JohnFromCincinnati.net

Any "lucky" guess about the upcoming show?

In anticipation of "Luck", I checked the HBO show site and the BB. Dismal three threads with about 19 posts, and of course all, as it was, in pitch black.
Maybe when the show starts the place will be livelier, we shall see. Waxon suggested we might get together for a discussion when such time comes, here or somewhere else.

I will post news about Luck here as well.


TV scribes rejoice: All of 'Luck' arrives next week

HBO is spreading the word of its David Milch-Michael Mann horseracing series "Luck" in a big way.

Pay cabler is sending out the entire nine-episode season to critics and TV writers next week, rather than the two- or three-episode advance that is usually the case, offered in hopes of whetting the appetite of scribes.

The full-season delivery is a rarity for HBO, which has done it only twice before: The fourth season of "The Wire" — known informally as the Corner Boys season — and for the World War II miniseries "The Pacific."

HBO insiders are sending out "Luck" because they believe the series — about the inhabitants of racetrack life — has the potential will be one of the net's great accomplishments.

Net, in reaching out to its audience beyond TV writers, will sneak the pilot of "Luck" this Sunday immediately following the season finale of "Boardwalk Empire." The show's regular run begins Jan. 29.

Series was created by David Milch, who is avid horseracing fan and has longed to bring his equine passion to TV. While the thought of bringing on Michael Mann to add the cinematic vision of the Sports of Kings sounded like a perfect accompaniment for Milch's script, the two have often tangled and HBO execs have had their fair share of headaches intervening between the two. Yet, Milch said he and Mann have worked out their differences for the greater good.

"You get to a point where you realize that it's a shame on you if you can't make things work, and we did," Milch said. "It was not an uneventful experience, but finally the responsibility has to be for the work."

What HBO is also hoping with "Luck" is to erase the memory of "John From Cincinnati," the surf noir series that always seemed an uneasy fit with Milch at the controls.

Milch, whose broadcast resume includes "Hill Street Blues" and "NYPD Blue," is best known these days for his Western opus "Deadwood," which after three seasons was cut too soon in order to make room for "John" — a decision that everyone involved likely deeply regrets.John-ortiz-photo

What "Deadwood" did for Ian McShane, Timothy Olyphant and Paula Malcomson, "Luck" could possibly do for little-known actor John Ortiz, who is phenomenal playing a Latin American trainer, partially based on real-life trainer Julio Canani.

What it also possibly may do is make a TV star out of Dustin Hoffman, a bigscreen giant for decades. Hoffman's character is a bit mysterious in the pilot, but he's clearly an individual with great power and is coming out of a prison term and looking to get back in the game.

Milch, who is preparing for another season of "Luck" — HBO hasn't yet greenlit a second season, but it's extremely likely and production needs an early start due to shooting at Santa Anita — and is looking forward to telling more stories.

As track announcer Trevor Denman says several times each race day at post time, "And away they go."


from:
http://weblogs.variety.com/on_the_air/2011/12/tv-scribes-rejoice-all-of-luck-arrives-next-week.html (http://weblogs.variety.com/on_the_air/2011/12/tv-scribes-rejoice-all-of-luck-arrives-next-week.html)

A horse racing blog post about Luck with some interesting details.

HBO's LUCK pilot show to air this Sunday at 10 p.m. ET
by Jennie Rees

A Santa Anita press release. According to hbo.com, the LUCK pilot will air this coming Sunday at 10 p.m. ET. I've got to find a friend who has HBO. I'd love to see it.

ARCADIA, Calif. (Dec. 7, 2011)—HBO's highly anticipated LUCK, which stars Dustin Hoffman, Nick Nolte, Dennis Farina, John Ortiz and many others, will air for the first time in a sneak preview unveiling of its pilot on Sunday, Dec. 11, following the season's final episode of "Boardwalk Empire."

Created by world renowned writer/producer David Milch, LUCK is also directed and produced by the highly acclaimed Michael Mann and has been filmed in large-part at Santa Anita.  The series will feature race scenes and characters from The Great Race Place including retired Hall of Fame jockey Gary Stevens and current rider, Chantal Sutherland.

The official LUCK pilot premier on HBO is Jan. 29 and that will be followed by eight episodes which will comprise Season One.

Milch, a longtime Thoroughbred owner who has also created such blockbuster hits as "Hill Street Blues," "NYPD Blue," and "Deadwood," has described LUCK as his "love letter" to horseracing.

LUCK marks the first-ever time the Academy Award winning Hoffman has starred in a television role and that alone makes its debut compelling viewing.

"We believe LUCK has tremendous potential for us here at Santa Anita," said Santa Anita President George Haines.  "This is going to be a look at horseracing that has never been provided.  It's going to at times make people uncomfortable, but in the end, we believe it has the potential to cultivate and create many thousands of new fans for us.

"It's no secret that the people at HBO are very excited about this series and we're going to do everything we can to personalize what folks are watching and help them relate what they see to real-life horsemen, fans, employees and scene locations here at Santa Anita.

"We've begun construction on a LUCK LOUNGE on the main floor of the grandstand and we've scheduled a grand opening for it on Sunshine Millions Day, Jan. 28, which is the day before the official premier on HBO," Haines added.

from:
http://blogs.courier-journal.com/racing/2011/12/07/hbos-luck-pilot-show-to-air-this-sunday-at-10-p-m-et/ (http://blogs.courier-journal.com/racing/2011/12/07/hbos-luck-pilot-show-to-air-this-sunday-at-10-p-m-et/)

My DVR didn't record it.

Here are the best, in my opinion, reviews of the pilot episode written with some evasive eloquence and understanding of the nature of horse racing as the subject and Mr.Milch, as a writer.


A Little Bit of Luck
HBO makes a micro-event of the pseudo-premiere of David Milch's promising new horse-racing drama.

By Troy Patterson


Last night, after the season finale of Boardwalk Empire, HBO aired the very fine pilot of Luck, presenting an early look at a horse-track drama that properly debuts on Jan. 29. To be sure, the channel's primary goal in this scheduling was to instigate some word-of-mouth marketing—to make a micro-event of a pseudo-premiere of a series created by two major talents, David Milch and Michael Mann, and starring genuine movie stars not yet put out to pasture, Nick Nolte and Dustin Hoffman. But nor can we escape the impression that HBO was generously offering viewers a kind of early warning. If you were gripped by the episode's thrilling race sequences and tense moments of drama but remain fuzzy on its nuances, then you've got a whole month and a half to figure out how your TV set's closed-captioning works.

Luck, with its bright light by turns buttery and frigid and its pace sometimes ambling contentedly and sometimes trotting hotly, boasts a distinctive voice. In terms of literal voice, what is most distinctive is that the rhythmic dialogue gets delivered in a fashion confidently approaching the edge of unintelligibility. The textured paddock patter and gambling slang were easy enough to sort out, but then there was the gallery of marble-mouths dripping pearls of wisdom. The Latin-American accent of the trainer played by John Ortiz was thicker than a high-roller's bankroll and a matter of comment within the episode, with one character suggesting that the trainer played it up as a matter of bewitching and bewildering various gringos. The dense muttering of Dustin Hoffman's character indicates the power of a gangster accustomed to being listened to by people whose lives depend on understanding his every word. And Nick Nolte, mumbling and grumbling as a ruminative trainer who enjoys a metaphysical bond with his horse, might as well be communicating by rolling the balls of the feet over gravel to trace out runic script.
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It's worth mentioning that the surname of the trainer is Escalante (which has the ring of a present participle hurtling itself to allegorical heights), that the nickname of Hoffman's character is "Ace," and that Nolte is portraying a person listed simply as "The Old Man." It is an indication of Luck's terrific tonal control that this stuff is not totally ridiculous.

Because the show is grounded in the grim specifics of the life at a fantasy version of Santa Anita Park—and because it minimizes its sentimental mistiness about equine nobility and human hopefulness—it wears its archetypes handsomely. Why, it doesn't even grate when Jason Gedrick, playing the greasiest and most degenerate of a crew of Pick Six bettors, stands up with perfect posture (for the first time in decades, it seems possible) and starts mumbling "America the Beautiful" when his long shot crosses the finish line. Listen closely and you'll hear the elegant approach of a machine built to refresh a myth about the goddess of fortune.

from:
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/television/2011/12/hbo_s_luck_with_dustin_hoffman_and_nick_nolte.html (http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/television/2011/12/hbo_s_luck_with_dustin_hoffman_and_nick_nolte.html)


Television review: 'Luck' on HBO

By Mary McNamara, Los Angeles Times Television Critic


Anyone who has been to Santa Anita in the early morning hours knows it is a place of poetry and pathos. Those time-weathered men, their eyes lined in mutual squint, gathered in sacramental silence to watch the horses move by, haloed by steam and sending dirt up in clods rich and dark; the sound of the hooves is like the beating pulse of the Earth itself.

But how to tell the story of such a place without lapsing into overworked extremes, the sentiment of bond between human and horse, the simplistic adrenaline of a champion's tale, the heartbreak of gambling's larcenous core?

Ve-ry slow-ly and without much concern for convention is the answer, at least if you are David Milch, whose new and much-anticipated series "Luck" got a sneak-preview premiere on HBO on Sunday night. "Luck" will officially debut in January, but the folks at HBO hoped to leverage the viewership for "Boardwalk Empire's" season finale.

It may work, it may not, though it's surprising that Milch went for it since, after yanking the still-mourned "Deadwood," HBO debuted his next series, "John From Cincinnati," right after the finale of "The Sopranos." The howling vacuum left by that now-famous final scene was not why "John From Cincinnati" failed, but it certainly did not help.

The juxtaposition of "Boardwalk Empire" and "Luck" is similarly jarring, but then it's difficult to imagine any show that would prepare an audience for the first episode of "Luck," which moves with slow and often maddening deliberation, showing the occasional glimpse of astonishing power, like a thoroughbred moving around a morning track under an iron hand. Much is revealed, and nothing at all, as characters are introduced with little or no context, midconversation as it were, in a place that few viewers will find familiar, speaking in small, seemingly nonessential sentences that have meaning only to the other characters.

The show opens with Chester "Ace" Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) being released from prison into the care of his driver, Gus (Dennis Farina). Ace has, apparently, taken the fall for certain colleagues. He is now, it seems, setting up some sort of payback that involves a horse Gus now "owns," courtesy of Ace, who cannot afford to be seen too much around the track.

The site is where an orchestra of colorful characters make their carefully timed entrances. There's the short-tempered trainer Escalante (John Ortiz), dressing down a chatty jockey named Goose (Jeffrey Woody Copland), whose agent, nicknamed Porky Pig and played by a stammering Richard Kind, tries to talk some sense into him while eyeballing a potential Derby winner — who is owned by "The Old Man," a laconic Nick Nolte muttering vague self-indictments into his white whiskers.

Meanwhile, a quartet of down-and-outers, led by Kevin Dunn as the oxygen-huffing, wheelchair-bound Marcus, attempts to hit a big win and provide a Greek chorus on the wily and fractured nature of luck and the disparate nature of the souls it ensnares.

All the big seeds are planted — love, power, self-destruction, betrayal, revenge, redemption — though planted so deep one can't imagine them blooming anytime soon. Even the master of the multiple storyline, Charles Dickens, took pity on his readers and appointed a protagonist, but Milch and director Michael Mann steadfastly refuse, though Ace and the Old Man quickly emerge, if only through sheer star power.

At this point in his career, Hoffman can and does act using only the back of his head. He keeps Ace so carefully (and barely) under control that he doesn't allow him a single smile (although the scene in which Ace's temper flares is ultimately very funny), and Farina provides a perfect foil in Gus, who communicates with his boss in the same almost wordless way a jockey communicates with his horse.

Nolte's Old Man is a rumpled, even weepy mess by comparison, and if neither character has the standard trappings of hero or antihero, they each shiver and smoke like volcanoes no longer dormant.

And that's about all you're going to get, ladies and gentlemen, at least until January, and even then it will unfold in its own sweet time. It is a great and perilous experiment, this "Luck," with Milch relying on the patience of HBO and HBO counting on the track record and talent of its creator and stars to draw viewers into a show that speaks its own cryptic language and steadfastly refuses to reveal its intentions.

The assumption is that this is game-changing TV, which makes one wonder that in consideration of the real power being summoned here, a better series title might have been "Faith."

from:
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/tv/la-et-hbo-luck-20111212,0,339190.story (http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/tv/la-et-hbo-luck-20111212,0,339190.story)

Watch and listen to it, while YouTube/HBO didn't terminate the account and removed the video, as they did to the episode someone uploaded previously. Why - isn't it what HBO tried to do by a sneak peek - spread the word, attract more viewers? Seems counterproductive to me.

The song is "Splitting the Atom" by Massive Attack.

Luck HBO series opening theme (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67X-m8W9pXs&feature=related#ws)

There is one more song, played in one of the trailers, Rich File -"In Time"

"In Time" by Rich File (HBO Luck) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5odmqzi3pbg#ws)

Am I the only one here who SAW the premiere?  Now, correct me if i"m wrong, but isn't the show not set to air until January?  They will undoubtedly re-air this pilot?

OK........    that being said,  ???  ........  I do not wish to talk about Luck right now. (Even though it was VERY well done, and I will probably keep watching it.) 

What I DO wish to say is:  I was right again!!!  Lol...  Long time ago, they said JFC was too expensive to warrant a second season.  Remember that?  Even Milch said that.  Well, let me tell you, folks, this show Luck must have cost them (seriously) about 100 times the operating budget.  Wait till you see this.  It is grandiose beyond imagining.

No spoiler alerts from me.  You watch it in January, and as you do, think about what they spent on this.

Yes, Zen, it might very well be that you were the only one! (I think Skor had also watched it, maybe she would share here what's her take on the sneak-peek.)

Would you please, explain, what do you mean by saying "I was right", is that too much to ask? I know - Christmas, busy time, etc...
You got me very intrigued, is that something you mentioned here, on the JFC site, on the now extinct HBO JFC BB or somewhere else? Was that concerning production costs of Deadwood or JFC?

On the side note - remember, with the cancellation of JFC, the official explanation was that the audience of 3.5 million was not enough to renew the show. Preview of "Luck", as it's been already reported, had the audience of 1.1 million.

However, Hung, or How to Make it, or Bored to Death  attract even lesser number of viewers, but I recently had read an article stating that now HBO would cancel a show only if the show runners or writers don't wish to continue with it themselves.

