The Guide | September 2020

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Photo: Rick Bern / All Rights Reserved © 2020

An Interview with FRONTLINE Producer

Michael Kirk about Making THE CHOICE 2020 by DANIEL HAUTZINGER MICHAEL KIRK

Michael Kirk is a veteran Frontline producer who has made scores of political documentaries, including four installments of Frontline’s election-year fixture The Choice. In The Choice 2020: Trump vs. Biden, which premieres Tuesday, September 22 at 9:00 pm, Kirk and his team offer portraits of the two major-party presidential candidates in an effort to understand how they might govern in the next four years. This interview has been edited and condensed. WTTW: At the beginning of this year, you told WTTW that, “It’s a precipice moment. This is really the most important political year coming that I have ever experienced, in all these years of reporting.” Do you still believe that, especially now that the country is experiencing numerous crises—the COVID-19 pandemic, an economic depression, and a reckoning with racial injustice? MICHAEL KIRK: It’s a very, very, very complicated time. The pandemic and the racial reckoning that are overtaking our nation simultaneously have become parts of the political calculus. Who could have predicted them? And the way that they’ve altered

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SEPTEMBER 2020


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