In one interview for the film, according to two people who’ve seen it, Kerry’s friend Adam Walinsky laments the candidate’s loss of passion, saying he wishes Kerry would forget who he’s been for the past 30 years and again be the man who bravely spoke out against a war he’d just fought in. For any documentarian, it’s a killer quote. But then the Kerry people found out about it. “George knows what he’s supposed to do,” says Kerry adviser David Thorne, laughing. But his point was clear. “I don’t think George wants to do anything that’s going to hurt John in any way,” adds Thorne, who is also a good friend of Butler’s. Butler says, “When I screen the film for David before the final cut, if he makes reasonable objections, I would listen to him.” Coproducer Daniel Holton-Roth is already thinking of taking his name off the project: “I want to have a full career in film. I don’t want to be seen as somebody who made a political piece for somebody.”
While Holton-Roth scrambles to line up interviews with Kerry critics, others involved with the film are counting on its working like an ad for Kerry. Though the film was nearly kaput in December–along with Kerry’s candidacy–money is now coursing in from investors who want to see Kerry get elected. Executive producer Bill Samuels, a longtime Kerry fund-raiser, used to pitch the film to potential investors as a means of defeating Bush until Holton-Roth got nervous about arousing the suspicion of federal election officials.
Whether it’s propaganda or not won’t change the fact that Butler’s photographs are often lovely and uncover their own truths. They reveal that Kerry once wore tight jeans, had a monstrous unibrow and always had his arms around his little girls. There’s also a powerful photograph (left) that shows Kerry, after throwing a vet’s medals onto the Capitol steps in 1971, crumpled on the lawn with his face in his arms, his wife at his side comforting him. The shot communicates in one glimpse what the candidate has struggled to get across: his humanity. You can be sure that that photograph, at least, will make the final cut.
