Inside FRONTLINE The Making of...

February 13, 2009

“I need to be distant enough from a story that it feels like the journalistic circus has left town.”
Michael Kirk, writer/director, Inside the Meltdown

Last fall, as the country's economic woes escalated into full-blown global crisis, FRONTLINE asked veteran producer Michael Kirk and his associates to begin tracking the story. Twenty weeks later, the Kirk team has delivered the first of its three hour-long reports on the crisis, called Inside the Meltdown -- a riveting account of how the richest economy in the world came apart at the seams.

So how did Kirk and Co. manage to get inside this hugely complex welter of events, and come out so quickly with a coherent and comprehensible account of what happened? We put the question to the producer on location, as he and his team were scrambling to assemble their first hour. His answer: It's all about finding the story.