it can be archived.

 

I would recommend it to everyone on this board. Though I suspect most of you are way ahead of me.

 

Also watched it. This humanizes  Buffett's  life for me. It was indeed a wistful Buffett we don't often get to see. The toll taken by his obsession with piling up the money is something we didn't quite know that well. Susie obviously wanted to spend time and money on social causes in the present, not in the future. Does $100B of giving make up for all that? Does the countless billions he inspired others to give count?

 

As shareholders, we gained at the expense of his marriage. It's all because of his sense of fiduciary responsibility with OPM. It made me feel somewhat guilty for wanting him to go motoring on buying the next elephant and the one after that...

 

He's just wired differently. We all are, but his happens to make money. Lots of it. Geez, how hard is it to understand compounding?

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I saw it and liked it. I mostly watched it for the human aspects of it, as I don't think there's much new left to be said about the business side for someone who's been in the spotlight so long. I thought it was nice to see a lot of the stuff that I had read about in the Snowball. Overall I thought it was good. My wife watched part of it too, and it was a good introduction to parts of the story for her, and she said that she recognized a bunch of stuff that I had told her about too.

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Absolutely a beautiful life we should all aspire too. Regarding his choice to compound instead of subsidizing his families wishes, a great success for consequential-ism in my view.

 

If he was worth 20 b and not 70 b, would he have inspired so many?

 

If he was worth 20b and not 70b (or 100+ if he hadn't given away shares) would he have inspired as many billionares to follow suit?

 

Is it worth making personal sacrifices to effectively improve the life of untold millions over time?

 

In hindsight the answers to these questions are obvious, he didn't have the benefit of hindsight which

makes his story all the more brilliant and delightful and gives us a glimpse of what the world could be as we all battle our personal demons to become more pragmatic and less emotional and subjected to our "monkey minds".

 

Coming full circle I can't help but think his bad habits, which he couldn't help but calculate with precision, are the incarnation of his own "monkey mind" and I suspect likely a manifestation of his balancing act regarding his own "monkey mind". I.G, he found the least enduring ways to accommodate his inherent weaknesses simultaneously allowing for all the possible strengths to manifest themselves.

 

Whether recognized in the history books or not, I suspect he will have compounded a greater number of mindful dollars than actual.

 

One of the few who I'm confident will remain in my mastermind group until the day I die. If he's not that enduring I'll have become a better man than I can imagine now.

 

 

 

 

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Guest longinvestor

OT: YouTube needs to work on their piracy controls...such blatant violations.

 

+1

 

Google better watch their hindside, they are inviting big troubles in this area. Expect to see some major litigation.

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OT: YouTube needs to work on their piracy controls...such blatant violations.

 

+1

 

Google better watch their hindside, they are inviting big troubles in this area. Expect to see some major litigation.

 

You guys are aware that all ad money allocation for this goes to original content owner as soon as the content is claimed by such owner (possibly via automatic tools) and retroactively? There is a reason why there are takedowns, but there's pretty much no litigation.

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When I finished The Snowball, the biggest takeaway was that you need to really, truly understand what/who it is you love and give your energy, devotion, and attention to that.

 

Buffett had 2 great loves in his life - money and his wife Susie - and he neglected, to a large extent, the one that mattered, in my opinion, most to him (i.e. not the money). I found that tragic.

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Guest longinvestor

When I finished The Snowball, the biggest takeaway was that you need to really, truly understand what/who it is you love and give your energy, devotion, and attention to that.

 

Buffett had 2 great loves in his life - money and his wife Susie - and he neglected, to a large extent, the one that mattered, in my opinion, most to him (i.e. not the money). I found that tragic.

 

In a way, I'm somewhat happy for Buffett that this movie is his narrative versus someone else's- Shroeder's. About his own life. At the end of the day, it is none of my business what he did in his personal life. In the few public appearances that she had, his daughter Susie said the same thing. She likely hates that all this about mom and dad had to air out in a movie but she would probably take this over the innuendo and falsehoods thanks to biographers and others.

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I thought this was a bittersweet celebration of the man...we all know that time is catching up to him as well as all of us. 

 

I agree with most, that this was as much a tribute to Buffett as it was to his wife Susie.  I think the depths that Alice Schroeder fell in the Snowball, and how personal she made it after Susie's death...this was the narrative that Buffett and his family wanted and had expected from the Snowball. 

 

Cheers! 

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