Why do I suspect this will have a left wing frame? Check the Authors.
FRONTLINE
pbs.org
- This Week: "The Choice 2004" (120 min.),
Tuesday, Oct. 12 at 9pm on PBS (check local listings)
- Inside FRONTLINE: A look back on producing "The Choice 2004"
- Live Discussion: Chat with producer Martin Smith this Wed. at 1 pm
ET
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+ This week
Every four years, since 1988, FRONTLINE has picked one of its most
experienced producers to tackle "The Choice" - the special two-hour
dual biography of the presidential candidates that we present before the
election. This year we chose veteran producer Martin Smith, and as
reporter, Nicholas Lemann, political correspondent to The New Yorker.
I asked Marty if he would share with us what it was like to make "The
Choice 2004" --
-----
"You begin with lots of reading. You construct elaborately detailed
chronologies of the candidates' lives and careers. You make hundreds of
phone calls to their friends and associates. You visit the campaigns.
You go to the video archives. You film locations and long detailed
interviews - more than 50 of them. You open the edit room and start
sorting through the material. At some point, you think you're making
some headway. You think you know something. You might even have an
insight or two, a perceived pattern, a glimpse of who the candidates
really are. How they think. But then, around the time you start patting
yourself on the back, some of the insights seem to morph into the next
day's conventional wisdom. You have to think harder, and quickly. The
election is drawing near and the clang and clatter of the campaign has
become deafening. You soon realize that you're running as fast as you
can just to keep pace with every other news organization, every
political junkie and blogger on the planet. The race is everyone's big
story. Information is cheap. Knowledge is valuable .... Well, along the
way, you realize original insight is priceless.
But how do you get that insight? As is often the case, much of the magic
is in the form, in the design. I remember watching the first FRONTLINE
"Choice" in 1988, a dual portrait of Michael Dukakis and the elder
George Bush. Segment by segment, their lives were laid side by side. I
remember being surprised at how much the form provided a startlingly
fresh context for evaluating the candidates. Even familiar material took
on new meaning.
As we began to piece the puzzling lives of George W. Bush and John F.
Kerry, the repeating patterns emerged - their habits, strengths,
foibles, blind spots. We saw what my colleague Nicholas Lemann calls
Bush's "enormous slumbering ambition" and Kerry's moderation and
caution. We laid them side by side, segment by segment. We discarded
extraneous side bars. We cinched it down. And we were polishing it right
to the very end.
But now it's your turn - to watch, and to make your choice."
-- Martin Smith
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We hope you'll watch "The Choice 2004" Tuesday, Oct. 12 at 9pm on PBS (check
local listings)
and afterward visit our web site where you can explore the report more
closely, read what presidential historians say are the leadership
qualities needed for success in the Oval Office, and express your
opinion about the program at
pbs.org
A note: PBS will rebroadcast "The Choice 2004" this Thursday, Oct. 14
and again on Nov. 1.
Louis Wiley
Executive Editor
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