Upriver Across America

It's 1 p.m. in Battleground Ohio. In less than 90 hours the polls will open for what is now commonly known as Most Important Election of Our Lifetime. As with every swing state, the campaign to convert every last undecided voter still rages, and on this last Friday before Nov. 2 it is taking the form of a screening of Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry on the campus of the University of Cincinnatti.

At least some of the estimated 500 students assembled at UC's student union may be more interested in the guests that have been assembled to present and participate in a post-screening Q&A about the cinematic story of John Kerry's combat experience, his participation with Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations hearing in 1971. Actors Paul Newman and Brenden Fraser are on hand, as are former Republican Congressman and Vietnam vet Pete McCloskey and author Douglas Brinkley, whose Kerry biography Tour of Duty provided the inspiration for the film. Even Jeff "the Dude" Dowd, the slacker-king inspiration for The Big Lebowski, overcame his amotivational syndrome to represent in Ohio.

By now, setting up screenings of a John Kerry documentary may seem like preaching to the choir, but Going Upriver director George Butler sees something more important happening. This screening is one of nearly 1000 that have taken place over the last several weeks at college campuses across the nation. According to Butler, while many students drawn to see the film may have intended to vote for whoever they considered the lesser of two evils, they are leaving with a changed outlook. "A woman just came in the door," he says. "And said exactly this: 'Before seeing the movie I was against George Bush. After seeing the movie I am for John Kerry.' I think that explains it in a very eloquent way."

Butler – a longtime friend of Kerry's who first rose to national attention as the director of Pumping Iron, the bodybuilding documentary that catapulted Arnold Schwartzenegger to fame – has introduced the film at events in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. He flew south last week for a screening at Florida State University, hit Iowa yesterday, and drives to Columbus this afternoon for the final screening at Ohio State. Altogether he's appeared at 20 screenings, with Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston, Cameron Diaz, Ed Norton, Reese Witherspoon and Dermot Mulroney rounding out the list of celebrity appearances.

The DVD screenings were set up by MoveOn.org's Student Action Network to take place after the conclusion of Going Upriver's recent 200-city theatrical run, although the announcement of Sinclair Broadcasting's October 22 airdate for anti-Kerry documentary Stolen Honor gave the screenings added purpose. Butler sued Sinclair for unauthorized use of his own photos and footage from Going Upriver, subsequently accepting an invitation by Sinclair to represent Kerry for the "news program" that ran in Stolen Honor's place.

"Sinclair gave me equal time with my film," says Butler, who was interviewed for the broadcast. "I think we completely converted that program. We demanded equal time. Sinclair was put under national pressure. They buckled. They turned it into a news program, and I think the sequences from my film were much more interesting [than the scenes from Stolen Honor]."

Aside from that appearance, Butler has been going full throttle screening his film and giving Q&As. "We did one last night at Iowa State, and it went on for about an hour," he says. "There were a lot of questions about Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, because my film deals with that and John O'Neill, and how Nixon couldn't find any disputes in the official records of John Kerry's naval medals."