I guess in 2007 the time for John didn't come yet.
Prophets, as it happens, usually come way before their time, do they not?   ;)

Gosh, I tried to find a link or two for you, but I have failed.  But please believe me when I say I heard David Milch himself say that HBO was worried about the budget.  I absolutely recall the phrase "cost overruns", and thinking "bull, this show was not that expensive to make, at least by HBO standards."

Yes, and we sure know the HBO ratings con:  "They're not TV numbers, they're HBO numbers" :)

So, when you watch Luck, think of the cost compared to the Snug Harbor budget.  It will amaze you.

And yes, John was ahead of his time, too.  But time will fly!  :)  Remember, "WE are coming 9 11 14"

Gosh, the show hasn't started ....let's see what a few more million have to say! . I remember someone going on about the cost?  2008 seems so , so long ago!

I really liked "Luck." I have always been attracted to the racetrack scene. I grew up near Monmouth Park and loved to go to the truck when I lived there. Like in the restaurant business, there is a "front of the house" and a "backside", a mystique and the underbelly. So "Luck" held my interest, and with Nick Nolte and Dustin Hoffmann and Dennis Farina. etc., excellent acting, tight writing. I will watch. Nonetheless, it is nothing llke JFC, and watching this new pilot only made me miss the IB gang. I loved the smallness and the realness of JFC. The "Luck" pilot sowed the seeds for future episodes and multiple subplots. These seem to be variations on what we see on just about every TV show these days- extortion, murder, blackmail, double dealing intrigue. JFC was unique, with its message of hope and promise of redemption. I don't watch TV these days other than listening to MSNBC, so maybe I am off base, there are so many shows I haven't seen, and here I am making generalizations.  Still, "John From Cincinnati" was something very, very special. Thinking back to the JFC summer on the BB, it was just so exciting and fun, there we were, all abuzz. Our little hive.

I always liked the atmosphere of the tracks. The cheers and screams of a big win. I'm a people watcher and there are all kinds of characters at the track.
I was mainly in Hot springs Ark and Fairlawn in E. St. Louis, so yeah an underbelly..  I hope to get see the show. This time maybe get in on the first season., could be interesting. Then again maybe not...we'll see.  Sven2 keep me posted...lol

Wow, guys, long time no see and -Wow!  :-* :-* :-*

For the ones who, like me, had to watch Deadwood and JFC quite few times to understand the language Mr.Milch's  characters speak, I'm re-posting here a long explanation of the preview episode that I found on HBO BB. This post would get lost there in the flow or deleted eventually by HBO moderators, while it could be useful for our readers.

The author's screen name is Bobby C.403, that's his foreword:

"I wrote a long post on twoplustwo dot com, in the thread where this show was being discussed. Twoplustwo is a site for advanced poker players, so it's full of very smart people, supposedly very knowledgeable about gambling....but the consensus there was that nobody could follow what was going on in this episode. Since I've spent more time at the track than all of them combined, I typed up what I called a "commentary track" for the episode. The feedback indicates that many of them found this very useful."

Warning - SPOILERS!

6:15  This is the toughest scene in the show to follow, because of
Turo's accent.  Escalante gives Leon (bug boy) his instructions,
stripping him of his riding crop:  "You don't need no stick.  I've got
to stay here.  Jog him around once the wrong way around (the track),
loosen him up for his race this afternoon."  The kid remarks, "We run
big with this horse today."  Now Escalante has to make sure the kid
understands the instructions he was just given--the last thing we need
is some idiot jockey sprinting around the track and wearing out the
horse before the race.  "What???  Is this morning today?  Or this
afternoon?"  The kid has no idea what the problem is.  Puzzled, he asks,
"What?"

Escalante is a busy man and has no patience for this kid's nonsense.
"Pinhead, is this morning today so far?"  When the kid replies in the
affirmative (with the brilliant, "I guess sir, yes so."), Escalante
repeats the instructions, "Then jog him once the wrong way around, and
shut up on what you don't know, before I call Porky Pig on you."  The
kid takes it, bites his lip, and rides off.

The vet, making conversation, asks, "You met the limo driver yet?"
Escalante scoffs, "And buys this horse for $2M?  You pro'ly too think
they really landed on the moon."

The blues music cranks, and Turo engages in this tough-to-hear exchange with the groom.



ESCALANTE:  Yap, yap, yap, esta nino.

GROOM:  Senor HablaMucho.

ESCALANTE:  (chuckles) HablaMucho, si.



9:00  Nolte remarks to the night watchman, "I was wonderin' if maybe the
last quarter (mile) the girl should loosen up, let him stretch the hell
out."  Then he asks the horse, "Feel like stretchin' out?"  Then, as
the music indicates something important is about to be said, he
instructs the girl, "Maybe you'd let him stretch out a little in the
lane."  The girl can't hide her excitement.  "Great!  Cuz he's been
pullin' my arms off!"  For you horse newbs, this is her way of letting
US know that she's been holding the horse back, and letting NOLTE know
that this is an incredibly strong horse.

11:15  The Big Horse isn't just farting around any more, he's settling down into a jog.  God, this music is kick-ass!

12:17  Marcus is studying his form, we see a brief close-up of his
program, opened to the 4th race, a $12.5k claiming race (which would
make these some of the cheapest horses on the grounds at a major-league
track like Santa Anita, or the classiest horses on the grounds of a
****hole like Suffolk Downs or Mountaineer) 1 Mile on the main track (on
the dirt, not the turf course).  



He's got a circle around the 2-horse; a ton of notations around the
4-horse, which the program tells us is the 9-to-5 favorite; and a couple
of cross-out marks in the blank spaces around the name of the 5-horse,
Mon Gateau.  The program lists each horse's owner, trainer, jock,
morning line odds, and weight to be carried (the fine print at the top
of the page, "the conditions", give a two-pound allowance to any horse
who hasn't won at this distance since January 24, and one pound for
every $1000 the owner knocks off the claiming price, up to two pounds;
I'll explain claiming in the following post).  Of the eight horses we
see listed (the bottom of the page is out of frame), only one is
carrying the entire 123 lbs.  A couple carry 121, a few carry 119, and
two stand out for carrying 113--each of these is a longshot with an
apprentice jockey.  The 3-horse's jockey has an asterisk next to his
name; our 5-horse, Mon Gateau, trained by Turo Escalante, is ridden by
Leon Micheaux, who has THREE asterisks next to his name.  In army terms,
he's not even a Private First Class yet, he's an E-1.  You wouldn't
think a 6-10 pound difference would matter much to a strong young horse,
but in racing, it's a big deal.


14:08 The Big Horse is really starting exert himself now as they begin to turn for home. The rhythm of the hoofbeats has picked up substantially (14 minutes into the first episode, and ship the Sound Editing Emmy--the same sound editing you guys hope they "clean up" before the show runs in earnest???). The rider has her feet up on the dashboard, which means exactly what you think it means: she's dug in, trying to hold this horse back. Another nice touch: you'd have to pause it to see it, but the blanket under the saddle says "WS". Nolte's character is named Walter Smith. The camera angle makes it seem like the horse is coming around the turn so fast, he's fish-tailing like the cars in a Steve McQueen chase scene! I'll bet that little photographic stunt caught the attention of the novice viewer.

14:20 The moment they pass the quarter-pole (which marks a quarter-mile from the finish--it drives me nuts every time Chris Berman calls Week 4 in the NFL "the quarter pole", when there is still THREE-QUARTERS of a season to go!), the girl drops her fanny and crouches as low as she can, loosens the reins, and starts "scrubbing" the horse's neck, urging him to take off. Nick Nolte hits the stopwatch, and the horse literally JUMPS at the chance run as fast as he can. It's what he was BRED to do! His trainer has been bringing him along slowly--not a scam like Escalante pulls later in the episode, this is what a responsible trainer does with a young horse who's not nearly ready to race yet. He's not being whipped or kicked or shouted at, he's not being forced to perform under any duress--all that's happening is he is being given the opportunity to run as fast as he wants in a wide-open space. What more could a strong young horse want? The background is flying by in a blur, every muscle on this running machine is flexing...does tv have a cinematography Emmy?

15:39  "You singled the fourth?  I had the fourth a semi-spread."  "For a
triple-bug apprentice who hasn't won ten races in his life, he's going
to single a horse that hasn't run in two years."  The quick close-up of
the DRF text tells us young Micheaux L has 48 career mounts, 6 wins, 7
places, 3 shows, a win % of .12--not bad for a bug, but not HOF numbers,
either.  That's an average WEEK for some jocks!  The chances to get on
the track are few and far between for a bug at a big-league meet.



16:55  When Porky Pig is done chewing out the kid for running his mouth,
the kid promptly runs his mouth.  He drops his voice to a whisper, and
confides that this horse is really fit.  The kid just doesn't get it.
Beneath the saddle is a red blanket with the initials "TE" on it.



17:15  "Mr Walter, listen, this guy's got nine more gears!", she pants.
Riders get in sync with their horses, she knows what she's talking
about.  She knows that when she asks for it, the horse will be able to
give her even more--a LOT more.  This horse is a monster.

23:41  First authenticity problem:  Kagle holds out a $50 bill for
Jerry's picks.  Everybody knows horse players think $50 bills are
unlucky!  (Lest anyone hold Milch in contempt for this oversight: in the
script I read, it was $10!)

27:57  Escalante gives his instructions: "Listen to me: you keep'n'm
covered up, so he don't go; when you ask o' him, you take'n'm WIDE, so
you don't get'm stopped."  He later repeats, "He gonna finish for you.
Get'm'n WIDE, don't get'm'n STOPPED."

34:04  The kid's trapped on the rail (not bad riding, totally bad luck).
When he sees an opening on the rail no wider than the horse's nose, he
doesn't hesitate, he LUNGES for it!  An incredible move for any jock,
let alone a bug.  This only makes Escalante's chilly reception in the
Winners Circle even funnier.

39:45  Nolte mentions to the horse that he might be ready to race in a few weeks.

43:30  "What's her name?"  "Tattered Flag."  This is called
"foreshadowing".  Milch may as well have called her, "Purina Dog Chow",
cuz that's what she'll be by the end of the week.



43:50  My favorite sound editing yet: as the starting gate moves into
position, we hear chains dragging, a tractor puttering, and those gates
creaking and slamming, each and every one of them.  In this shot, the
SOUND is setting the scene even better than the PICTURE is!



44:01  For the first time, we hear the voice of track announcer Trevor
Denman in the background as the horses go into the gate.  I'm hoping we
hear a lot of Trevor over the course of this series.  He's the best ever
at what he does.  He was featured prominently in Richard Dreyfuss'
horse race comedy "Let It Ride", a film that I highly recommend
(shocker!).  Hey, it's funny.  Ask anybody.



47:28  The kid is making his move, Gary Stevens urges from the stands,
"The outside's the upside, bug!", the music is building to a
crescendo...and I can't make my palms stop sweating, because I know
those sound editors are standing by with a stalk of celery to make the
sickest sound effect in all of sports.

47:33  SNAP!  The crowd gasps.  Even Gary Stevens has to turn and look away.


48:43  The boys win.  The rising music obscures one of my favorite
lines: we hear Lonnie shout "Champion of the World!  Heavyweight
Champ!", but it's tough to hear my favorite part:  "Everyone
kiss...my...ass!"

49:00  They may have cut out Kagle offering a 33% kickback of the IRS
withholding, but they didn't cut it out of Marcus' summary:  "$2.68
million and some, plus 33% of the withholding, plus 15 consolations."



??:??  I went back to add this, after I had finished watching.  I've
never seen a "night watchman" watching a single horse overnight before.
"He slept through the night...licked his bucket clean"???  There's
usually Track Security prowling the grounds, that's it, and they're not
there to watch any one particular horse.  I've also never seen a trainer
hang around the barn all day, doing nothing, never leaving his horse's
side.  I don't know what happened to this horse's daddy 2000 miles away,
or what Nick Nolte was supposed to do about it back then, but he sure
seems intent on not letting it happen a second time.


54:11  Dustin Hoffman is talking to himself.  You'll note I haven't
mentioned him once in this write-up.  As far as that arc goes, you guys
are on your own.



The link, for as long as it works:

http://www.hbo.com/#/luck/talk/forums/item.html/eNrjcmbOYM5nLtQsy0xJzXfMS8ypLMlMds7PK0mtKFHPz0mBCQUkpqf6JeamcjIysiWWZqbYGpmampsbGiWrGrkYJRqlAilDw1RDIGVpYmEEpAwMjIwMLc1SzI1NUtkY2RgB6uAdkQ== (http://www.hbo.com/#/luck/talk/forums/item.html/eNrjcmbOYM5nLtQsy0xJzXfMS8ypLMlMds7PK0mtKFHPz0mBCQUkpqf6JeamcjIysiWWZqbYGpmampsbGiWrGrkYJRqlAilDw1RDIGVpYmEEpAwMjIwMLc1SzI1NUtkY2RgB6uAdkQ==)

With my apologies for possible typos, etc. I didn't see the episode, so I had to restrain myself from reading the post.

I've had the pilot sitting in my DVR and haven't watched it yet. I will, but have to say that with everything I have read about the tension between Milch and Michael Mann, I am a little reluctant to commit to another Milch/HBO endeavor.

Hey, Wavewatcher, did you get a chance to see the pilot? If yes, what's your opinion?

"we're talking we're talking. You're listening, now you're listening. Look at the bears for a second. Look at the bear, look at the bear. Hey?"   

Those phrases still pop up in my mind, almost verbatim! Anyways, good to read your posts again and know that you're not a stranger, more like a traveler, returning to the places  of dear memories. Welcome back, my friend. You can't do wrong, no doubts. 

Q&A: David Milch on horse racing and iconic TV series

Is "Luck" your opus to horse racing?

"I hope it's a love letter. By saying that, I'm not saying it's a story coming through rose-colored glasses. To me, the track is what the river was to Mark Twain. Where you see the most life and interesting people, go there. That's what I've done."

Why did you choose Santa Anita as the backdrop?

"It's the most beautiful setting for horse racing that I've seen, and I'd include Saratoga. I've been thinking about doing a show like this for 25 years, and it never occurred for me to do it anywhere but Santa Anita."

You have been described as having more than a passing interest in the ponies. What is the depth of this interest?

"My dad started taking me to Saratoga at age 5 or 6. You have so many associations from childhood that stay with you. How a kid idolizes his dad is all tied up in this. My dad used to call me a degenerate gambler. You hear that, and you spend time trying to live up to those ideas. Then, the animals are so heart-stopping beautiful, the competition can lead to such joy and heartache. You get to see that play out every day at the track. You can't ask for anything more."

