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In the event of an earthquake, you'll want to avoid Michael Kirk's tiny office at WGBH, Boston's PBS station. Every square inch of the top shelf over his desk is covered with little sculptures with spearlike appendages that thrust upward in tribute to the highest aspirations of television journalism—and threaten instant trepanation if one of them were to land on your skull.
"Let's see, seven Emmys," says Kirk, a 25-year veteran of the hard-hitting documentary series Frontline, examining his battery of gold plate as if it had just landed from Neptune. "No, nine…five Writers Guild of America…I won one Peabody, was part of three others…two duPonts. That's all we could fit on the shelf. I didn't know what to do with this stuff."
With his restless energy and charcoal hair sticking out at odd angles, Kirk appears much younger than his 60 years, even with dark circles under his eyes.
"Don't get me wrong. I care about recognition if it helps Frontline. Winning a statue, that's good," he says with furrowed-brow ambivalence. "Somebody called me and said I was going to win the Writers Guild Award again this year and suggested that I go to the ceremony. So I go to the hotel and get off the elevator, and everyone is wearing a tuxedo. And I'm wearing this…" Kirk indicates his current apparel: blue jeans that look like they spent last night at the foot of his bed, a wrinkled blue shirt, and scuffed boots. "And of course I win. And the band plays. And I go out onstage. And it's me. In this." Pause. "If I go to one of these things again, I face the question: Should journalists wear tuxedos? It doesn't seem right to me."
Journalism being what it is these days—more tuxedos than legwork—Kirk has little competition. But even if the big entertainment conglomerates were still doing long-form documentaries, Kirk would probably continue to take home most of the metal. As his colleague Bill Moyers says, "Mike's documentaries have that rare quality of forcing you to grapple with complicated issues while reaching out and grabbing you in the gut."
Unless you make a hobby of credit-spotting on PBS, you've probably never heard of Kirk. He doesn't stand in hurricanes or harangue his guests; in fact, he remains exclusively behind the camera. Yet Kirk has become one of the most important filmmakers in America thanks to his remarkable ability to accumulate large masses of information, chisel off everything that isn't the story, and get to the heart of something important through plot and character development. It's literary nonfiction on the boob tube. His best documentaries in recent years—The Torture Question, The Dark Side, The Lost Year in Iraq, and Endgame—have the relentless sweep of epic tragedy played out against a backdrop of secrecy, ambition, malice, and staggering incompetence in Washington's highest rungs. His latest film, Cheney's Law, chronicles the vice president's 33-year struggle to restore the imperial powers of Nixon's presidency.
