PREVIOUS SPREAD: ZELLER/©FITNESS PUBLICATIONS, INC./COURTESY OF WEIDER HEALTH & FITNESSM&F:What was your first professional
experience with bodybuilding?
George Butler:Charles Gaines
wasassignedbySports Illustrated
to write an article on a bodybuilding
contestfortheJuly’72issue.He
askedmetotakethephotographs.
What was the contest?
ItwastheMrEastCoast,whichwasheld
inMassachusettsandwaswonbya
wonderful body-builder named Leon Brown.
Were you familiar with bodybuilding
atthetime,orwasitanew
experience for you?
IhadgrownupinJamaicaandtheWest
IndiesandIusedtoworkout
in a gym in Jamaica, and bodybuilding
wasabigsportdownthere.Isaw
my first bodybuilding exhibit actually
atapoliticalrallyinachurchin
Savanna-la-Mar, Jamaica.
How did that come about?
Afriendofminewasrunningfor
parliamentinJamaica,andhehada
politicalrallyintheparishchurch,and
partofhisrallyincludedabodybuilding
exhibitionwithaguynamedSamson.
The power went out in the middle of it,
so they lit it with kerosene f lares.
After theSports Illustratedarticle
camethebook.Iunderstandthatyou
facedafewobstaclesinattempting
to get it published. Hadn’t Doubleday
givenyouanadvancetodothebook?
Right. We did the entire book and turned
themanuscriptintoSandyRichardson,
PUMPING IRON:
the film that almost wasn’t.
With the exception of the brothers Weider,
few people have had as much of an
influence on the popularisation of body-
building as George Butler. As the engine that
conceived, directed and then brought the
film Pumping Iron to theatres 40 years ago,
Butler has given bodybuilding fans the world
over a visual touchstone that still serves
as everything from historical reference
to motivational guide to celluloid bible.
who was editor in chief at Doubleday,
and he wrote us a letter saying, “I want
my money back. No one will ever read
this book, and no one will ever be
interested in Arnold Schwarzenegger.”So then you shopped it around
in New York?
Yeah. We ended up at Simon & Schuster.That was in ’74?
Late 1974.And was it a success?
Ye s. It m a de The New York Times
Best Sellers list.How many editions have there been?
I think about 20 printings.Your book is what inspired me to
take up bodybuilding. When I was
about 10, I remember thumbing
through a copy in a department
store and coming to the picture
of Arnold with a topless girl on his
shoulders, and I thought, “That’s
what I want to be.”
Well, bear in mind that the woman
on his shoulders was the top woman
bodybuilder at the time. I took those
photos for a Playboy article, and
Arnold was supposed to be the male
bodybuilder and Heidi was supposed
to be the female bodybuilder.So after the book comes the movie.
What was it like trying to bring
the film to the screen?
Was Charles involved?Charles decided he didn’t want to be
involved in the movie. Pretty much
everyone deserted by this point.Did you have funding at this stage?
Funding came in very erratically and with
great difficulty. I actually went to 3000
people one by one to finance the film.3000?!
Yeah, it’s really true. I’m not exaggerating.So you then went out and shot
some footage?
We shot a test film, and I screened
it in New York for 100 investors,
and [actress] Laura Linney’s father
[playwright Romulus Linney] got up
and said, “George, if you ever make a
movie about Arnold Schwarzenegger,
you’ll be laughed off 42nd Street.”That kind of negative attitude
still astounds me.
What you’ve got to understand is
that back in the early ’70s, bodybuilding
was the least glamorous sport in
the world. The prevailing view was
that it was purely homosexual,
that bodybuilders were totally
uncoordinated, that when they grew
older their muscles would turn to fat,
and that they had no intelligence
whatsoever. Charles Gaines said that
it was like trying to promote midget
wrestling. It was so tawdry... everyone
we knew was laughing at us.It’s amazing not only how far
bodybuilding has risen since then64 FLEX | JUNE – JULY 2017