Horns and Halos
by Michael Galinsky, Suki Hawley
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DVD details
Actor: George Bush, Pamela Colloff, Richard Curtis, The Rev. Billy, Zack ExleyDirector: Michael Galinsky, Suki Hawley
Producer: Michael Galinsky
Producer: Suki Hawley
Writer: Suki Hawley
Producer: Danielle Schleif
Producer: David Beilinson
Producer: Jeff Sanders
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; Spanish (Subtitled)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 90 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-10-05
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Go-Kart Films
DVD Reviews of Horns and Halos
DVD Review: sad story, another Bush related tragedy
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a sad and poignant video. I remember buying the first edition of the book released by Soft Skull Press, and I was amazed but not surprised by the revelation that Bush was busted for coke.
J.H. Hatfield was obviously a troubled person, and the whole story is tragic. This is what happens to those who reveal the truth about powerful people.
DVD Review: Makes you think
Summary: 4 Stars
It really makes you wonder. I tried to read "Fortunate Son" by James Hatfield but didn't have the patience at the time to read the book. I heard plenty about it and felt I got the gist of the book. I decided I could spend 79 minutes of my time watching the DVD. The owner of Soft Skull, the publishing company who re-released the book after St. Martin dropped and recalled the book. St. Martin even burned the books they had (disgusting!)after being threated by Bush campaign legal staff. Anyway, what bothers me is that our media, even book publishers, are afraid to say anything negative about Bush. I thought that was changing after Katrina but not much. Mainstream media goes easy on the Bush Administration but not surprising since Corporate America owns everything. And the writer, James Hatfield committed suicide. He was no angel himself but that struck me as sad. He had a little girl who he genuinely seem to adore.
DVD Review: Not clear
Summary: 2 Stars
First, as anyone who knows me will testify, I'm NOT a Dubya fan. On the contrary, I've been working on his impeachment, have written to Congress many times on the subject.
Second, I did purchase the book, "Fortunate Son" a couple of years ago. It's among the several anti-Bush books I have.
But this documentary had me wondering: Did the book's author make up scuttlebutt about Dubya?
I think Bush is a spoiled brat who's literally gotten away with murder his whole life. But my belief doesn't make the claim true. I hoped that Hatfield, the book's author, would have solid evidence that Bush had indulged in cocaine--or any other practice to show that Bush is the collossal hypocrite I believe he is. Unfortunately, even the film suggested that those whom Hatfield "quoted" denied having said what Hatfield attributed to them.
So, did Hatfield make up the story? Did he just spread gossip? I'd love to find Bush guilty of everything of which I believe he's guilty. But, as I worked in civil rights law for a number of years, I became wary of speculation, gossip, people FEELING something was, say, racist when such a feeling did not a racist motive make.
Really, I hoped to find a useful documentary here--and I have a good sized collection of documentary DVDs--but I didn't. May Mister Hatfield rest in peace (He committed suicide, and that was emotionally hard on those at Soft Skull Press who's defended him--needless to say). But the best I can say about this documentary is that it served to challenge the credibility of a Bush critic. And that may have done far more harm than good.
DVD Review: The human story underneath
Summary: 4 Stars
This documentary actually turns out to be quite a lot more than a political polemic, and it's all the better for it. Naturally, extreme lovers of Bush will be put off immediately, but no surprise there. And, people looking for straight Bush bashing may be disappointed as well. This is not an expose into the darker side of the Retard King, and it purposely goes easy on the conspiratorial tone. There is a significant, though not entirely fleshed out, subtext about media control and the consequences of that, but mostly this is a story about some fascinating, driven, rather demented people and their travails amongst the big fish. In other words, it's most entertaining and enlightening on a human level, not a political one.
I will say that the `revelation' at the end is so extreme that it changes the perception of the entire narrative, and it's something which the movie itself never entirely comes to grips with. The way it's structured does give the momentum of the drama a naturalistic feel, but I wonder if there wasn't a better, more upfront way to rework it and maintain the impact.
