George ButlerArnold Schwarzenegger, an adventure filmmaker who explored the bodybuilding subculture in the documentary “Pumping Iron”, died at his home in Holdernes, NH, on October 21. He was 78 years old.

Son Desmond said the cause was pneumonia.

“Pumping Iron” (1977) Mr. of British descent. Endangered Bengal tigers Sunderbans, mangrove forest in India and Bangladesh; Mars Exploration in Robotic Vehicle; And the 2004 presidential campaign of his longtime friend John Kerry.

“Movies should take people to places they can’t imagine, not just places they haven’t been to,” said Carolyn Alexander, his longtime friend and business partner and screenwriter or co-author of five of his documentaries. Telephone.

It is Mr. Butler’s best known film Popular Documentary “Pumping Iron” with Robert Fiore (with some scripted sequences). He helped bodybuilders escape from them as physical curiosities and gained recognition as serious athletes.

In 1977, Mr. Butler told the New York Daily News that there was a “myth” that bodybuilders were “uncoordinated, stupid, narcissistic muscleheads,” but they were actually “followers of others. Some – on a professional level.”

“Pumping Iron” focused on a group of bodybuilders trained at the Goldhouse Gym in Venice Beach, California. The film draws special attention to the fierce rivalry between Mr. Schwarzenegger, five times Mr. Olympia, and the shy Lou Ferigno, who soon starred in the title role of the television series “The Incredible Hulk.”

Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times praised the bodybuilders for “pumping iron” to make it into a movie “without sympathy or ridicule, but with unwavering detachment and calmness – even when they are handled naked.”

George Tyson Butler was born in Chester, England on October 12, 1942 and grew up in Wales, Somalia, Kenya and Jamaica. His father, Desmond, was an Irish-born British Army officer who later ran an avis plantation and rental car franchise in Jamaica. His mother, Dorothy (West) Butler, owns a restaurant business and rental property in Jamaica.