"John Kerry has had the most interesting life of anyone in the presidential arena since Theodore Roosevelt," Butler told Daily Variety. "His history as a politician is that he's been underestimated, and that he has enormous willpower, not unlike Arnold Schwarzenegger."

Butler describes "Tour of Duty" as a cross between the cinema verite style of "Pumping Iron" and the historical material of "Endurance."

In other film news as reported by Daily Variety, Michael Moore's anti-Bush documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 will probably premiere at Cannes and be released here in the early fall, and The Hunting of the President, based on the book by Joe Conason and Gene Lyons about the attempted Republican putsch during the second Clinton term, is also expected to be released before the election. Also, a non-documentary film by John Sayles, Silver City, which "shoots satiric arrows at the present state of American democracy and features Chris Cooper as the less-than-erudite scion of a conservative political dynasty fumbling his way to office in a Colorado gubernatorial race" is due in September as well.

It looks like there could well be a significant number of liberal-oriented political films around just as the vast majority of the population finally turns its full attention to the upcoming electing, and that can hardly be considered a bad thing -- or any kind of coincidence. (Certainly these films will primarily be preaching to the choir, but I also expect that they will provoke a fair amount of media coverage, and that will be seen by many more people, including some who may already, because of events int he real world, be considering withdrawing their support from Bush.)

Perhaps we're lucky that the whole Mel Gibson/"Passion of the Christ" thing has already happened and is over with.

Update: Also according to Daily Variety, another documentary film maker, Steve Rosenbaum, will follow Kerry behind the scenes during the campaign. "Inside The Bubble" is due to be released in mid-September.

The feature began shooting earlier this month and will continue filming through the Democratic convention in July. Rosenbaum will examine Kerry via his interaction with the immediate sphere that surrounds him, including his personal assistant, trip director, press secretaries and strategic advisers, all of whom will be key characters in the movie.

"We want to give people a chance to form opinions that are not based purely on stump speeches," Rosenbaum said. "Cameras are usually on John Kerry when he's giving a speech or a press conference or in a photo opportunity.

"We realized that in none of these moments do you get to see him in anything but performance mode," he added. "The idea of our film is to show all the moments in between." ...

"There's no intention to make a film that's either controversial or a political endorsement," Rosenbaum said. "This cannot be a political commercial or we lose. This has to be honest, revealing, questioning, fun and entertaining. It has to show the ride of the campaign experience with all the peaks and valleys."