Choosing a president is a profound responsibility and since 1988, FRONTLINE has produced an edition of The Choice documentary to help voters get to know the candidates during each election cycle. Filmmaker Michael Kirk has been at the helm of six of these productions. According to FRONTLINE Executive Producer and Editor-in-Chief Raney Aronson-Rath, “Michael Kirk and his team have offered an in-depth examination of who the presidential candidates are—from their upbringings to their careers to the person they are outside of politics. In an election year that continues to keep us on our toes, we know this sort of reporting is more valuable than ever to our public media audiences.”

We sat down with Michael to learn more about his approach to these films. 

FRONTLINE’s The Choice is unique in that it delves into the candidates’ personal stories and not just their policies. Why is that important?

MK: Years ago, writer and newspaper reporter Richard Ben Kramer was working on one of these films and told me, “We figured something out about what we’re doing when we make The Choice. We’re searching for people’s ‘life method’.” I thought that was a great phrase, and it animates what we do. The starting proposition is, “Show me the person at age 7, and I’ll show you the President. I’ll show you the grown-up.”

You’re looking for psychological characteristics. Do they have sibling rivalries? Do they have a bad family life or a fascinating family life? But also, how did they respond to trouble in their lives, and what is the method they create for themselves to do everything that matters? You see in the early stages of their lives the things that pull all the way through.

Each film requires hundreds of hours of research and interviews. How do you approach the process?

MK: We build a film from what we call “boxes,” which is literally a schematic of Act 1, Act 2, Act 3…What’s going to be in there? What are the major events and the major sequences? Then we go looking for authors, family members, and other people we call principal sources—people who have been around the candidate ever since they were children and all the way up. They are people who can animate and tell the stories. We try to work on 40 interviews per candidate, and most of our interviews are an hour and a half to two hours long. Then you need the people in the next ring who are the authors and people who work with them and then the next ring which is journalists who cover them day-to-day and, in some cases, opponents. You have to decide how to break these interviews down and how they fit into the story. It’s a complicated dance.

When you are covering a candidate for the second, or in this case, third time, what is different about your approach?

Kirk: It’s the thing that haunts you as a filmmaker. What do I do that’s new? You learn more about a person after they’re president. You’ve seen a kind of maturation or maybe a really stark and obvious way of operating that you might have missed or you didn’t emphasize. You have a better idea how they acted in their presidency. People or issues come to the surface and you say to yourself, “I really want to go a little deeper there.”

This election’s film posed a completely new challenge—a change of candidate mid-race. What was required to make that pivot?

Kirk: It’s unimaginable if you’re us because it’s such a rich process of making things. So now you have basically 100 days to make a film that ordinarily would take you five or six months. But if you’re going to be the producer of The Choice, you want to be working with an executive producer like Raney (Aronson-Rath), who is very good at anticipating the future. We were talking for a couple months: “Why is it not easy to get to Biden? Why is he not doing press conferences? Why is he not on Sunday morning shows?” And we thought maybe we should make a The Choice: Vice Presidents and have Vice President Harris versus whoever Trump chose as vice president. As it turned out, it was a very smart thing to do because we at least had the outlines of a film.

Two of our best reporters/producers have already spent months looking into Kamala Harris, so we were kind of ready. We have a great archivist who really knows how to find footage, and these films are 60-70% stock footage and still footage. We’re making what we call “history on horseback.” You’re making a history film by roaring through history into history that’s happening right now.

To read more about FRONTLINE The Choice 2024: Harris vs. Trump, visit here.

SAVE THE DATE: FRONTLINE’s Countdown to November
Wednesday, October 23, 7-9:30pm
GBH Studios
$100 + fees General Admission
Formal invitation forthcoming - Beacon Circle patrons can enjoy a discounted ticket of $75!

Join us for a deep dive into the 2024 presidential elections with our award-winning FRONTLINE team! Academy Award-winning Editor-In-Chief, Raney Aronson-Rath and the talented filmmakers behind FRONTLINE’s pivotal fall documentaries will share their unique perspectives on the race and what is at stake this November.

FRONTLINE The Choice 2024: Harris vs. Trump
Premiered September 24. Available to stream now on the PBS app or on FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel.

Repeats:
Friday, September 27 at 8pm on GBH WORLD
Friday, September 27 at 9pm on GBH 44
Sunday, September 29 at 8pm on GBH 44
Monday, November 4 at 9pm on GBH 2

FRONTLINE The VP Choice: Vance vs. Walz
Tuesday, October 8 at 10pm on GBH 2 and the PBS app

Repeats:
Wednesday, October 9 at 9pm on GBH WORLD
Friday, October 11 at 9pm on GBH 44