Have you been a degenerate?

"It depends what decade you want to concentrate on. There were times; if I wasn't home by 6 p.m. ... it has not been an uneventful journey. I would say gambling became a problem for me. It distorts relationships, the way you want to live. If you don't realize when it has you in its grip, shame on you. One of the great things about this is to reencounter these situations — and some are ripped from the headlines, as they say — and add this imagination to it. It can be quite uplifting for the viewer to see these stories play out."

Beyond the crime dramas, the gold rush and your newest project to take on author William Faulkner's works, what convinces you horse racing will be compelling to the audience?

"I lived it. Faulkner said the stories of human heart in conflict with itself are the stories worth telling. When you see people's lives — all of someone's dreams — determined one way or another by one race or the performance of a horse, that's the stuff of great drama."

You based some of the "Luck" characters on your friends, like your trainer, Julio Canani?

"I have to make sure they're still willing to talk to me. I'm trying to be both honest and loving."

The cast is strong, experienced. Can you predict how "Luck" will fare?

"You never know the answer to that question, but I'm certainly grateful for the actors associated with the project. I've spent seven days a week for the last three years on it. I'm proud of the scripts. I know it's up to the public. I hope they can take it to heart like they did 'Hill Street' and 'NYPD Blue.' You hope. But I know everyone involved in this has given it their best shot."

from:
http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-pugmire-qa-20111226,0,5931388.story (http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-pugmire-qa-20111226,0,5931388.story)

The old favourites who keep on riding their Luck

HBO's new drama features the oldest cast on television. It's a must-see, says Sarah Hughes


Television these days is supposed to be about youth.

Executives are obsessed by what twentysomethings want to watch; audiences tune in only to watch the young and the lithe. Which is just one reason why Luck, HBO's much anticipated horseracing drama, which comes to Sky Atlantic in February, stands out. With the notable exceptions of the rising British star Tom Payne (29) and Irish actress Kerry Condon (28) who play a pair of would-be jockeys, this is a story about old men.

Written by Deadwood's David Milch and produced by Michael Mann (who also directed the pilot), Luck is a slow-burning examination of loss and regret. As such, it's a world away from HBO's current hits, the sleek Boardwalk Empire or the bold and brutal Game of Thrones.

It stars Dustin Hoffman (74) as a weary gangster, his first lead role in a television series (he won an Emmy in 1986 for his performance as Willy Loman in a television adaptation of Death of a Salesman), Nick Nolte (70) as a trainer for whom the word grizzled appears to have been created and eye-catching supporting roles for Michael Gambon (71) and Dennis Farina (67).

While Luck flies in the face of modern television wisdom – in addition to having what must be the oldest cast on television, it also has barely any female roles – Milch's decision to gamble on experience pays off in interesting, and often unexpected, ways.

Take Hoffman's character, Chester "Ace" Bernstein, newly released from jail and angry at his perceived betrayal. On paper, Bernstein's tale should be a standard quest for vengeance but, as the first episode plays out, it becomes apparent that there is something far more compelling at stake.

This is a portrait of the gangster as an old man, weakened both by his time in prison and by his creeping suspicion that his faculties are fading. Both character and audience are left unsure of the extent to which dementia might be encroaching but Hoffman's restrained performance and, more importantly, the ever-present fear lurking just behind his calculating eyes, make this a candid look at aging rarely seen on our screens. Similarly, the plight of Nolte's trainer, scrabbling around the margins of the racing industry, hoping against hope for that one special horse, is made more powerful by the fact that a lifetime of small disappointments are etched on his weather-beaten face.

The fact that Luck is about more than simply horses and gambling (although it is excellent about both those things) should come as no surprise. Milch, 66, has always taken risks with his material whether reinventing the Western with Deadwood or upending the police procedural in NYPD Blue. Here, he seems to be as interested in meditating on the passage of time as he is on examining the close-knit racing world. This might be a drama about the thrill of the race but it is also a subtle look at the slow ravages of age.

It isn't always an easy ride. We enter conversations midway through and are introduced only briefly to characters before the camera spins off to hang out with someone new. The cast is large and the plot, essentially revolving around three different racehorses and the people connected to them, is not always easy to follow.

For all its complexity and despite an occasional tendency to meander towards the finishing line, those with the patience to stick with Luck will be amply rewarded. This is a clever, absorbing piece of television, and, thanks in part to its experienced cast, is quite unlike anything else on screen at the moment.

This article is from "Independent", which is considered a non-political British paper.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/the-old-favourites-who-keep-on-riding-their-luck-6283847.html (http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/the-old-favourites-who-keep-on-riding-their-luck-6283847.html)

 A video review from WSJ that thankfully doesn't divulge many details of the plot, and the comments are informative. We should forgive the customary snide remark about JFC, as it's nothing new.
http://www.marketwatch.com/video/asset/hbo-gambles-on-horse-racing-drama-luck-2012-01-12/EBF27CF2-34D5-4A37-BA82-E05103044A9D# (http://www.marketwatch.com/video/asset/hbo-gambles-on-horse-racing-drama-luck-2012-01-12/EBF27CF2-34D5-4A37-BA82-E05103044A9D#)

Close the vid after it ends, or there would be endless stream of them from the site.

HBO Takes Its Money to the Track
'Luck' has Dustin Hoffman, the 'Degenerates' and fractious, thoroughbred producers

By JOHN JURGENSEN

During a climactic horse race in the first episode of the new HBO series "Luck," four crusty gamblers try to win $2.7 million on a complex betting scenario known as a Pick Six. As the horses pound down the track and the stakes rise, one bettor looks confused. "What's happening?" he asks his more seasoned cohorts. "Will someone please tell me what's happening?"

"Luck," HBO's new show with Dustin Hoffman, Nick Nolte and John Ortiz, is set in the world of horse racing and features the return of "Deadwood" writer David Milch, John Jurgensen reports on Lunch Break. Photo: HBO.

The question is really on behalf of the viewers, most of whom will have little knowledge of the sport and its arcana. The same insular details that make racing ripe for on-screen drama also make it daunting to follow the stories. That tension has helped spur anticipation for "Luck," which marks Dustin Hoffman's first recurring role on television and a sometimes-fraught collaboration between executive producer Michael Mann and series creator David Milch, a lifelong devotee of the sport whose previous TV output includes the HBO western "Deadwood." The series starts Jan. 29.

Of racing, Mr. Milch said, "This is not a world that is easily known." He compares track denizens to adolescents in their use of intentionally "exclusionary language"—triple boxes, Beyer figures, running for a tag. Add to that Mr. Milch's self-acknowledged reputation as a "slow unfolding" storyteller. (Indeed, a sneak preview of the "Luck" pilot last month tried some viewers' patience: one Twitter user compared it to "a stylish foreign-language film with the subtitles missing.") But Mr. Milch maintains that the audience bears some responsibility to meet him halfway: "It's a kind of contract that the viewer is willing to enter into."

"Luck" is set at Santa Anita, the sun-drenched Art Deco racetrack near Los Angeles. The location, and a powerful horse, figure into a long-game revenge plan by a taciturn crime kingpin recently released from prison, played by Mr. Hoffman. Among the other track archetypes: a haunted old horseman played by Nick Nolte; John Ortiz's gifted but unscrupulous trainer; an unpredictable jockey played by real-life Hall of Famer Gary Stevens; and the four scheming gamblers referred to in the script as the "Degenerates."

Behind the scenes, tensions smoldered between Messrs. Mann and Milch. In addition to the challenge of how to effectively render the racing culture in faithful detail, the two men, both known for their distinctive creative vision, clashed over control issues. To persevere, they negotiated a strict division of labor. Mr. Mann, who executive-produced"Miami Vice" and directed many films, including "Heat," said, "David's the boss on the writing, and I run everything from that point," including casting, music and hiring directors.

Mr. Milch, who wrote for groundbreaking Steven Bochco series including "Hill Street Blues" and "NYPD Blue," is known for a rigorous—"I don't want to say insane," says Mr. Stevens—attention to research and narrative detail. He produces scripts by dictation while prone and often leaning on an elbow, resulting in two torn rotator cuffs, the writer says.

The world of "Luck" is deeply familiar to Mr. Milch. His dad first took him to the track at Saratoga Springs, N.Y., at age 5. Some 60 years later, Mr. Milch says he still keeps a box there in his father's name. The writer has co-owned many horses, including one named Gilded Time that Mr. Stevens rode ("one of the best I sat on") before the colt went on to become a Breeders' Cup champion in 1992.

In "Luck," Mr. Milch said, he was less interested in portraying the world of moneyed owners and breeders than that of the sport's seedier devotees. "I've been with them my whole life," he said. "Any regular at the racetrack has some degenerate in them, and some are utterly so. Those were the ones I was interested in."

Though the first nine-episode season of "Luck" was shot at Santa Anita while the track was in season, Mr. Milch says he never hit the betting windows. "You can only serve one master at a time," he said.

from:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204257504577155230077695016.html (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204257504577155230077695016.html)

TCA: The 5 Most Awkward and Amusing Moments from HBO's 'Luck' Panel ("The Hollywood Reporter")

With big personalities Dustin Hoffman, Nick Nolte, David Milch and Michael Mann sharing the stage, subjects veer between the uncomfortable, the hilarious and the completely incoherent.

by Michael O'Connell


Reporters got a look at the on and off screen worlds of HBO's Luck on Friday morning. The network presented its slick, horse-racing drama at the Television Critics Association winter press tour -- and when the highlight reel concluded, things seemed to get a little less polished.
our editor recommends

Writer David Milch, director Michael Mann and stars Dustin Hoffman and Nick Nolte appeared on stage to take questions. The outcome, while wholly entertaining, reignited suspicions about the working relationship between Milch and Mann, Hoffman's interest in the medium and the stability of Nolte.

Here are five exceptionally awkward and amusing moments that went down during the brief session:

1. The Seating Chart
In line with reports of tension between Milch and Mann on the set of Luck, the duo were pictured at opposite ends of the stage on the seating chart handed out before the panel. They strayed from the course, however, taking seats next to each other and almost immediately addressing their reluctance of sharing responsibilities. "There can only be one captain of the ship," Mann said, while Milch sat quietly. "And the writing must be David's."

2. "70"
Nick Nolte arrived, his face almost completely obscured by a hat, and didn't speak until one reporter asked him what made him make the move to television. "70," he replied, with a scratchy voice. Presumably, he was referring to his age, but Hoffman jumped in to clarify. "Do you understand all of the answers to your questions?" he asked the reporter, before noting the network drew them both to the series. "There's no reason for me to butter up HBO, the contract is already signed... We are given the shot to do our best work, and I'm very thankful for that."

STORY: Michael Mann, David Milch Split Duties to Settle Power Struggle on HBO's 'Luck'

3. Creative Differences
Not content with Mann's politically correct response earlier, another reporter asked about the story that he, at one point, had banned Milch from the set. "It's ridiculous," he said. "There [are] times when a director is on the set, and he just wants the set for himself and the actors to work on the scene. Somehow that got contorted into something else." Milch, again, didn't address the matter.

4. The P-Word
When asked to comment on his reputation for being a "prick" on set (Hoffman's word, not the reporter's), the Luck star revisited his previous comments about wanting to do his best work, while Nolte interrupted with a story about covering his face with spaghetti during an argument with Cannery Row director David Ward. Hoffman, then pressed about his commitment to possibly playing the same character for as much as five years, simply noted that he and his wife never fought while he filmed Tootsie: "She loved having a girlfriend."

5. 3D Television
The most off-topic turn during the panel came when Nolte chimed in about television -- which he likes, as long as the dimensions are limited. "3D disconnects the eyeball, the lenses form the brain," said Nolte. "It's like the brain itself is creating the hallucination of 3D... They're going to find out six hours of 3D TV will cause psychotic breaks. Australia is doing the research. I can just tell you that."

from:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/tca-luck-nick-nolte-dustin-hoffman-david-milch-michael-mann-281559 (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/tca-luck-nick-nolte-dustin-hoffman-david-milch-michael-mann-281559)

'Luck' Producers Capture the Real and Mythic Santa Anita Race Track

Producers David Milch and Michael Mann explain how their new HBO drama captures the reality and mythology of the famous race track.

By Fred Topel

Creators of HBO's upcoming horse-racing themed drama Luck said that Arcadia's famed Santa Anita Race Track--the setting and location for the series--rolled out the red carpet for the production. As well they should, given how much money creator and racing enthusiast David Milch (HBO's Deadwood) has dropped at the track.

"It was an easy choice because Santa Anita is fantastic," said executive producer and director Michael Mann at a press conference Friday in Pasadena, part of the Television Critics Association winter press tour. "Because of relations we had there, because David's spent so much money over his lifetime at Santa Anita, the red carpet was rolled out. They were tremendously cooperative, and we had a great working relationship with them."

Mann added: "The rest of it is the same as you do on absolutely any film. What are the places, who are the people to make this all become flesh and blood and come to life?"

Throughout 2011, HBO has had crews filming a new TV series in and around Santa Anita, and this month, the new original series premieres on HBO. Dustin Hoffman, Nick Nolte and Dennis Farina star in the drama, set in the world of horse racing and gambling. Executive producer Milch created the series and is a race horse owner himself. Filmmaker Mann directed the pilot and also executive produces the show with Milch.

Hoffman plays Chester "Ace" Bernstein, a gambler who just got out of federal prison after a three year stint. His driver, Gus (Dennis Farina), fronts as the owner of Ace's horse.

Real History Informs the Fiction

The story is fictional, but Milch injected Luck with the real history and culture of Santa Anita as an atmosphere.

"There's a particular doubleness that operates there because it's kind of a Santa Anita of the mind," Milch said. "You're not literally using the lived history of Santa Anita, but, as Michael points out, it's such a beautiful atmosphere that you're crazy not to honor it shot for shot. It isn't meant to be worshipful or historical, but certainly I know the people who operate the track feel they've been well served."

Milch is also proud of the way Mann captured the race track, as it will exemplify the location to viewers around the world. "Because I had so little to do with the visual execution of the project, I can brag on it without feeling I have a conflict of interest," Milch said. "I think it looks great."

Luck is also not aiming to be a race track 101 show. The viewer jumps into Ace's deals and gambler's bets, and viewers are expected to keep up. "It's an act of faith," Milch said. "I think your fundamental responsibility is to stay true to the deepest nature and intention of the materials. That's what we did. I have to say that Michael's work in creating an atmosphere, which generated an entire second level continuously of dialogue, took a tremendous amount of the burden off demystifying of the world."

