09.19.2004:Pumping Iron Filmaker George Butler Does John Kerry Movie

from tribnet.com :

BY DAVID GERMAIN Associated Press

TORONTO - Along with careers in politics, John Kerry and Arnold Schwarzenegger share this: They've been under George Butler's lens for decades.

The filmmaker who helped popularize bodybuilding with "Pumping Iron," the 1977 documentary chronicling Schwarzenegger and other muscle men's training regimens, Butler now puts his long association with the Democratic presidential candidate to use in "Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry."

The documentary, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival before its theatrical release Oct. 1, traces Kerry's tour of duty as a patrol boat leader in Vietnam and his later involvement in the peace movement as a disillusioned veteran.

Butler met Kerry at a party in June 1964, when both had just finished their sophomore year in college.

Something struck Butler when he met Kerry. "I truly believed the moment I saw him: This guy's going to be president," Butler said. "He had real bearing, he had a presence."

Butler paints a portrait of a young idealist who volunteers for military service, takes command of a Swift boat on Vietnam rivers where firefights could happen three times a day, is wounded three times and earns a Silver Star for heroism."