However, the sense of howling into the wind is subtle and well played, and the real human drama of people striving to be more than they actually are (even by duplicitous means) opens up a whole range of connections between GWB, the author and the publisher. The idea that the publisher and the author are to some extent frauds, or at the very least unabashed showmen, would call into question the validity of the whole documentary if the approach didn't feel genuinely v?rit?, which is why it works much better as a depiction of flawed humanity than as an investigation into the (also interesting) issues with the book, media, etc.
DVD Review: "We don't burn books in this country."
Summary: 5 Stars
"Horns and Halos" is a fascinating story behind a book that became so controversial, its publisher, St Martin's Press issued a recall a few days after the publication date, and promptly burned all of the copies. The name of the book is "Fortunate Son" a biography of George W. Bush. The book's author, J.H.Hatfield had a few other star biographies under his belt (Ewan McGregor and Patrick Stewart) and also authored an unauthorized guide of X-Files when he pitched the book successfully to St. Martin's Press. "Fortunate Son" was supposed to be one of those glitzy tribute bios, but it turned into something much more, and what happened to the book, and J.H.Hatfield is the meat of this riveting documentary.
Hatfield added an afterword to the book, which he claimed was at St. Martin's insistence. The afterword included a juicy acknowledgment by three unspecified sources about Bush's alleged cocaine addiction. Hatfield insisted that he didn't want to add this info, but did so when the publisher pressed the issue. Immediately after publication, Hatfield's sordid past--which included a murder-for-hire scheme came to light, and the dirt on Hatfield--combined with the segment on Bush's alleged cocaine use led to the books' recall and destruction.
Enter Soft Skull Press, a tiny independent press who then republished the book and tried to distribute it. A great deal of the film follows the trials and tribulations of the rogue founder of Soft Skull Press, the intrepid, idealistic Sander Hicks as he and J.H.Hatfield attempt to re-launch the book. Hicks and Hatfield attended book conventions, and even appeared on 60 Minutes to try and promote the book. The two men form an unlikely sometimes-difficult bond. There's Hatfield with his glum, fatalistic realisation that he's "dead meat", and then there's Hicks, who refuses to give up. Unfortunately, the content of the book faded behind its controversy and the author's past. And even when Hatfield revealed his sources, nothing could salvage the situation.
The film "Horns and Halos" is a two-disc set. One disc is the film, and the other disc is devoted to extras including: protests at Bush's inauguration, band White Collar Crime in performance, 11 deleted scenes, director's commentary, interviews with Hatfield, protest coverage, KCET coverage of the documentary, and an interview with Sander Hicks. If you are interested in reading more of the story (the 60 minutes transcript, for example), Sander Hicks has a website (sanderhicks.com). Hicks no longer works for Soft Skull Press and is now--amongst other things--working on a bio of Karl Rove--displacedhuman
Description of Horns and Halos
This DVD captures the unlikely connection of three men. An ex-con biographer, a janitor turned publisher and U.S. President George W. Bush whose paths to power and popularity become tangled in the controversial book Fortunate Son. Winner "Best Documentary" 2002 New York Underground Film Festival, Winner "Best Documentary" 2002 Chicago Underground Film Festival.Horns and Halos is a fascinating, unexpectedly tragic story about one man's downfall in the brutal world of perception-driven media and politics. In the late 1990s, author James Hatfield wrote Fortunate Son, a biography of then-candidate George W. Bush that alleged, among other things, that the future president used cocaine during the '70s. St. Martin's Press fast-tracked the project, but recalled the book when Hatfield's earlier prison time for murder conspiracy became known. Horns and Halos follows what happened next: Fortunate Son was picked up by tiny Soft Skull Press, run by a passionate, Mohawk-topped young man named Sander Hicks, but the long, uphill battle to restore credibility to the work proves ruinous. The film is notable for access to the anxiety and roller-coaster emotions of Hatfield and Hicks, and there's plenty more despair in deleted scenes offered on this two-DVD set. Special features are especially important and useful here for added context, including raw footage of protests at Bush's inauguration, performances by Hicks and his band White Collar Crime, a profile of the film created by public television's KCET, and much else. --Tom Keogh
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