Mann said he strove to convey broad strokes of what technical bets meant, so the audience could appreciate the stakes of a race. "I know nothing about gambling, and David knows everything about this world," Mann said. "One of the big complexities was how to communicate to a mass audience what, for example, a pick six is. It became somehow finding those ways to get the concept of just singling the fifth race, if they can understand that a man's made a one out of six selection, get a concept that that the number five horse is going to be good news for them. We weren't into simple ... comprehension. To this day I don't know how to pick six."

Ensemble Drama

The ensemble drama also follows Walter Smith (Nick Nolte), an optimistic horse owner with a secret past. Turo Escalante (John Ortiz) is a Peruvian immigrant who has become a successful but infamous horse trainer. Joey Rathburn (Richard Kind) is a jockey's agent. Marcus (Kevin Dunn) leads a group of four gamblers  (Ian Hart, Ritchie Coster and Jason Gedrick) openly referred to as "degenerates" by HBO's own publicity materials. There are jockeys (Kerry Condon, Gary Stevens and Tom Payne) and even a veterinarian (Jill Hennessy.)

The stories encompass some of what Milch loves about the track. Telling these stories, Milch hopes to be more objective about the world he knows. "It's a privilege, and it's an enormous responsibility," Milch said. "To the extent that there's an autobiographical connection, that becomes secondary pretty quick. You hope you're there as an artist."

Mann produced Miami Vice and Crime Story on television in the 1980s. Luck gave him a new challenge to the crime shows of his past.

"First of all, I was attracted to it because of the writing," Mann said. "That was it. There's a tremendous responsibility in taking this narrative, which is very complex--which had multiple story tracks filled with wonderful characters whose lives we immersed into--and that challenge was very exciting and was a major reason we did it. Then moving that forward into flesh and blood people and places and having it come alive with the music and everything else when you're making a film."

Entertainment industry publications reported some tension on the set of Luck, speculating that Mann had Milch barred from the set of the pilot episode. Mann clarified what he considered a misunderstanding.

"It's ridiculous," Mann said. "It was like any other film I made. There are times the director wants the set for himself and his actors to discuss the scene. In one of those times he'll ask the first [assistant director], the dolly grip, cameraman and everyone else to excuse themselves for 15 minutes. Somehow that got contorted into something else."

Milch continued to praise Mann's execution of his script. "To know that what one had tried to convey on the page was honored so rigorously in its execution, I felt that the material was in good hands," Milch said.

Luck premieres Jan. 29 on HBO.

from:
http://arcadia.patch.com/articles/luck-producers-capture-the-real-and-mythic-santa-anita-racetrack#photo-8896672 (http://arcadia.patch.com/articles/luck-producers-capture-the-real-and-mythic-santa-anita-racetrack#photo-8896672)

Q&A: 'Luck' Star Dustin Hoffman Has Personal Ties to Santa Anita
The actor and star of HBO's upcoming horse-racing drama says he has become a fan of the Sport of Kings.

By Fred Topel

A movie star has been coming to work in our neighborhood for the past year:  Dustin Hoffman stars in the new HBO series Luck, a drama about horse racing and the people involved in it, which is set at and shot at Arcadia's Santa Anita Race Track.

Hoffman, who has been filming at the track since last year, told reporters at the Television Critics Association winter press tour Friday that he also has a personal connection to the life of the legendary race track--through his wife.

Deadwood's David Milch is executive producer and creator of Luck, whose pilot was directed by executive producer and filmmaker Michael Mann. Luck premieres Jan. 29 at 9 p.m. on HBO. Following is an edited version of a Q&A with Hoffman by Patch and other reporters.

Are you learning about the history and culture of Santa Anita?

Hoffman: Through David [Milch]. David knows more about it than anything else. I shouldn't say that, because my wife's father was a "degenerate" [a nickname for a regular gambler], and my wife went to the track with him when she was 6 years old. My wife has told me everything I have to know about the track, because as a child, she'd learn it from her father, who was a degenerate. When my wife was 5 or 6 years old, she went out to Santa Anita every day with him, and she held a piece of paper and she would look at her dad and say, "See that horse? Write down KS," and she knew that stood for "kidney sweat" [a sign of a nervous or sick horse], and that was her job for about three years.

Is she helping you out with the show?

Hoffman: No, no, she wants no part of it.

How do you like working on location at the track, in the bar, in the restaurant? [Among other Arcadia locations, the show shot at the landmark eatery Rod's Grill.]

Hoffman: It's a nice location. It's better than slogging around in the mud. It's nice as locations go. It was extraordinary to see what he was talking about, David was talking about, to see 300 people in a place that used to have thousands and thousands. To see people that had just bet not going back to watch the race, but seeing it on TV, and they're there at the track. That's extraordinary, and it gives you chills.

Are you a horse guy at all?

Hoffman: No, and I've become a horse guy. Now I am, mainly because of what David has been doing with the material, and that is to focus on the animal as an animal, not as a symbol of making money.

What do you like about Chester? [Hoffman plays Chester "Ace" Bernstein, a deal maker involved with gambling enterprises who returns to Santa Anita after being released after serving three years in prison.]

Hoffman: I think he tells the truth, and yet he's very intimidating. He's not believed. In the world that he lives in, telling the truth is the last thing they're going to believe. Paddy Chayefsky said to me many, many years ago when he was researching for The Godfather, he says, "I'll take the mob any day, because if you don't keep your word, they kill you. So you keep your word. I just got to know a little bit about Hollywood. There is no moral compass because no one keeps your word because no one's going to kill them. They're just going to get sued. Give me the mafia."

What brought you to TV after such a career in film?

Hoffman: There's no reason for me to butter up HBO. Contract's done already, too late to fire me. I had not had this experience before. It's very hard to do your best work, but you want a shot at it. You cannot get a shot at doing your best work in the studio system. You can't. There's committees, there's meetings, you're on the set, you don't have to do that, they get involved in a quasi-creative way but they buck heads with people they shouldn't be bucking heads with. With HBO, once they give a go, there's no committee, no meetings. I was expecting 20 pages a day. I was expecting an atmosphere like making movies on cocaine or speed. It's the opposite. We did the best we could with as much time as we could, and came back the next day. Michael [Mann] hired all film directors. There was no difference between making a movie, except he used digital and three cameras, which actors love because we don't have to repeat.

If the show does well, how do you feel about being identified with the character for maybe five years?

Hoffman: I know. My wife and I never had a fight when I was doing Tootsie. She loves having a girlfriend. Movies are a bastard art form, period. Art, I would think, is the first day you don't start with chapter 25, then jump to the beginning, then jump to the end, and it's all set in concrete, and a script is never what the movie turns out to be. It's either better or worse, but it's a blueprint. When you're painting a picture or writing, you know as well as anyone, you have the general feeling of it but it begins to tell you where it's going. This is the first time I've ever had that opportunity. That is extraordinary. Michael said he looks at the work, and it starts to influence [him]: We could go there, we could go there, we could go there. I've never had that experience before. As far as it inhabiting me, it doesn't. I don't take the character [home], I've never really understood that personally. You're pretending.

Did you do anything special to prepare for this role?

Hoffman: No. There's very little you have to do...You're altered immediately. You know what happens when you put the right dress on in the closet. You get a feeling.

from:
http://arcadia.patch.com/articles/luck-star-dustin-hoffman-has-personal-ties-to-santa-anita#photo-8900926 (http://arcadia.patch.com/articles/luck-star-dustin-hoffman-has-personal-ties-to-santa-anita#photo-8900926)

Horsey Set

The upscale temptations of "Luck"

by Emily Nussbaum, "New Yorker"

Here are a few things I know little about: gambling, horses, the manly bonds of career drinkers, the lonely hotel rooms of businessmen, and the sly mathematical ecstasy of statistics. In other words, I'm almost certainly not the critic to determine the authenticity of "Luck," the new HBO series by David Milch, who is himself a horse owner and has wagered at the track for nearly half a century.

Still, I can say that the show has a musky, appealing sensuality to it, a stink of leather and aged Scotch. Starting with the pilot, filmed at the Santa Anita racetrack and directed by Michael Mann, the show's camera noses into everything, lapping up the dirty allure of the stables, the twitchy degenerates filling the bleachers, the champions gloating for the cameras, and particularly the races themselves, sequences in which the camera gets so close that it might as well be a horse itself. When it comes to story, unfortunately, "Luck" is a drag. Like David Simon's "Treme," "Luck" has lofty, loving aims: it yearns to celebrate an exotic subculture, one whose argot can feel as impenetrable as Klingon. At Milch's Santa Anita, rich men wager on poorer, younger bodies (those of both the horses and the jockeys)—a theme so fascinating that I kept placing my own bets that it would pay off. But, starting with the pilot, the drama makes a bad gamble: it takes for granted that we'll care about the fates of its shutoff, curmudgeonly power brokers, yet never gives us much reason to do so. Like so many love letters, it's hard to decipher if you haven't already made the leap.

I take no pleasure as I type these words. To the contrary, I feel the ghastly critical chill of admitting that I was bored by such obvious prestige television, created by people whose work I admire. Milch was behind "NYPD Blue" and "Deadwood"; as a risk-taker in a world of easy bets, he's venerated for good reason. The series gleams with HBO handsomeness. It stars Dustin Hoffman and Nick Nolte (and Dennis Farina and Joan Allen: the cast is so impressive that I giggled when Alan Rosenberg showed up). And yet I couldn't help feeling that I was missing something.

Much of the problem is the macho ensemble, which barks insults like comics at a roast. There's the muttering codger Walter Smith (Nolte), the irascible trainer Turo Escalante (John Ortiz), and the stuttering rageaholic jockey-agent Joey Rathburn (Richard Kind). Then there's Dustin Hoffman's Chester (Ace) Bernstein, an ex-con financier who spends the bulk of his time seething in lavish hotel suites, rattling ice in a glass. Like Emily Thorne on "Revenge," Bernstein is working a long scam against the men who wrecked his life, a scheme that we learn about through Socratic dialogues with his chauffeur-consigliere, Gus Demitriou (Farina). Visually, the show frames Bernstein as a weighty cable antihero: the Tony, the Walter, the Don. But he never evolves into more than a constipated rich guy who communicates in pained glances, curt demands, and other signifiers of manliness. In one negotiation, Bernstein name-checks Miles Davis in order to telegraph his worth to another man. In another, Bernstein's decadent antagonist (British accent, check; flowery Biblical references, check) offers him anal sex with his stable of slave girls. When Bernstein declines, the scene seems intended to suggest that he's a restrained romantic—a low standard, even for an antihero. (Let's simply skirt the subject of the other female characters, who are angelic and/or dull, except for the cable-nudity contribution of two pissed-off cougars.)

Milch is famous for his aggressively stylized, arcane dialogue, and the scripts overflow with faintly "Guys and Dolls"-ish exchanges, which lean heavily on constructions like "How long my time in Siberia?" and "No icing error, this." That oddness can be effective. But, just as often, it feels affected or expositional—once you slash through the verbal kudzu, there's surprisingly little subtext. Some performances do kick in (especially the charismatic, roosterish Ortiz, and Kerry Condon, who makes the most of her thinly written Irish jockey), but the show's air of menace eventually fizzles, despite propulsive synth chords insisting that trouble is on the way.

Milch has more success with the show's quartet of lovable "railbirds": the cranky cripple, Marcus (Kevin Dunn); the cocky Lonnie (Ian Hart); the goofy Renzo (Ritchie Coster); and the handsome Jerry (Jason Gedrick), who is hooked on gambling in a way that the show at once glamorizes and finds sickening. While their camaraderie isn't always as funny as it's meant to be, it's a relief to root for these bickering small-timers, who share an innocent fantasy of the big time. In the first episode—although this is a spoiler, and I'm making this aside as lengthy as possible, in order to warn anyone who doesn't want to know anything about the plot, it's the basic premise of the show—the four win a jackpot. They join forces, aiming to step into the winner's circle among the track's storied owners, a place they've ogled from afar.

But the sweetest moments feature horses, not humans. At one point, a trainer gives a new owner a carrot, advising him, "Keep your hands open." A gorgeous closeup of the horse follows, with its huge liquid alien eyes. Mann films the races with affection, capturing the stalls from above, then diving right onto the track, where we see the jockeys play aggressive games with one another, and then back out to the audience, whose faces crack open with fear and excitement. In the most thrilling of these sequences, the camera captures the ripple of flesh and the flaring red nostril of a horse in motion. The jockey is ecstatic, bonded with her steed. The owner's eyes tear up. As classical music plays, we enter slow motion, the lens alighting on face after face. There's a cut to a stack of money knocked against a table with an exaggerated sound effect, like a jail door banged shut. The scene is so portentous, so monumental, that I nearly switched sides—the sheer boldness was seductive. But then yet another scene featured a long, mumbling monologue to a horse. I wanted to take it seriously, but all I could think was: Mister Ed.

From:
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/television/2012/01/23/120123crte_television_nussbaum#ixzz1jpnif1Fa (http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/television/2012/01/23/120123crte_television_nussbaum#ixzz1jpnif1Fa)

HBO takes a gamble on 'Luck'
The layered horse racing series 'Luck' is a hard fit for TV. But it has David Milch and Michael Mann in control, and Dustin Hoffman heads the ensemble. So it's got a shot.

By Scott Timberg, "Los Angeles Times", January 22, 2012


Even before the pilot for "Luck," the new David Milch-Michael Mann series about horse racing, appeared on HBO in December, word began to get around that this thoroughbred — however fierce — took a while to get around the track. And this was even from people who liked the show. Just wait till episode four, they said. Or five.

If most television — even high-toned television — is a collection of short stories, "Luck" is a novel. A big, sprawling one, with a layered setting and close to a dozen main characters, some woven together in complex ways and many not who they initially appear to be. It's every bit as ambitious and multifaceted as "The Wire," which also aired on HBO between 2002 and 2008.

But was it really necessary week after week to sketch an intricate ecosystem as complicated as the teeming life of a rain forest — from trainers to aspiring jockeys to dead-end gamblers to the dodgy financiers who make the whole thing run? Did Milch, a reputed mad genius, whose "Deadwood" brought Shakespearean soliloquy to the Wild West, consider making a linear show with maybe a single protagonist and a conventional plot?

"Never," Milch said, in a hotel suite with Mann and Dustin Hoffman, who plays an enigmatic moneyman and one of the program's key figures. "I always thought these were lives, and spirits, which interpenetrated even when they did not intersect. One of the gifts of Dustin's performance is his spirit dominates even when he isn't physically present."

