`Going Upriver' director says film is not an anti-Swift Boat tract.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

Byline: Rene Rodriguez

It's natural to assume, watching "Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry," that director George T. Butler made the movie as a direct response to "Unfit for Command," the controversial bestseller co-written by John E. O'Neill, who has spearheaded the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign to discredit Kerry's decorated Vietnam War record.

But Butler, a photographer and filmmaker ("Pumping Iron") who began working on the film in 2002, quickly dismisses that theory.

"I don't own a copy of the book, I've never held a copy in my hands and I've never seen a Swift Boat ad on TV," Butler, 61, says via telephone from his New Hampshire home. "We were in the middle of editing when all that happened, and I truly and forthrightly never paid attention to it. If I had tried to raise specific objections to the Swift Boat people in my movie, I would have never finished."

Relying heavily on newsreel footage and vintage photographs, along with recent interviews of Vietnam veterans who fought alongside Kerry on the battlefield, "Going Upriver" follows the presidential candidate from his days as an idealistic Yale student to his experiences on the battlefield and his transformation into a passionate anti-war advocate upon his return to the United States.

Unlike most of the politically themed documentaries released this year, "Going Upriver" takes a relaxed, nonconfrontational approach that is the antithesis of Michael Moore's bluster. That's not to imply that "Going Upriver" is a nonpartisan movie: Butler put the final touches on the film mere days before its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival last month, and is rushing it into theaters Friday, all in hopes of getting it seen before the presidential election.

A personal friend of Kerry since 1964 (Kerry is even godfather of one of his sons), Butler makes no apologies for his close ties to his subject.