Becoming Warren Buffett (2017)

The stories about Warren Buffett (b. 1930) as a regular Joe are by now well-known.  He filed his first tax return when he was thirteen, after jobs that included a paper route (500 customers) and selling gum and coke door-to-door.  He's lived in Omaha most of his life, and in the same modest house there since 1958.  Almost every day he eats the same breakfast at a McDonalds drive thru.  The stories about his wealth (net worth of $73 billion) and his intellect (he reads five to six hours every day) are similarly well-known.  What's less well known, and what drives this HBO documentary, is how Buffett has worked at understanding and making peace with his own imperfect self, and trying to make changes for the better.  According to his three children and his first wife Susie, and by his own admission, for most of his life he was emotionally aloof.  "My dad is a solitary guy," says one of his sons.  He was more comfortable with numbers than with people, and he's way smart enough to know that's not a compliment.  But his wife Susie humanized him, and this film gives him, and especially her, credit for that.  Even at the age of eighty-seven, he is still "becoming Warren Buffett."