Milch, who wrote the screenplay for the series, talks this way a lot — a mixture of abstraction, literary terminology and boundless praise for his colleagues. Mann, who oversees the directing side of the program, expresses himself more pragmatically.

"What's fascinating about David's screenplay," he says, "with all these different groups and stories, people's whole life histories and ambitions — there are so many of them. And to not have preludes, not have contexts, to just parachute into these lives.... The challenge is, how do you evoke that in ways that the viewer doesn't need Dramamine after 20 minutes?"

Boyhood memories

For Milch, whose temperament is poetic and philosophical, racing — and cheating at — horses goes back to some of the human race's oldest impulses. But the show's literal origins are a bit more earthbound, dating to his early years as a kid in upstate New York, borrowing his father's fedora to ride along to the track in Saratoga Springs. (He's since become an owner of horses and, by his own admission, a gambler.)

Back then, six decades ago, he got a sense of how richly interconnected the track's sociology was. "Literally from the time I was 5 years old, and the waiter approached me and I told him who I wanted to bet on," he says. "One of the things I think Michael has executed so brilliantly is a sense of the simultaneity of those worlds, so you naturally flow from one to another."

That's for sure. Despite a massive ad campaign that features only Hoffman's guarded and besuited Ace Bernstein character, the term "ensemble cast," which includes Nick Nolte, Dennis Farina, John Ortiz and Jill Hennessy, has rarely been so aptly applied. The story's direction, like the show's emotional center, is all over the place. "I've used the metaphor," Hoffman says, "of the jazz combo, where they can riff off each other but are somehow playing the same tune."

The characters are all orbiting the same patch of land — Arcadia's Santa Anita racetrack — so they're connected, Mann says, whether they know one another or not. Viewers who stick with the show will see just how true that is.

Hoffman's Bernstein emerges first, returning to the world from a three-year stint in prison with intentions of getting involved in the racetrack, something his felony conviction complicates. ("You get out of prison and what do you want?" Mann asks as he explains how he directed that opening scene. "Sex, and pizza.")

The existing world of the track involves a batch of jockeys (including a young Irish woman aspiring to greatness), a trainer of ambiguous loyalties, a battered old Kentucky horse owner who seems to move with a dark cloud over him and a quartet of lowlife gamblers known collectively as "the degenerates." It's when the degenerates make an unexpected score early in the series that the whole solar system — which also includes jockey's agents, security guards, horse doctors, capitalists and others — is put into motion.

Power couple

Another thing that makes "Luck" anomalous is its unconventional power-sharing arrangement. Mann and Milch are both executive producers, with Mann in charge of the directing — he directed the pilot himself and oversaw the directors of the others — and Milch writing everything and retaining the creator credit.

To heighten the tension a bit: Both are known to be strong-willed, and Mann apparently banned Milch from the set while directing the pilot episode. (HBO has conceded some "clashes" despite what it calls an otherwise fruitful working experience.)

Most television shows, of course, have a single chief, with others working as subordinates. "This isn't 'most,'" Mann asserts. "David has shows he's run, I've had shows I've run ... so this is different. Dave, Eric [Roth, a co-executive producer] and I had lots of conversations about the script, but ultimately that's gotta be [Milch's] domain. Making that world there, making it manifest on film, that becomes what I do — from casting, location, interpretation, all that. That goes all the way through to color timing. And David comes in and sees the finished product."

Says Hoffman: "How should this arrangement — how could this arrangement — be any different than any marriage, or parents with their children? At a certain point, it's an arm wrestle over vision, if you care about what you're doing.... And that's what happens in the house: 'What kind of party is this gonna be?'"

Milch says that despite speculations that two control freaks could never work together, it's been the best collaboration of his life. "We don't always have the experience of being able to trust our collaborators in the most fundamental ways," he says. "And in an exercise of faith, the more you believe, the more you accomplish."

While the show's two helmsmen speak about how much they loved working together, Hoffman begins choking on the water he's sipping and quickly recovers. "He acts that way," Milch says in a soft voice, "when he hears a lie."

Unlikely trio

Jockeys, gamblers, executive producers ... will viewers have the patience to follow all of these twists and turns? HBO is certainly hoping so: This show was not cheap to produce.

December's pilot drew 1.14 million viewers, losing 62% from the audience for "Boardwalk Empire," which preceded it. And horse racing is hardly a going concern for most 21st century Americans. But in some ways, HBO really is different, and it may be that shows like "The Sopranos" and "The Wire" have stretched the attention span of at least a significant fraction of the television audience.

The cable network likes to boast about its unconventional programming, and many of its shows do smash the medium's orthodoxies. One of the things that's unconventional about "Luck," after all, is that its three main players are in television right now at all.

Milch is revered by many, and his and Steven Bochco's "NYPD Blue" was an unambiguous success. But neither of his last two shows — "Deadwood" and "John From Cincinnati" — got past a third season. Besides a few cameos, Hoffman has never done a television program. And Mann has devoted his last two decades to movies like "The Insider" and "Collateral" — he's not done a major television show since producing "Miami Vice" in the '80s.

He doesn't feel like he ever left the small screen. "I studied film in Europe," Mann says about his early days, in the '60s. "And in the European tradition, directors do opera, they do TV, they do movies.... You're motivated by the material, that's it.

"And it's no secret: The best work, the best content, happening right now is on cable. When we look back at this 10 years from now, we might realize we were fortunate enough to be part of the golden age of television."

Hoffman adds: "Which I think comes from having no committee," and letting show runners, not network suits, really run their own shows. The result is a series, he says, in which he and the other actors are able to feel their way to a perfect scene. "Here you're allowed to work the way a painter, or someone writing a novel, works. You go to work each day, and it starts to lead you to something. That's what they've allowed me to be a part of here."

from:
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/tv/la-ca-luck-20120122,0,3528636.story (http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/tv/la-ca-luck-20120122,0,3528636.story)

READ, IF YOU ARE NOT A RACETRACK INSIDER

A Handy Guide to Understanding HBO's Luck
By Aileen Gallagher

There are not enough horse-racing fans in the world to sustain Luck, the new Michael Mann–David Milch show on HBO, which had a special premiere after the Boardwalk Empire finale last night (it will return for its first full season on January 29: we'll start recaps then). The rest of us need to tune in, too. But unless you spend a lot of time at Belmont or Aqueduct (and we sort of hope you don't), Luck was a bit difficult to follow. (It is a David Milch production after all.)  We suspect you spent much of last night's premiere saying, "Huh?" Watch it again and consult our Vulture guide to the questions you probably asked about Luck, in chronological order.

Why can't Ace (Dustin Hoffman) own a horse?
Ace's driver, Gus, picks him up outside of California Institution for Men in Chino. Under California law (the series is set at the Santa Anita racetrack, near Los Angeles), the state Horse Racing Board may "may refuse to issue a license or deny a license to any person ... who has been convicted of a crime punishable by imprisonment in a California state prison or a federal prison."

Why does everyone care so much about the horse's bowels?
Horses are big, but their intestines are not. When food gets stuck along the many twists and turns of the digestive tract, the horse's bowel gets impacted. Could you run a race that way? There are several remedies, like Milk of Magnesia, to help the horse along. If that doesn't work, the lady from Crossing Jordan has to pretend stick her hand up the horse's ass and clear the poor guy out.

Why is the trainer Escalante (John Ortiz) such a dick to jockey Leon Micheaux (Tom Payne)?
In addition to making horses run faster, trainers also determine a horse's strategy. Does the horse start slow and then explode along the final stretch? Is it lousy at weaving around other horses? The trainer tells the jockey how to run the horse, but the jockey should keep that information to himself. Plus, Leon is a "bug boy," or an apprentice jockey. He should just be quiet.

Why is that nice, pretty lady (Kerry Condon) riding horses for scary Nick Nolte?
Rosie is an exercise rider. They run the horses early in the morning for practice. The trainer watches the run and times it with a stopwatch to determine how fast the horse is moving

Okay, but why does Escalante bitch Leon out to Joey Rathburn (Richard Kind)?
Rathburn (known to meanies around the track as "Porky Pig") is Leon's agent. Agents pair jockeys with horses. "There is perhaps no other job in the business of sports that demands such a diverse and eclectic set of skills," Joe Drape wrote in the Times. "[An agent] must be a sharp handicapper and salesman, a methodical thinker. He also is a full-time travel agent, a part-time shrink and a sometime whipping boy."

What's a "Pick Six"?
There are lots and lots of ways to bet on horses. The riskier the bet, the higher the payout. To win a Pick Six, the gambler must pick the winners in six consecutive races.

But if there's only one winner, why does Jerry (Jason Gedrick) pick so many horses?
Jerry spreads the risk by betting on several possible winners in multiple races. But it costs more, too. Let's say it costs $2 to place a bet in one race. If you're betting on six different horses, that's a $12 bet. In the case of our railbirds, the total cost of the Pick Six bet was $864. (Jerry is very good at this, which is why he sold his picks to that scuzzy security guard.)

That sounds impossible.
Not quite, but almost. That's why the Pick Six jackpot can get so big. If no one wins today, the pool carries over into tomorrow and the next day.

Why does Kagle the security guard boot those nice degenerate gamblers?
The railbirds, the real hard-core track guys, come in early to see the horses exercise. (Really early — they usually start before 6 a.m.) This research is part of "handicapping," which is how a gambler considers betting the race. (Lots of elements go into handicapping a race, including prior performance, the horse's lineage, its trainer, etc.) The track is often closed to the public for a couple of hours between training runs and when the first race begins.

Why does Leon get weighed holding a saddle?
There are strict limits about how much weight a horse can carry and a jockey is weighed with his equipment (saddle and stirrups) to determine if he or she fits in that limit. Jockeys, like wrestlers, have to "make weight." They do this in a number of unpleasant ways, including sweating and purging.

Are trainers allowed to bet on their horses?
For sure! And Escalante just won a ton. Perhaps he knew something we did not. (The horse paid $26.40; Escalante placed two bets, one for $1,000 and one for $2,000.) Jockeys are not allowed to bet on races they are riding.

Why is Kagle so curious about the railbirds' tax situation?
If you win more than $5,000 at the track in one race, the IRS is going to hear about it. And then anything else you may owe the IRS will be garnished from your winnings. What Kagle is offering the railbirds is a "beard" to collect their winnings for them. In this case, the beard is someone with a clean tax record who can claim the winnings, pay the appropriate taxes, and then give the money back to the railbirds — for a small fee, of course.

Why does the track official want to publicize the winner of the Pick Six?
Have you ever been to the track? What about any of your friends? Your extended family? Horse racing is a sport in big, big financial trouble. Racing authorities want to attract more gamblers, and what better way to do that than have the lucky winner (who, the authority prays, is a clean-looking, clear-eyed person with a full set of choppers) look happy behind an oversize check? It could happen to you!

Did they have to do that to that nice horse?
Yes.

from:
http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2011/12/handy-guide-to-understanding-hbos-luck.html (http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2011/12/handy-guide-to-understanding-hbos-luck.html)

Horse Power
Underdogs and character actors seek redemption in David Milch's Luck.

By Matt Zoller Seitz

Luck is no Deadwood, nor was it meant to be. But if you stick with Deadwood creator David Milch's new HBO series about horse racing—buffed to a fine sheen by executive producer and pilot director Michael Mann (Heat, Collateral)—it's hugely rewarding. Set and shot mostly at the Santa Anita racetrack outside of L.A., it comes on like a seedy comic melodrama about winners and losers who change places because of luck. The opening credits are a kaleidoscope of superstition-laden objects and symbols: a shooting star, coins tumbling into a fountain, a neon shamrock, a tattoo of praying hands. But over the course of several episodes, the show reveals itself as something slipperier and more complicated: a drama that asks if luck even exists and, if so, whether one can understand and harness it. The elasticity of the show's organizing metaphor is part of what makes it so fascinating.

The pilot starts with entrepreneur-gangster Chester "Ace" Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman, also one of the show's producers) leaving prison after doing a few years for cocaine possession (the drugs weren't his). While Ace was in the slammer, he bought a $2 million thoroughbred and registered it under the name of his limo driver and bodyguard, Gus Demitriou (Dennis Farina, star of Mann's great series Crime Story). Ace and Gus's relationship has a touch of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza's; the boss is the visionary, the dreamer with a violent temper, and Gus is the cool cat who reins him in, saving him from others and himself. Over the next few weeks, we find out whom Ace protected by doing the time and what, precisely, he's after—revenge against the business associates who screwed him, exacted in the form of a stealth takeover of the track. Michael Gambon plays one of those associates, a British billionaire who lives on a yacht. Watching Gambon and Hoffman act together is like watching two old lions circle each other.


Hoffman, Farina, and Gambon are but three names in one of the biggest recurring casts on TV. The arrogant but wizardly trainer Escalante (John Ortiz) handles Ace's horse and many others, including a growing stable managed by four gambling buddies (Kevin Dunn, Jason Gedrick, Ian Hart, and Ritchie Coster) who have a good run of luck and try to build it into something permanent. Jill Hennessy is Jo, a veterinarian who might have eyes for Escalante. Nick Nolte plays trainer Walter Smith, a shambling old man who seems to feel things more intensely than most people; when he watches a horse win, he bellows his lungs out and tears up. Gary Stevens plays a veteran jockey (and was one in real life), while Tom Payne and Kerry Condon play a pair of riders who are secretly sleeping together even though they're in direct competition. Richard Kind is a resourceful jockeys' agent with a stutter that earns him the cruel nickname "Porky Pig." Vivid minor characters loiter in the margins of Luck, including a security guard who's running an unofficial loan-sharking business.

