Michael Kirk: It started in 2016 with Donald Trump, where we made a film then about him for the choice 2016. We remade it when we were all in the middle of the 2000 election and we were all in COVID. And we decided to make that film really all about crisis and how he responded over his lifetime to crisis issues and how Joe Biden did. In this case, this is the third go-around on Trump and really my eighth film about Trump about all of the things that have happened with him and through his presidency and in his entire life. And this particular film also has Kamala Harris, who's never ever, there've never been any major documentaries made about her, never been a book, really definitive book written about her. Nobody really thought of her yet as a presidential candidate. And we didn't find out she was a presidential candidate until about eight weeks ago. So, and it usually takes us a year or so to put these things together. So, we've been on our horses, going as fast as we possibly can, trying to tell her story and match it up to his. It's been a fascinating process of putting the two life stories together, especially when you think about following the adage I always follow. Your listeners may find this instructive in terms of the film itself. A president could bring to the job no more than the lessons of their own life. That's the basic operating principle of this film. So, we're trying to show you critical lessons of things that they've learned along the way from when they were little children, who were their parents, where did they live? When did they go to school? All of it. What is the life method they've learned that you can count on when they finally become candidate for president of the United States to evaluate them and to try to make a decision with your vote about who you're going to vote for, even if you think you've already made your mind up. There are things about this process when you watch it and when you make it, if you're me, that just become incredibly enlightening in a surprising way.
Patrick Center: I have the news release in front of me, your email, and the one thing I wrote down on this sheet of paper is what has shaped their lives. What a coincidence that you bring this up. What is it about these two?
Michael Kirk: You look across the board at the weave. We think we know everything about Donald Trump, but when you look at it, his father, his childhood, military school, sibling rivalry, a winner imperative, his father was very stern guy, super rich worth $200 million in the early 1970s. So, you can imagine what that is in today's dollars. The father has one rule in life that he insists on for his children in, especially young Donald, who seems to be the one that's going to inherit the entire company and everything else. And that rule is, the world is filled with winners and losers. If you are a loser, you are a real loser. There's not shades of gray. It's not, well, I lost in one thing, but I win in a lot of other things. You. must win in everything you do. And if you know that, and if you watch Donald Trump, and no matter what you have to do to win, you know, no matter what the playbook is, you battle, you fight. So, he created this fighter, the father, that cannot lose. And so, on election night 2020, you can imagine the psychological problem Donald Trump was having with the idea that Joe Biden, who he detested, that Joe Biden might have beaten him. It is the rationale. The people we talk to, and we talk to close friends, family, everybody who knows these people and people who work in their administrations, et cetera, you can imagine their feelings and understanding of how strongly Trump rejected the idea of losing because he figured if he's a loser, nobody's ever going to follow him again. So, he can't lose. So, he could not lose. He had to do all the things he did, including the January 6th moments, to keep himself from being seen as a loser by himself than the people that follow him. In Harris's case, you see an equivalent young woman raised in Berkeley, California, what a lot of people where I came from called “Berserkly,” California. A lot of liberal progressives, Black Panther, anti-Vietnam war. Her parents were strong protesters. Really believed in fighting the government from the outside. Mother, a cancer researcher who was raised as a Brahmin in India, the highest caste there was, walked away from it all at 19, much to the chagrin of her parents, came to the United States, became a cancer researcher, worked at University of California, Berkeley in cancer research. Preeminent economist for a father. A black man from Jamaica. So biracial kid in the middle of very liberal Berkeley, California. being raised by two extremely liberal parents who believe that the right thing to do is some form of social justice protest. That's who these two people are, two fighters. One of them cannot be a loser, and one of them must feel that they are changing the government in some way. And that's really the difference between the two fighters.
Patrick Center: What message are these two sending to the American public as we draw so much closer to this election?
Michael Kirk: He's running on fear, fear of the current America, trying to impose fear and to a certain extent, to a large extent, hatred of ‘the other’ in this society. He's running to go back to an America, a vision of America that he remembers a certain way and thinks millions of Americans remember a certain way. And they do. And a big part of that America is not a very big federal government, but also many other things. So, he's arguing and fighting hard to go backwards, to different attitudes that didn't have as much sort of DEI, woke, progressive, Democrat, big government ideas. And she's fighting for, you know, what's her big campaign slogan? Don't go back, we aren't going back, we're not going back. So, he's saying, I'm going to take you back to a different America. And she's saying, I want to pitch you forward into an America of inclusion where all kinds of people who have been disenfranchised by the American government are enfranchised, where there's a more equal justice perspective. She's also carrying with her a history of working with law enforcement. So, she's carrying this kind of really different, not progressive, but a different kind of, let's go into an America where the government is doing more benevolent things for people, where the Affordable Care Act is enhanced even more. So, a lot of things that are in direct opposition to him and that pitch everything forward in a kind of social justice way and other things. And neither one of them are ideological. He doesn't represent the old Republican Party and she doesn't represent the Democrats in quite the same way, especially progressives. So, it's very interesting. It's about a little bit about who they are and not what they say they'll do because you don't really know that.
Patrick Center: This is your sixth FRONTLINE The Choice. You bring in people who know both candidates. So, when you interview them, what is revealed about how they might lead?
Michael Kirk: You have to kind of read behind the lines. It's an interesting process to say, I'm not going to deal with specific issues necessarily. I'm going to follow them, watch the things that happen to them and watch it through the eyes of the people who were there, who saw them, who know them, family members. And I'm looking for one thing. What is their life method? What's the plan? What's the playbook that Donald Trump carries with him? What's the playbook that Kamala Harris carries with her? Because in the end, that's how voters and viewers and listeners of your program, that's how they're going to know. You could say I'm for gun control or I'm not for gun control or I'm 100% in favor of abortion. And those definitely are issues. But how will she, how will he make things happen? How have they done it in the past? How do they handle making a really tough decision? What is their life method? And that's the most interesting thing when people tell you, well, when she was a child, she went to an amazing daycare center, believe it or not. All part of this idea that your listeners can roll around in their minds for a little while. There's a saying that you show me the child at seven and I'll show you the adult. That's what operates when I'm making the film. It's who were they? Who were their parents? What were their friends like? Who have been their friends? What major events happened to them when they were teenagers? Major events happened to both Donald and Kamala when they were in their mid-teenage years. Events that really created who they are in lots of ways. And then what happens through their life is you see those tendencies emerge as new challenges and new crises emerge in their life, as they emerge in all of our lives. To go back and think about yourself and how you've become who you are, go back and think about what you thought and who you were at seven. I know it's a sort of strange idea, but if I could talk to people who knew you, Patrick, everything about you back then, I might know a lot about you now. And that's certainly the theory of this film.
Patrick Center: FRONTLINE presents The Choice 2024: Harris vs. Trump. It airs tonight (September 24, 2024) at nine o'clock on WGVU Public Television Award-winning filmmaker, Michael Kirk. Thank you so much.
Michael Kirk: You're welcome, Patrick.