NEW YORK — George Butler, a filmmaker and photographer best
known for documentaries celebrating Arnold Schwarzenegger
(Pumping Iron) and Ernest Shackleton (The
Endurance), has finally decided what to call his John Kerry
campaign movie, er, documentary. Coming to theaters in October, the
film is titled Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry.
Butler has been following and photographing Kerry for 35 years,
which should qualify him for some kind of clinical diagnosis.
According to a summer article in the New York Times, he
has accumulated footage of “both of Mr. Kerry’s weddings, all of
his campaigns, countless family vacations.”
It’s a good thing conservatives have taken such total control of
the American media. Otherwise this year’s unprecedented onslaught
of partisan filmmaking might be viewed as coordinated, or worse, in
violation of campaign finance laws. In 2004, Democratic-friendly
filmmakers have brought the Ghosts of White Houses Past, Present
and maybe Future to the big screen. We’ve had The Hunting of
the President, about the vast right-wing conspiracy to destroy
Bush’s predecessor; Fahrenheit 9/11, about the evils of
Bush himself; and now Butler’s mock documentary about Kerry, Bush’s
potential successor. And these are only the most obvious
examples.
Going Upriver will have to go a long way to match
Pumping Iron for the arrogance, self-importance, and petty
nastiness of its protagonist, but Butler may have the goods in the
senator from Massachusetts. Kerry’s hubris has only grown since
that April day in 1971 when he defamed a generation of United
States troops in order to jumpstart his political career. At least
in Schwarzenegger’s case, a viewer can look back at his 1970s
megalomania and sense that age has tempered him to a degree. But 35
years of Kerry footage will remind most viewers of those people
they run into at class reunions and think, “God, he’s an even
bigger ass than he was then.”
If Kerry’s personality wasn’t bad enough, his life presents an
even bigger problem for Butler.
For starters, how will the filmmaker handle the fallout from
Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, as set out in campaign ads and the
best-selling book, Unfit for Command? The Kerry campaign has
already retracted or obscured several of his longstanding Vietnam
claims, including the Christmas in Cambodia tale.
Butler must be editing frantically in advance of the release
date. He’ll have to make sure that he cuts any footage of Kerry’s
1986 speech on the floor of the Senate, where he declared that
memories of his holiday in Cambodia were “seared — seared — in
me.” Extensive accounts of the heroics that Kerry performed in
winning his medals will have to be carefully reviewed as well, as
some of these have been called into serious question, if not
debunked.
Butler can find less ambiguity in his hero’s antiwar activities.
There are no disputes about what Kerry said to the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee on April 22, 1971. It’s all in black and white. No doubt
Butler will select carefully here as well. He probably won’t
include the part where Kerry wishes that a “merciful God could wipe
away” his memories of Vietnam. If God had been more attentive,
there would be no Kerry campaign. Butler probably won’t include the
moment when Kerry dismisses the Cold War and pontificates about
American consumerism when he says: “There is no threat. The
Communists are not about to take over our McDonald hamburger
stands.”
And Butler certainly won’t waste any footage discussing Kerry’s
debut as an author with The New Soldier, which Kerry wrote with fellow
members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. At the end of that
book, which sports an infamous cover photo of veterans holding a
flag upside down, the future senator writes:
…the New Soldier does not accept the old myths.
We will not quickly join those who march on Veterans’ Day waving
small flags, calling to memory those thousands who died for the
“greater glory of the United States.” We will not accept the
rhetoric. We will not readily join the American Legion and the
Veterans of Foreign Wars…We will not uphold traditions which
decorously memorialize that which was base and grim.
It is from these things the New Soldier is asking America to
turn.
So what is Butler left with? The uncontested portions of Kerry’s
war record, now somewhat reduced by the Swifties’ revelations; the
unfortunately unambiguous antiwar record; and a long, forgettable
career in Washington.
Maybe Butler should focus on footage from the “countless family
vacations.” There must be some good stuff in there that even a
merciful God wouldn’t wipe away.