Much was made of the friction between Milch and Mann, which devolved into an arrangement under which Milch controlled the scripts and Mann controlled everything else. You can feel the uneasiness in Mann's pilot, which is slow-paced yet oddly tense. The meditative shots of racetracks at dawn, birds scattering through cloudy skies, and horses' eyes, ears, and teeth in close-up are very Mannish, but the mix of profane, philosophical banter, old-guys-know-everything monologuing, and out-of-nowhere bursts of tenderness and fellow-feeling are pure Milch. The talk of oddsmaking and pick-sixes and claims may be impenetrable if you don't spend much time at the track, but don't let it scare you off; the linguistic details sell the action, but they're not the whole show. And it's all a metaphor anyway. Milch's racetrack is a microcosm of late-capitalist America's death throes, the dark mirror of Deadwood's exuberant robber-baron petri dish. The most radical thing about this show is its belief in kind and unselfish behavior as a different type of gambling: a bet on karma, or an investment in the future of the species. There are several sequences in upcoming episodes that are as affecting as anything I've seen on television, and they're all about people caring for other people and showing them the love they've been denied. For all his outward hardness, Milch is a cockeyed optimist, Frank Capra with F-words. Do good deeds, Luck seems to say, and you'll reap rewards tenfold.

from:
http://nymag.com/arts/tv/reviews/luck-seitz-2012-1/ (http://nymag.com/arts/tv/reviews/luck-seitz-2012-1/)

HBO's 'Luck': Hollywood Goes to the Races
By Andrew Cohen, Jan 25 2012

The dark series, with its brilliant cinematography, is a paean to people who believe that things happen for a reason.

When it comes to luck, and the new HBO series Luck, there is no in-between. There is only good luck and bad luck. And the nine-episode-long morality play brought to us by creators Michael Mann and David Milch--not brought to us, more like thrown in our faces--doesn't pretend to argue otherwise. The low are raised high in this dark work about human vanity and vice. And the high are laid low. Good things happen to bad people. Bad things happen to good people. And then bad things just happen. It's a dramatic series, and a powerful paean, for all you people out there who don't believe that shit just happens.

About the only thing about Luck—which premieres on Sunday at 9 pm Eastern—that comes directly and honestly at you is the title. The title--and of course the horses, the magnificent animals, who grace the screen in every episode as brilliant props. As a horseman, I came to Luck hoping that it would, at last, be the top-shelf portrayal of horse racing that America has long deserved but never seen. In this, I was keenly disappointed. There is still a larger story for Hollywood to tell about the backstretch and about the good (and the good people) in the horse industry. A softer story. A nobler one in which the characters are more admirable, less feared, and certainly more average in their lifestyles.

But I wasn't disappointed with the series itself. It was called Luck, after all, and not Racing Luck, so no one ought to be surprised that the story is more about gambling than it is about horses. The series is nine hours of lies and paranoia, revenge and redemption, sweet and sour. It is about a little bit of love and a whole lot of dread, which I suppose you could say about a lot of industries and a lot of workers. Oh, and the cinematography, especially at the track and of the races, is simply stunning--new standard by which future horse racing movies will have to be judged.

Luck is one part Sopranos (when a body is dumped overboard in a later episode you feel like Big Pussy Bonpensiero is going to rise back up), one part Deadwood (the opening credits tell us that) one part Day At The Races (who owns which horse again?), one part Black Beauty and one part Good Fellas (this time, it's an ashtray that breaks open a skull). The series highlights some of the harshest truths about the world of horse racing and gambling. It's often an ugly view, painful to watch, but then the truth hurts, right? Especially when you lose the bet, or the race, or, God forbid, the horse itself.

Whatever else Mann and Milch may achieve with Luck, they already have likely succeeded where everyone else has failed for generations: The series will unite the gamblers with the trainers with the racehorse owners with the casino operators with the Tribal leaders with the jockeys with the regulators. It will unite New York with Kentucky with California. Everyone in the horseracing orbit, for one reason or another, will hate the series for the way it portrays their little corner of the two interconnected industries. And of course everyone who is anyone either industry will watch it, too. "Whaddaya think?" will be the question asked in every shed row next Monday morning.

They'll likely say they find distorted the view back from the mirror. Luck skews the reflection of both the sport of Thoroughbred racing and the gambling industry by highlighting the extremes. That's what Hollywood does, right? It takes the outliers and the exaggerated and it turns them into stereotypes. Luck isn't a documentary about horse racing--or about gambling. It's a story about archetypes who orbit around the horses and the track. Damon Runyon once portrayed these backstretch operators as whimsical. Mann and Milch portray them as grim fatalists. Runyon saw the humor in their failed expectations. Luck thinks there's nothing funny about it.

At the bottom end of the spectrum, we are introduced to a group of four diehard gamblers, led by the brilliant Kevin Dunn as the disabled, breathless, cranky Marcus. At the other end of the line is Dustin Hoffman, as Ace Bernstein, the mobbed-up guy just out of prison who has eyes for a special horse, the racetrack, and for California racing itself. The only thing they have in common, aside from wanting to spend a lot of time at the track, is that they both have a dim view of human nature. And why not? One is scarred on the outside; the other on the inside. One expresses it in virtually every sentence. The other hides it behind a rich mask.

In between the low of Marcus and the high of Ace there is the craggy Kentucky trainer, Walter Smith, played by Nick Nolte, out looking for redemption with a colt by a sire who mysteriously died. Here Mann and Milch (and fellow executive producer Carolyn Strauss) are channeling the famous (and still murky) story of Calumet Farms and the death of the great sire Alydar. Nolte's character, Walter Smith, also helps us understand the grim world of jockeys. And here Gary Stevens, the real-life legend, steals the show as Ronnie Jenkins, the aging, drug-addled jock looking for one more shot at glory.

The writing is good. Milch always seems to deliver on that promise and the language of the track is genuine and well delivered. So is the casting. John Ortiz memorably plays a sleazy trainer, Turo Escalante, who turns out to have a soul. Dennis Farina--old "Ray Bones" himself!--nicely plays Bernstein's tempered bodyguard and consigliere Gus Demitriou. And Kerry Condon, as "Rosie," the young jockey who seems to be the only optimist sighted during the entire series, should earn some praise from critics, too. And Jill Hennessy, who plays a vet and Escalante's love interest? She could entrance me by reading a phone book.

But everything was so... so California. I found myself wondering throughout the series how very different its series would be--from the narrative to the casting to the background--if it were filmed and set in New York or in Kentucky, the other two points of Thoroughbred racing's main triangle. In the end, Luck is about a form of luck particular to California's racing scene, and to its gaming dynamic, and if the series ever makes it back for a second season I hope we'll see a change of venue, to Belmont Park or to Aqueduct back East or to Churchill Downs or to Keeneland down in the Bluegrass.

When it comes to horse racing, in other words, California ain't the only game in town. And yet the only other racing venue even mentioned, as near as I can remember, is a relatively small track in Oregon named Portland Meadows. Of Kentucky, which serves as the eternal heart of the industry because it's where most of the racehorses are bred, born and raised, all we get only a few mumbled references by Nolte's Smith. Alone, he's simply not enough to fairly represent the Bluegrass, much in the same way that Condon's Rosie isn't enough to fairly portray the eternal optimism that is also at the heart of the sport.

The series achieves many milestones worth noting here. For example, one of the miraculous feelings it generates, later in the series, is a genuine sense of what an owner of a racehorse feels when his or her horse is racing and has a chance to win. As a small-time owner and breeder, whose horses have occasionally won, I promise here that what some of you will feel toward the races that come at the end of the series is the way you truly would feel if you owned the horses yourself. That is no small cinematic achievement. It's something that Seabiscuit and Secretariat and even the umder-appreciated Dreamer never made me feel.

What Mann and Milch also capture here amid the chicanery and the chaos is the essence of the preternatural connection between human and horse. It surely is no coincidence in the series that two of its toughest characters, Bernstein and Demitriou, fall head over heels in love with their horse--and with racing itself. "That's some beautiful fuckin' horse," says Demitriou, the strong arm, as he falls asleep toward the end of episode three. And Bernstein? I mean, Hoffman? His scenes with the horses are by far his best of the series. All due respect to the great actor but the horses, like children, always steal the scene.

Another grand achievement of Luck is its timing. Its narrative includes an essential (and, again disconcerting) truth about the current real-world tension between casino corporations and the racing industry. In real life, most gaming corporations hate horse racing, which they consider a dying sport. Yet most track owners and operators need gaming to survive. Meanwhile, the legislators are beholden to the casino interests and their lobbyists, who don't generally support racing. The series thus comes at a pivotal time, and many believe a critical time, in the history of the intersection of these two evolving industries.

Indeed, Luck portrays a scenario that in some ways is playing out, for real, 3,000 miles away from Hollywood, at the Meadowlands in East Rutherford, New Jersey. It is home to the most famous harness racing track in North America. And it has just been transferred from state control to the control of a man named Jeff Gural. He wants to bring gaming to the track-- wants to help create a world-class casino just a few miles from the heart of Manhattan-- but is being stymied by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and the Atlantic City lobby. That's also a topic for season two if Luck gets that far.

All horse players die broke, Damon Runyon famously wrote, and I recommend the great writer still if you are looking for something softer about humans and racehorses. Luck instead is a brooding bit of work, lighted up well by Hollywood, which few in racing or gaming will be happy to know you are watching. As somewhat of an insider to some of this, all I can say is: Not every trainer in horse racing is crooked, not every owner is a freak, and not every bettor is a degenerate. There is an awful lot of good on the backstretch and in the grandstand, an awful lot the series doesn't ever let its well-aimed cameras see.

Some people will love Luck. Some will find it too slow. And some will consider it too insular to appeal to the broader audience HBO welcomes. Me? I hope the series is a raging success so that it comes back for another season and then another one after that. Maybe by then, by the sheer force of its popularity, the leaders of the horse racing industry, and their tribunes in government, will have been roused out of their torpor to secure the future of the sport of Kings. And maybe then we'll also be one step closer to having Hollywood give us the horse racing story, the noble one, that so many of us want.

from:
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/01/hbos-luck-hollywood-goes-to-the-races/251758/ (http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/01/hbos-luck-hollywood-goes-to-the-races/251758/)

'Luck' Interviews: Is HBO's Horse Racing Drama Destined To Be A Winner?

By Maggie Furlong

HBO's "Luck" is a show that is trying to do a lot of things and nothing all at once. The characters speak all the time, in all different accents, but they're not really saying much, and whatever they do say is never what they really mean. The bulk of "Luck" -- a show that's about horse racing, on the surface -- is that there's nothing that "surface" about it. Subtext is the mantra, so if you're not into working hard to be entertained, this one might not excite you right away.

But they say slow and steady wins the race, and while "Luck" definitely starts out slow, with a cast and a pedigree this strong and a premise that has plenty worth exploring, I'm hoping it can speed up to a gallop sooner rather than later in its first season (premieres Sun., Jan. 29 at 9 p.m. EST on HBO).

I, along with a select handful of fellow journalists, sat down with "Luck" stars Dustin Hoffman and Nick Nolte, creator David Milch and executive producer Michael Mann, all of whom are known for being rather offbeat in their own ways.

Joining Hoffman and Nolte to round out the cast are Dennis Farina, Jill Hennessy, Richard Kind, Kevin Dunn, Jason Gedrick, Kerry Condon, Joan Allen, Michael Gambon and John Ortiz, among others. ("We've got all these great character actors -- we've got the crème de la crème," Nolte said.) Milch, the man behind "Deadwood," wrote and created the show, and Oscar-nominated director Mann -- the man behind such films as "Heat," "The Insider" and "Ali" -- shot the pilot and serves as executive producer on the show as well.

My chat with the "Luck" foursome can only be described as informal considering Nolte was in sweatpants and immediately asked if we'd mind if he took off his shoes (we didn't, so he did). That was just the beginning of an entertaining parallel to the quietly controlled chaos that happens onscreen ...

As an actor, do you decide to do something because you read a script and can see yourself playing a part? Or do you prefer to choose parts that aren't as easy to imagine yourself playing?

Hoffman: "I always look for the reason not to do it! I've turned down a lot of good movies with a lot of good directors, so I'm trying to get away from that. [Laughs] Michael Mann called me and said, 'I know you don't want to do television ... you're not gonna do this, but this is one of the best scripts I've ever read. Would you just read it?' So I read it, and I said, 'I really liked the parts I understood.' [Laughs] I don't know anything about television, and I'd never seen David's work. I took a meeting with both of them, and just listening to the way they were talking ... I said, 'Who was your first choice?'"

Mann: "He was the first choice, and I said I hadn't seen him play this kind of a role. That's always great territory, to bring an actor into something he hasn't done. In many of Dustin's great roles, he's been reactive -- reactive to other characters, reactive to circumstances. And he's brilliant. This character is very different. This character is proactive -- he's the man with the plan; he's the architect. And consequently, when you know where you're going, and you know what's happening and you're able to predict other people's reactions before they react, what that brings to Dustin work ... is a power in stillness. He's still quite often, and you feel the power located within him. There is the opposite of interesting agitation -- it's just the power in stillness."

Hoffman: "There's certain instruments set up, which I didn't see when I read the script, because the script is kind of an amorphous thing. A movie's either better or not as good as the script -- it's there to jump off from. To begin to see the elements that these guys set up ... here are these beautiful horses that have, in generations, abstracted themselves down to only winning and losing. And being at a window where you're betting ... I'd never really been to the track, and David takes me, and they make their bet and they watch the race on television, and right out there, it's happening. It's extraordinary."

What is it about doing TV that's so attractive to an actor?

Nolte: "It's a great way to work, if you have great material. It's better than film and I'll tell you why. Film, you know the beginning, the middle and the end ... You can really focus and create a very interesting character, make the transition seamless and everything else, but you've got the end. In this, when we're handed a script every two weeks, some of the actors go, 'Oh my god.' [Laughs] It's a surprise! It's a challenge ... and it's creatively challenging."

The show looks at every element of horse racing: horses and jockeys, owners and trainers, and, of course, the gamblers. How did the people at Santa Anita racetrack respond to you shooting there?

Milch: "It's like the way people are protective of family, and you don't tell any secrets outside the family. I think that it becomes our responsibility to be truthful in our portrayal. And if someone is going to get upset, that becomes their business. I think that Michael was so responsible in his evocation of that world, and in the authenticity of Nick's and Dustin's performance, that that goes beyond the superficial correspondence to any kind of lived character."

Mann: "Yeah, they've been pretty good ... I think they get it. We're responsible. We're authentic."

You really start to feel for these horses. They are as much characters on the show as the actors are ...

Mann: "We try to tell you a lot of things subliminally -- not in the opening credits stuff that's cut to Massive Attack, but after Ace is released from prison, that first horse montage. We're trying to tell you lots and lots and lots of messages subliminally. One is that the horses have personality ... They're characters -- it's a life around them."

Hoffman: "Look at what our society does: They have a winner and a loser, and it's by a nose. Whether it's Phelps in a pool or racing horses ... how extraordinary that we have to do that."

What was your biggest surprise, your biggest "oh my god" moment as an actor, while shooting this first season?

