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 Success with numbers has helped the billionaire become one of
the world's most admired investors and top philanthropists,
despite spending most of his 86 years far from Wall Street in
Omaha, Nebraska, where he has run Berkshire Hathaway Inc since
1965.
That life is now the subject of "Becoming Warren Buffett," which
is being previewed for journalists this week ahead of its Jan.
30 airing on Time Warner Inc's HBO.
Directed by Peter Kunhardt, whose film subjects have included
U.S. President Richard Nixon and media mogul Oprah Winfrey, the
documentary was largely narrated by Buffett and contains
interviews with people close to him, including his sisters,
three children, Berkshire Vice Chairman Charlie Munger, and
philanthropists Bill and Melinda Gates.
It also provides a fresh overview of the "Oracle of Omaha," the
subject of a best-selling 2008 biography for which he also
extensively cooperated but reportedly had mixed feelings.
Longtime fans will not learn much new. And Buffett remained
reticent on some matters, including his last conversation with
his father, and his first wife Susan's decision in 1977 to move
out.
But he fondly recalled lesser-known stories, including
overcoming his fear of public speaking by attending a Dale
Carnegie course, and picking up a high school date in a hearse
he owned half of. "Not the smoothest thing," he recalled.
The Buffetts remained married but lived separately until Susan
Buffett died in 2004. "There's no finer human being than who he
is," she recalled in an interview just before her death.
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Buffett's second wife Astrid, who he married on his 76th birthday,
was not interviewed for the film.
The film shows Buffett's preference for a buy-and-hold style of
investing in "wonderful companies at fair prices," not fair
companies at wonderful prices.
"I do know what I call my circle of competence," he said.
It also shows Buffett's ability to connect with ordinary people,
including his driving himself to work from his normal-sized house,
his distaste for vegetables, and his plain talk about markets and
the world.
That includes his 1991 Congressional testimony about a Treasury
auction bidding scandal at Salomon Brothers, where he was interim
chairman, and vowed to be "ruthless" toward people who harm their
employer's reputation.
"Warren is not interested in making money by cheating people,"
Munger said.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Lisa
Shumaker)
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