September 27, 2004 | Photojournalist-turned-documentarian George Butler unleashed Arnold Schwarzenegger on a unsuspecting world with “Pumping Iron,” the critically acclaimed and hugely entertaining 1977 film about the subculture of bodybuilding and the science of self-promotion.

More recently, Butler celebrated a different sort of larger-than-life hero – British explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, commander of the ill-fated H.M.S. Endurance – in a full-length feature (“The Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Expedition”) and a literally awesome IMAX spectacle (“Shackleton’s Antarctic Adventure”).

And now Butler is back with a cinematic ode to… John Kerry?

Yes indeed: “Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry” is an unabashedly admiring yet undeniably engrossing account of the Presidential candidate’s formative years during and after his Vietnam War military service. Specifically, the film traces the development of the well-born, Yale-educated Kerry from idealistic student to Swift Boast commander – and, ultimately, to anti-war activist.

Set to open theatrically Oct. 1, “Going Upriver” is the culmination of a 40-year friendship between the documentarian and his subject. Butler insists that he didn’t start out to make his movie as a response to the anti-Kerry assaults by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (a group spearheaded by Houston attorney John E. O’Neill, co-author of the incendiary “Unfit for Duty”). But as he freely admitted during an interview at the recent Toronto International Film Festival, Butler always intended the documentary to arrive in theaters just in time to influence voters before the 2004 election.

Question: You’ve made movies about Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sir Ernest Shackleton and John Kerry. What do all three of these guys have in common?

George Butler: Will. That’s W-I-L-L. They each have it in abundance. They each are underestimated characters. And they each over-achieve – and, in the end, always succeed.

Q: Schwarzenegger and Shackleton gained fame partly because of their talent for self-promotion. Would you agree that Kerry might need some coaching in that area?

Butler: He certainly needs characters like me to come along and make movies about him.

Q: Why?

Butler: Kerry is very old-fashioned in a certain regard: He’s not a self-promoter, and never has been. He’s always a little uncomfortable talking about himself. I’ve seen him almost stop interviews when he’s been asked personal questions. He just doesn’t like it. And he doesn’t like to brag. He’s almost the opposite of what the normal American celebrity or politician is today. And it’s fascinating: Kerry’s friends speak for Kerry. But Kerry doesn’t speak much for himself at all.

Q: Is this a byproduct of traditional Yankee reserve?

Butler: No question about it. It’s the same thing in my family. We’ve always been told: You get your name in the newspapers the day you’re born and the day you die, and nothing in between. When I made “Pumping Iron,” my Yankee Boston family was appalled at the idea that I was appearing in the press.

Q: You began taking pictures of Kerry long before you started snapping Schwarzenegger. What made you take such an early interest?

Butler: Because I thought he’d become President. For sure. I thought he’d become President the moment I met him in June 1964. And I began photographing him when he came back from Vietnam in late 1969. I took something like 150 rolls of film of him, and kept the pictures. I had a very elaborate filing system. But for a long time, I had no market for them. No one would ever buy them. It was a very similar thing with Arnold. No one would ever buy pictures of him. But I was on-target. I did the same thing with each of those two guys – 7,500 pictures of Arnold, 6,000 pictures of Kerry. So I must have known something before anybody else.

Q: The common rap against Kerry as a campaigner is that he’s too stiff, too formal. You’ve known him for a long time. What’s the funniest thing you’ve ever heard him say?

Butler: Well, he used to do a terrific Peter Sellers imitation. He could play Inspector Clouseau and so forth. But other than that… I’m just trying to think. [Long pause] What I would say is more interesting about John is to be in a room with him and understand that he just said something that was incredibly insightful, or analytic in just the perfect kind of way.

Q: Doesn’t sound like much of a party animal. Wouldn’t you advise him to loosen up more? Maybe share his lighter side with us? I mean, doesn’t he know that’s how people get elected these days?

Butler: John’s a hard guy to assess. That’s often true with very smart people – they won’t or can’t do the things that not-so-smart people can do easily in order to get other people’s attention. What John Kerry does not do is share a lot of his private life with a lot of people.

Q: Fair enough. But that raises the question: Does he really want to be president badly enough to do whatever it takes?

Butler: I can’t get into too many political questions, because I’m a filmmaker, talking about my film. But, yes, I’m sure he wants it. And he’s wanted to be President from Lord only knows how far back. He’s been essentially single-minded about that. And, you know, Kerry often wins his campaigns for the Senate just by wearing the opponent down with his sheer physical energy. Here’s a guy who’s had prostate cancer, but he’s still going. He’s unstoppable.

Q: One of the most powerful things in “Going Upriver” is Kerry’s address to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during the 1971 anti-war protests in Washington, D.C. He’s passionate, he’s articulate – and yet, at the same time, as you make clear in the movie, he’s media-savvy enough not to come across as some raving hippie firebrand.

Butler: And can you imagine a young man in America today – a guy who’s 27 years old – making that kind of speech to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee? Seventeen thousand words. Spoken totally without notes or use of a Teleprompter. Could George Bush do that today? Not a chance.

Q: You also make clear in your movie that it was this Senate speech – along with his activities with Vietnam Veterans Against the War – that brought Kerry to the attention of President Nixon and his White House cronies. In fact, you show that it was Nixon aide Charles Colson who initially encouraged John E. O’Neill to debate and attack Kerry as early as 1971. All these years later, O’Neill still is on Kerry’s case. You could almost make an entire movie about that relationship.

Butler: What I find interesting is that if you go back to 1971, you’ll see that Nixon and all these people around him – Colson, Ehrlichman, Haldeman, Dean – with the benefit of the CIA, the Secret Service and the FBI, they had every piece of equipment on God’s earth to go to the Naval records and find out whether Kerry really earned his medals in Vietnam. Now, do you really think they didn’t fully investigate him then? So how is it possible that, 35 years later, there is new evidence? People are coming forward with memories as clear as if they’d seen it yesterday, to condemn John Kerry and question whether he earned his Bronze Star and his Silver Star. It just leaves me wondering: How on earth can John O’Neill do now what he couldn’t do in 1971?