Hoffman: "My biggest surprise, my "oh my god" moment, is that it's the closest thing to life I've ever done. I've always felt that acting was a bastard art form because you're supposed to be able to get up in the morning and paint what's inside you -- your demons or whatever -- or write. And actors have to get something delivered, and then you try to do what the originator wanted you to do. When I did 'Kramer vs. Kramer,' it was the first time I was like, 'Oh, thank God. I get to work on a man getting a divorce as I'm getting a divorce in real life. Now it makes sense!' The best way to say it is that you hear yourself on a tape recorder and you think, 'Do I sound like that? I don't sound like that.' We don't know what we look like at this very moment -- we don't know the information that the person that's looking at us is getting. We can assume we know, but we don't know ... So that's the closest thing that I have been able to equate to working 45 years trying to learn this fucking racket ... I am learning about this character as I am learning about myself. That's the biggest revelation, not to know, really, who am I going to be in a year? We've lived so many different lives. Being a human being is a frightening experience! I say, 'I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know who this guy is.' And they always say, 'Just keep doing what you're doing.'"

from:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/26/luck-interviews-hbo-dustin-hoffman_n_1234470.html?ref=mostpopular (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/26/luck-interviews-hbo-dustin-hoffman_n_1234470.html?ref=mostpopular)

HORSE RACING BETS:



Win, place and show — first, second or third place. If can bet a horse to show, you still collect if it wins or comes in second

Exacta — betting the first two horses in a race in the correct order

Quinella — first two finishers in no particular order. Pays about half what a winning exacta bet would pay

Trifecta — first three finishers. Usually big pay out.

Double — winners of two races in a row, usually the first and second race (the "early" double) or the eighth and ninth races (the "late" double)

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/tv/odds_on_favorite_ku575ryQWfe34Uj6LmpBDN#ixzz1kgXd2x1m (http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/tv/odds_on_favorite_ku575ryQWfe34Uj6LmpBDN#ixzz1kgXd2x1m)

'Luck' horse-track characters are best since 'Sopranos'

by Linda Stasi

Do you remember the first time you saw "Deadwood" or "The Sopranos," and you couldn't figure out what the hell you'd just seen — but you knew you wanted more?

That's exactly how you'll probably feel after watching HBO's new unlike-anything-you've-ever-seen series, "Luck," about life at the track. For one thing, it has the best characters on TV since "The Sopranos."

However, the dialogue is so authentic, you might want to invite over a degenerate gambler to interpret for you.

Lucky for me, I have a live-in ex-professional gambler — who traveled the world as a card counter with Jeff Katzenberg, of Dreamworks — interpreting for me.

It was like having a UN interpreter who speaks "track" translating beside me.

The series, from David Milch of "Deadwood" and Michael Mann of "Miami Vice," is a slowly evolving story not of tony WASPs who own horses, nor even the Wall Street horses' asses who invest in them.

This is a series about trainers, jockeys, on-track owners, mobsters and gamblers — the real people who live and work at the bizarre world of the track.

It's the story of two long-shot horses who get bought against all, er, odds, by two improbable groups.

First is a group of four degenerate gamblers: There's fat, foul-mouthed, colostomy-bag-wearing, emphysema-wheezing Marcus (Kevin Dunn); idiots Renzo (Ritchie Coster) and Lonnie (Ian Hart); plus total degenerate Jerry (Jason Gedrick).

The other owner is Gus, (Dennis Farina), body guard/sycophant/killer and assistant to mobbed-up Ace Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman). Gus somehow won over $2 million on the slots in Vegas while his boss was serving three years after taking the fall for a bunch of mobsters.

The pitch-perfect chemistry between Gus and Ace, as well as the four degenerates, is funny and scary at the same time.

Also in the ensemble are two trainers, Turo Escalante (John Ortiz), a disreputable but incredible trainer, and Walter Smith, (Nick Nolte), who loves, understands and has devoted his life to horses.

There's Joey, a stuttering, broken-down agent, played brilliantly by Richard Kind; and the track veterinarian, played by Jill Hennessey in smart, against-the-grain casting. Finally there's Tom Payne as a young, cocky jockey, Kerry Condon as an exercise girl, and real-life jockey Gary Stevens, as a boozy, half-washed-up veteran jockey.

With an impossibly good cast, writing so spot-on it's poetic, and slow-build stories, I, for one, was left wanting more — even after watching the entire season.

From:
http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/tv/odds_on_favorite_ku575ryQWfe34Uj6LmpBDN#ixzz1kgaUdHuk (http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/tv/odds_on_favorite_ku575ryQWfe34Uj6LmpBDN#ixzz1kgaUdHuk)

HERE IS THE LINK TO THE INTERVIEW WITH DAVID MILCH ON PBS. IT'S ABOUT lUCK, HIS FAMILY, GAMBLING, ETC.
IT IS LONG, 30 MINUTES, POSTING THE TRANSCRIPT WOULD TAKE TOO MUCH SPACE.

http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=145706854&m=145835879 (http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=145706854&m=145835879)

Interview: 'Luck' producers David Milch and Michael Mann
How did the two dramatic heavyweights work together on horseracing series?

by Alan Sepinwall

When I heard a couple of years ago that David Milch, Michael Mann and Dustin Hoffman had teamed up to write, direct and star in an HBO drama about the world of horseracing — the finished product, "Luck," debuts Sunday night at 9 — my initial reaction was that I was almost as eager to see a fly-on-the-wall documentary about the making of such a show as I was to see the show itself.

In one corner, you had Milch, the genius creator of "Deadwood" and "NYPD Blue," who had over the years developed a process that involved constantly rewriting scripts, to the point where he would often dictate brand-new dialogue to actors right as the cameras were about to roll. In another, you had Hoffman, the two-time Oscar winner legendary for how much time and energy he devoted to preparing for a part. And in yet another corner, you had Mann, a brilliant and strong-willed director (and writer in his own right) who's been the clear person in charge of previous shows like "Miami Vice" and "Crime Story." When you add in a colorful personality like Nick Nolte, what exactly was that working experience going to be like?

Though at least one report about the production claimed Mann had banned Milch from the set, Mann vehemently denied it when they appeared with Hoffman and Nolte at the Television Critics Association press tour earlier this month.

"It's ridiculous," Mann said. "There's a time when David, (HBO president) Michael Lombardo and I embarked on this, you know, had a meeting, understood how we were going to make the pilot. And then went off and did it, meaning I was going to make it like any other film I make. There's times when a director is on the set that he wants to just have the set for himself and the actors to work out a scene. And one of those times, he'll ask the first AD and the producer and the camera man and the dolly grip and everybody else to excuse him for 10 or 15 minutes. And somehow that got contorted into something else."

Meanwhile, Milch went out of his way to be complimentary of Mann, often injecting praise towards his colleague in answers to wholly unrelated questions.

Whatever actually happened on the set, Milch and Mann have combined to make a terrific show (you can read my review here), and that's ultimately all that matters. And when I spoke to both men later that day, they continued the mutual admiration society even as they talked about the delicate working arrangement they needed to set up to make "Luck."

The first day I met Milch, he took me and the late David Mills to the track, which was the first and only time I've seen horses race in person. It's been a lifelong passion of his (and I didn't know before this interview how literally lifelong it's been), so with Mann running a few minutes behind for the interview, I began by reminding Milch of that afternoon.

(Note: at one point, Milch discusses an event that happens late in the series pilot episode, which HBO already aired as a sneak preview back in December.)

So that day you took me and Mills out was the first time I'd ever been. When did you first go to the track?

David Milch: I was five or six years old and my dad took me, and it was a complicated and conflicting experience. He explained to me that he knew that in my heart of hearts, I was a degenerate gambler and-

At five or six?
David Milch: At five or six, but that despite my disposition to be a degenerate it wasn't legal for me.

(Mann enters)

David Milch: And I've afflicted Michael with this story before, so I will abbreviate it, but all of the process of disentangling all of the conflicting messages that were contained in that has preoccupied me either obsessively or more constructively, creatively in the ensuing years.

Now Michael, David has a lifetime of experience at the track. What was your exposure to it before this?

Michael Mann:         Nothing. I mean, I went to one race. I think I went to the Kentucky Derby once and kind of shocked that we came all this way and the whole thing only took a little over a minute. But I ride now and I own a horse who is out to pasture, so I know horses have personalities, but that is what's exciting. That is what is usually exciting about something for me is if I start—you know for something, kind of a frontier. I don't know anything about it and then you can't have a better guide to the world of the racetrack than David.

So when you said, "All right, I'm going to do a show at the track," what was the story or the idea that you wanted to tell with it?

David Milch: I had no sense of any particular story. I had a collection of characters that compelled my imagination, but in my experience that's all that you ever have. And the process of witnessing the unfolding mystery is the process of telling the story in the same way I watched Michael engage those materials like an athlete. It's kind of sometimes you're wrestling with them, (and) sometimes you're seducing them. For me, I'm never going to understand horse racing and I couldn't begin to tell a linear story about it. It's just a collection of experiences I'm trying to report.

Michael, you've done some impressive things in the past with the way you've shot cars and guns and other machines, and here you're working with live animals. And the way you shot the races, especially in the pilot, I have never seen that method quite used before. Talk a little bit about the challenges of that.

Michael Mann:         I'm going to dispute with the last statement. From my point of view I'm interested in character and people and conflicts and themes and politics and-

I know, those as well.

Michael Mann:         And if you look at my movies like "The Insider" and "Last of the Mohicans," they don't have a lot to do with cars or machines or guns. I like books. So I'm not interested in the objects is the answer. I'm interested in the internal drama. I'm interested in what's going on. I'm interested in why Escalante (the horse trainer played by John Ortiz) has this — he is very adept. He is very smart. He is totally disreputable and clearly he's autodidactic. He has educated himself with some results, like he knows for sure they didn't really land on the moon and they can't fool him. So those tend to be interesting in that kind of a drama.

I like the elegance of athleticism and speed. It's very romantic about that and I think that there is brilliance that is not all about the neocortex, so I think that Michael Jordan is a brilliant artist. There is not much difference between him imagining how he can extend himself and a theoretical physicist in terms of a mental process. So I like that, and how do I impact upon an audience that inner experience of being a jockey on a horse moving like that and what it is? First of all, I have to know what the jockey's experience is, what the horse's experience is, what the relationship between the two of them is. It's an imagined experience and how I can impact upon that so that you as an audience feel I got some fraction of it?

David Milch: If I could interject, the process of the sequence in which the horse dies in the first episode compresses into two minutes a dramatic meditation on the intersection of science and spirit and it compels the imagination at five or six different levels. I think that one of the things that engage me as I watched Michael work on the piece was exactly his examination of the kind of romantic underpinning of what seems to be a mechanistic process.

In both the writing and the directing, did you have to treat the three main horses as characters?

Michael Mann:         They were written as characters. It's sequential. David writes them as characters, I have to find three horses who can do the right things for us and are also visually separated a little bit, so that you can track with them somewhat. Each horse's character isn't built. They look different and they're related to differently by different people. It's our human characters who you know. What we tried to do in the beginning of the pilot is make you almost subliminally aware — aware without knowing you're being aware — that there is a life and a liveliness within the animals themselves, so it's almost like they've got their own world, that the people aren't as tuned to the fact that the animals have their world as we the audience are, and that by design because I wanted you in that place for the eight race with the horse.

David, in the past you would rewrite often right up until when the cameras were rolling. Given the way you ultimately settled on the division of labor, did you have the ability to do that here?

David Milch: It didn't happen.

So how did that change your process?

David Milch: Utterly and necessarily and properly, so much of Michael's storytelling process is subliminal, sensual, visual that you can't fool around with that. You can't assume that, "Well, if I just rewrite a speech, it doesn't have an effect on the rest of it." And I had to make peace with that, and it was not an uneventful process, the process of making peace with that, but my work had to finish earlier and that becomes simply a discipline that you live into and try to derive a kind of strength from.

Michael Mann:         It makes complete total sense if you think about it because the writing is brilliant. It has attracted a lot of great talent who require preparation to bring their best game onto the floor, and because it's an artistically ambitious piece then that requires a lot of choreography of components to deliver that. So all that means is that you have to have it earlier, which means that we design ways for the production for afford David more time when he needed time, which is unheard of, unheard of. It's only through the support of HBO that we were able to do it and they actually literally stopped filming.

David Milch: Shut down.

Michael Mann:         Shut down and paid people to stay home so that there could be more time to get it. So talk about a collaborative effort of everybody, including HBO and David and I working toward a common objective.

from:
http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/whats-alan-watching/posts/interview-luck-producers-david-milch-and-michael-mann (http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/whats-alan-watching/posts/interview-luck-producers-david-milch-and-michael-mann)

Now there are simply too many articles about Luck, so I will no longer re-post anything here. It's enough to say that Luck is already renewed for the second season. It escaped the ill fate of JFC. 

Hey Sven! I watched the first episode last night. I liked it and am gonna watch it all. I am intrigued by the Dustin Hoffman character(there's gonna be some good "temper" scenes coming I'll bet) and can't believe how beat up Jason Gedrick looks.

I missed it, but will try to catch up.

Wavewatcher and Mz.Lily, I watched it twice, as with JFC, it's better with the second viewing. I remember feeling ready to quit JFC after two episodes, but stayed glued to the TV, and I grew up to Deadwood only after falling in love with JFC.

At least with the second season guaranteed the show will have time to develop the story, we'll see what is it about. I do hope there is promise for the lost and love for the desperate. Or just mercy, same as for injured horses.

I have been watching and love it.  I still can't set down during a horserace.   Hated to see the horse die.  I've seen that in real time.  But, tonight I seen the emotion of a jockey for the first time.
I like the line from the man(forgot name of ex-jockey) walking the jockey back in to the barn. " You never get used to it. That's why they made Jim Beam".  :( I think I'm gonna like the show, and a second viewing always helps and you see a little more it seems the second time.

So, now it's down to the third episode of Luck I just finished watching. 

A lot of memories that brings back, to start with the new show's central idea of revenge. Isn't it Milch himself as a master, returned to power - forcefully taken away from him - to vanquish the rivals - the likes of HBO that canceled Deadwood and demolished JFC with prejudice? (I simplify it terribly of course, there's much more at play in Luck.)

The vocabulary - "Give me a pound", "Doctor won't restrict his activities", the high spirited soliloquies by Nick Nolte so beautifully written - Bill Jacks immediately comes to mind. The seedy environs - motel, (yes, "El Camino" is around somewhere), dark barrooms, trash filled backyards and alleys, not exactly IB, but close.

