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Horns and Halos

A Bush Burner Burned

By John Anderson | STAFF WRITER

February 28, 2003

(U). The Bush biographer, the punk publisher, the unnamed sources and the dark side of the media. Documentary about the Dubya-bashing "Fortunate Son" is saddled with an unwieldy cast of characters and angles, but the payoff is powerful and revelatory. Written by Suki Hawley. Directed by Michael Galinsky and Hawley. 1:30. At Cinema Village, 12th Street near University Place, Manhattan.

Timing is everything. Had "Horns and Halos" arrived while George W. Bush's popularity was in its ascendancy, the film might have seemed less urgent, less relevant and certainly more apt to be labeled "old news." Current events, however, can often seem like an advertising campaign.

"Horns and Halos," by the team of Michael Galinsky and Suki Hawley ("Radiation"), is only partly about Bush. Mostly, it's about a book about Bush - "Fortunate Son," the controversial biography of the then-Texas governor by J.H. Hatfield, which St. Martin's Press pulled off the shelves in 1999, when it discovered Hatfield was a convicted felon (he'd served five years in prison for conspiracy to commit murder). That Hatfield's record damaged his credibility is unquestioned, but that it was virtually immaterial to the charges in the book (including that Bush was arrested for cocaine possession in 1972) didn't seem to matter to anyone - including the Dallas reporter who "discovered" Hatfield's prison record, but has little to say about the book's claims.

Hatfield's stupidity or hubris or naivete - or a combination of all three - gave St. Martin's a way out, the rest of the media a much easier story to cover and all but buried the book.

Enter Sander Hicks, a then-29- year-old "publisher" and Lower East Side building "maintenance engineer" who engages his low-budget, basement-operated Soft Skull Press to reprint the Hatfield book. Hicks is not what most people would likely call an engaging character. He loves the camera far too much and - because he apparently gave Galinsky- Hawley the greatest access - is on screen far too much. He also is in way over his head: If the administration-to-be is as powerful and manipulative as he contends, why would he ever dream that his punk-rock publishing house would get away with tearing it down?

But naivete is the name of the game in "Horns and Halos." Hatfield, whose previous books had been quickie celebrity bios, is a sympathetic character, partly because he seems to have honestly believed no one would find him out. Hicks pit-bulls the book through the publishing process, in the face of financial ruin and a lawsuit Hatfield brings on himself. Galinsky-Hawley obviously began their film and pursued it on the flimsiest of hopes that an actual movie would result. (It does.) And the entire cast of characters seems to have had the idea that, if only "Fortunate Son" could be published, the fate of a nation might be changed. That seems the most quixotic aspect of an ultimately tragic film.