About a year before George W. Bush became president, J. H. Hatfield wrote a biography of the then governor of Texas in which he claimed, in the afterward, that Bush had used cocaine in the seventies. This book was called Fortunate Son: George W. Bush And The Making Of An American President and it was originally published by St. Martin's Press until supposed legal pressure from the Bush family lawyers caused a complete recall and a subsequent burning of the book.

Shortly after, independent underground publisher, Soft Skull Press, headed up by a punk named Sander Hicks, picked up the rights to the book and got it back in print. It has since gone back to press for a third edition and the author, J. H. Hatfield, has committed suicide.

Horns And Halos takes a look at the controversy surrounding the book, and in particular, the controversy surrounding its enigmatic author. It seems Hatfield had a prior conviction for acting as in a conspiracy to murder and when this book came out, his credibility was called into play. He did serve his time, five years in jail to be exact, and oddly enough when he wrote a tell all book on Ewan McGregor and a trivia book on The X-Files no one brought it up, but with the release of Fortunate Son all of a sudden it was being brought into light.

Hicks stood behind him the entire time and the two struck up an interesting friendship despite coming from very different backgrounds and have a fairly large gap in their ages. The film follows them around from book show to publishing house (contained in a basement office in the building in which Hicks worked as the superintendent), and various other locations. Of course, it all ends with Hatfield's death but the film had been started long before he killed himself, it just so happens that it makes for a rather unusual ending to a story that is both tragic, hilarious, and very thought provoking (more in regards to what you aren't told than what you are).

Horns And Halos takes a critical look at the author, his subject, and more importantly, the way the controversy surrounding it was handled by the media. When Hatfield holds a press conference to reveal who his sources were for the cocaine allegations, attendance is amazingly sparse considering the magnitude of the event – the author is going to reveal who exactly revealed to him that the most powerful political figure in the world had a penchant for the powder – this is a big deal and something that the president still has yet to deny. Despite all this though, the film does a nice job of staring impartial and ultimately lets you make up your own mind without force feeding you its politics. J. H. Hatfield was obviously a strange guy and that's made very clear, but he was also intelligent and passionate about what he did, as was Hicks.

Video:

Horns And Halos is presented in a rock solid 1.85.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer. It's not perfect, some of the limitations of the source material is noticeable and some of the clips from various other sources are a little softer looking but for the most part this is a very nice transfer with strong colors, a high level of detail, nice deep black levels, and a solid color range. The supplements are mostly full frame and some of the older footage doesn't fare as well as the feature but it's all very watchable and pretty much problem free.