The characters, the outstanding Ortiz-Escalante, and Coster-Renzo, the latter most resembling a helplessly childlike outlook of JFC - not John's certainly, perhaps more similar to Barry Cunningham.

The scene that made my heart turn is the one with the 'four amigos' in the stables, each holding a carrot in the open palm, looking at their newly acquired thoroughbred, waiting, as if they are begging the horse, their Luck, their Fate to come and smile at them, to save them, help them. God, that was worth watching.

As to Soprano style action in some future episodes where a dead body is thrown off the yacht - that's Deadwood cutthroat business, there is plenty of it around, no news and no good coming out of it for me.

I will be watching Luck again, not just once or twice, I'm sure.

Once again, here is a good place to discuss "Luck", on IMDB board:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1578887/board/threads/ (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1578887/board/threads/)
See you there!

HBO board is a desolate place, dark and full of angry, whining posters, no surprises and no fun.

I just watched the pilot for the second time and can't wait to proceed with the other episodes. The horse races have some of the best racing shots I've ever seen and I love all of the characters. Once or twice a year I get to work on a horse race and have to say that Mann and Milch have nailed the atmosphere that I have experienced at Saratoga, Belmont and even ratty old Aqueduct. Dustin Hoffman is fantastic.

Wait till you get to see these characters develop, I'm already in love with Four Amigos and fascinated by Escalante, and watch the Ep.4 race - it would be cathartic, it's so beautiful.  Glad you like it, I expect many Milchean surprises down the road, or should I say - down the track?  :)

Is anyone else watching Luck at all? The episode 5 is the best so far, heartbreaking and funny like hell.

There is so much of JFC there, from close resemblance of the characters in both shows to some sound effects, like troubling guitar riffs. I'm spellbound and on my toes, love it. Horses in Luck represent as obscure and discriminate medium as was surfing in JFC, Renzo and his downtrodden comrades are Vietnam Joe, Barry and Ramon, Marcus is Freddy, Smith is Bill Jacks. I believe that Ace Bernstein is Milch himself, who hates boardroom honchos of HBO and sticking it to them for Deadwood and JFC. There is no John and no end of the world eschatology, but that's OK by me.

I wish Eccles were here to offer his knowledge, and Waxon would weight in with his soft spoken opinion, Walkara said something beautiful and profane and the rest of the gang.... I wish, I wish.

I mis remember which episode it was, but some of the shots, motel shots, dusty ranch shots, made me so homesick! Then when I tried to come home to share, I found I had lost my way home! Thank you Sven for showing me the way.

I've been loving this show right along. I appreciate that they made Escalante Peruvian. Seeing N. N. at the Oscars last night made me think of the night he showed up in that Hawaiin shirt? Looking pretty sad? Luck has already been good for him. I love when he talks like Bill Jacks. I love it.

Hello Sven! Hi there WaterLily, so good to see your posts, Wave, awful nice to see you still around :)!

It's good to be here, I won't be away so long I can't find my way again. That was not a good feeling.

Hello, Cis, as Sister! Glad you've arrived safely!  :D :) 8)

Great post, Cissy, thanks for the thoughts!

I'm happy to know that I'm not delusional seeing shadows of JFC in "Luck". I agree, Cissy, the shots of the motel at night, (it's called Oasis this time) the scenes with the railbirds at their barbeque, their nomadic, unsettled existence  and something avoiding definition - the mood, or the atmosphere, or the sounds maybe - it all felt like part of JFC, like a JFC cousin.  :). In the Ep.5 the search of every character for camaraderie, understanding, meaningful connection is so moving, tragic in the case of Joe, the agent,  profound in the scene with Ace and his horse, sweet and funny in Gerry and Marcus confessions. I am already saddened that we only have 4 more episodes left in the season, happy that we got the second one this time.

Skor, Mz.Lily, what do you think about Luck, Wavewatcher, do you like the story?

Hey Cissy! Always great to see a post from an old friend!
I'm almost caught up with Luck (halfway through Ep 5- fell asleep last night).
Love the layers and all of the characters.
Rathburn (the jockey agent) is a scene stealer.
Jason Gedrick rips your heart out at the poker table.
Nick Nolte is a wonder.
Was anyone else shocked when Dustin Hoffman meets with his board of directors? I thought he was more of a gangster and didn't see that coming!
Great show so far!

  Hi Everyone, and hey, Jimmy! long time mbfam. Thanks for your welcome Sven :)  I'm not delusional! I do see IB there. I'm loving when a character is allowed to do a Bill Jacks inner discourse. Love Nick doing it, but heard... who was that? Ep. 4 I think. Was it the sweaty jock pusher I don't like so very much? Sorry, I see the respect here for him, I've just never gotten along with that actor. Hoffman would have been a waste if they were only giving one season. Mann gets the 2 seasons, even though there is plenty of complaining about the sound track everywhere you read. (personal grrrrr here & you know why) Also plenty of complaning about the usual, over budget, over time. Now where have we heard that before? But because Mann is on it? Hm.
I am grateful for every single IB aspect to this show. I knew I would love it. My Dad used to take me to the county fairs and down to the paddocks and have me choose horses, at 8, 9 years old. I read nothing at that age but anything about horses. He let me pick the horse, I kinda 'get' Milch's experience, though at a county fair, it's mellow there.  My name is down there, at Santa Anita, did I tell you? On The Breeders Cup.
I am nuts for horses. No two ways about that. Good money after bad though, breeding if you ain't got a lot of money, and you just aren't a hang at the track sort of person. I'm better on the farm. Ranch. Whatever. I cannot watch this show and then sleep! I couldn't believe you were watching before bed! I want to badly to watch 2 more eps, but I'll be up till 10:00 a.m., I get so wound up. In a good way.

Somehow, though it's a smaller vehicle? The scenes inside the car with our little Surf Motel group have a serious Vietnam Joe Van feel to them, anyone else notice that?
Big Love to you all!!! :-*

I just watched the latest ep. tonight. At sleep time.
Wonder if it's always this point in the series? I have to watch Deadwood, and count ep.s till we get to the comparative one to this ep. I cannot believe you fell asleep. It was the 'human/humane' episode. The underlying stuff, a lot of it.
I'm still trying to process. There's only one thing I know for sure about this episode; that vet was never going to leave the Peruvian that night. I'm thrilled it's a Peruvian, I'm more than crazy about Peru. But I also understand him better, the character, because I have spent time there, and with the people. I actually know a man like him. And I know others there, or from there who, well, let's say different socio economic backgrounds breed different men. In a third world, that's truly a horse of a different color.
Should I try to read a little of "It" to get sleepy with? hahahahaha
It is so good, each of you, it's so good to be here where any time, you might be, and we all be thinking of each other, because we were here.
I am grateful.
Someone talk about the horses, in last weeks ep. or point me where I should be finding you. Please?  You know how it says in books ' my heart was in my throat?' Mine was. Worked a little on my 6 pack too. I was scared and well, more scared than excited. So much heart. As in Rosie's ride, the heart is all. No one feels like a loser when they see a race like that. 
I screw up if I preview, so am sure I would if I spell checked, operator error, I know. So please, forgive any typos or flat out mis spellings?
yo' sfam

Cissy, it's you that is all heart!

The Peruvian might be not a Peruvian though, maybe you know that Ortiz grew up in NY or something like that and can speak English without any accent.

The last episode is the most emotionally revealing for me, it's also the point where JFC and Mr.Milch's "ultimate tenderness" as one of the critics called it, comes to the surface. Everyone is painfully open, vulnerable, fragile, including the supposed tough guys, Escalante and Ace.

Great to have you here, Cissy. Have you ridden many horses? Have you owned any? Do tell!

This is a comment to Luck episode recaps.
Should be well accepted by people familiar with John From Cincinnati archetypes.

by Rasdiff

Re: Luck Recap: No Icing Error, This

What I'm saying is that if you watch the show Milch is writing there is nothing slow moving about this at all. Listen close to the lines that don't quite make sense, or just appear to be thrown away, and in those words you will find the story Milch is really telling. The "fresh apples over there" Ace tosses out after the parole officer gives up on the demand of seeing the sample hit the cup first-hand should be all the veteran Milch watcher needs to understand Ace's true identity. Ace is the guy at the front end of the Bible handing out apples in Eden, but Luck is not that story.
This is the story found at the other end of the book. The story Milch is telling here is of the coming of the judgment. Once you understand Ace's role, the horn playing imagery around the parole officer tells his story. I have no knowledge of future episodes but have little doubt that when the officer gets a name, it will be Gabriel. The "Never, never near a horse, I've a lifetime ambition to keep it that way" quote makes sense. The coming of the horses will leave him no choice but to blow his horn, which will herald the death of countless millions by sword and by fire.
Memory-losing Ace remembering seeing Miles Davis play Sept 8th, no September 9th 1958 at a club in what must have been his mid-teens does not quite add up. See Ace as timeless and it makes this viewing far more possible. Which brings up Ace's old friend turned enemy Mike. Like Gabriel, Michael is one of the seven Archangels. His fame is for casting Lucifer (the fallen angel) out of heaven and into the underworld. Even on the surface level Michael's conversation with Ace on the yacht is both beautiful and terrifying, but see the story Milch is telling and Mike's description of Christ on the cross is no longer something he read, but is instead something the two men witnessed firsthand.
That Michael is corrupt to his core and with the wise Gabriel willing to let things play out as Ace moves to secure a venue for his plot, it is already clear this is a very different telling of the Revelation. Nothing here is slow moving, and the stakes in this gamble are considerably more than whether or not Mike can afford to keep his yacht when all is said and done. At the poker table Milch has brought us to, the minimum bet is the fate of humankind.
Download the Golden Gate Quartet's version of "That Great Getting Up Morning" on i-tunes, 99 cents that if you are watching Luck will make your HBO subscription far more valuable.


from:
http://www.vulture.com/2012/03/luck-recap-season-1-episode-6.html#comments (http://www.vulture.com/2012/03/luck-recap-season-1-episode-6.html#comments)

"That Great Getting Up Morning" is classic, here it is in Mahalia Jackson's interpretation.
Mahalia Jackon In That Great Gettin' Up Morning (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSHp8X9pHic&feature=related#)

The full series, episode by episode recaps and additional opinions about "Luck" in "Vulture", all in one place. Recaps author is Matt Zeller Seitz.

http://www.vulture.com/tv/luck/

Hello Sven and everybody!
Just finished tonight's Luck. I cried! When Ace was 'jogging' with the horse? I just nah nahed into tears!
Escalante, the character just keeps on doing exactly what I expect him to do. I love it. Looks like,
from the preview, she isn't going to get to keep that babe, he will be sorry about that. Ace is breaking
my heart, simple and sweet things he loves, hard "Ace Bernstein" he is only a shadow of now I am thinking.
He will over react to Mr. Israel's unfortunate incident. The 'conversation' Jerry and Naomi? had in the car
I found to be rather... what, different? laughing. Unhappy about Rosie and Smith and Ronni, dammit Ronni!
Ronni could use a visit from John, eh?
I need to find the 'nest' place. Off to look for it.

Hey, what nest are you in search of? IMDB? See you there, Cissy.  ;)

Yes, Ace and the horse walking in step are touching, although is Ace that sweet and harmless, of that I am not so sure. Nathan is dead, and Ace is the one who sent "The Kid" to be slaughtered, didn't he?

I would like to learn what is ahead for the Latino boy, Eduardo,  who appeared in this episode. I'm guessing he'll be under Turo's wing, who might be seeing himself in the boy.

I was thinking about the black and white photo Turo turns to, on his mantle, of a little boy. I'm thinking he's lost one along the way somewhere. A son, a brother? Someone from his past, some male child has gone missing, and he misses that child. I agree Sven, he will take that little one on, and he'll do it the
way it gets done. Remember, Turo started out shoveling horse droppings? I have done my share, I'm lucky the smell agrees with me :)

Ace isn't real sure who he is anymore I think. He went to his own room, alone tonight to watch his horse. I'm thinking the man who went away for 3 years isn't the man who came out. He's going through the motions, but I get the feeling he'd as soon walk away from the revenge business when he's with his lady, or his horse.
I really don't think he thought 'the kid' would be killed, I think that's going to put him back further into his 'Ace' persona where acting out in his way won't be accepted by those new in his life, and he likes the new in his life.
Off to read IMBD, you all are sleeping now. 'night~

Luck is cancelled

"It is with heartbreak that executive producers David Milch and Michael Mann together with HBO have decided to cease all future production on the series LUCK.

Safety is always of paramount concern.  We maintained the highest safety standards throughout production, higher in fact than any protocols existing in horseracing anywhere with many fewer incidents than occur in racing or than befall horses normally in barns at night or pastures.  While we maintained the highest safety standards possible, accidents unfortunately happen and it is impossible to guarantee they won't in the future.  Accordingly, we have reached this difficult decision.

We are immensely proud of this series, the writing, the acting, the filmmaking, the celebration of the culture of horses, and everyone involved in its creation."

Quote from Michael Mann and David Milch:  "The two of us loved this series, loved the cast, crew and writers.  This has been a tremendous collaboration and one that we plan to continue in the future."

http://www.seat42f.com/luck-halts-production.html (http://www.seat42f.com/luck-halts-production.html)

If there was ever any doubt, it is now official...Milch (and anything he touches) is cursed. I'm sorry, but this is not about the horses. 3 groundbreaking shows all end prematurely, leaving the viewer unfulfilled, angry. Great and beautiful storytelling...but in the grand scheme...bad TV.

JFC and Luck were  trying to transcend TV, wavewatcher, that's the problem, but apparently the author's power was not enough to defy gravitation. Horses deaths are just portends, signs. 

Curse? Maybe.

I am sad and angry, yes. Luck is now where JFC is, where our memories call to each other, and only the silence answers.

Wow.  "Bad" Luck, for sure.  Will HBO finish airing the finished episodes?  Or is this it? 

Seems I find myself just not being able to believe this. When Breaking Bad was rejected by hbo, AMC took it an bless them, look what they made.
Is there a way this could not happen for this show? Or are contracts in place forbidding such action? I'm not saying who cares horses die, not by a very long shot, but, what are the actual statistics on horse deaths over the same period of time when it isn't being a film. Anyone know? I did read that post, but wasn't sure it meant that it was certainly within the actual statistics, even less than normal? Or average, or worse?
This show has simply gotten better with each episode, I am hearing from people who intended to watch, who hadn't seen an ep yet, very unhappy this has happened.

I just think, if it's well within the actual 'norm' for this track, the number of horses dying that year, or that quarter, then it's sorta not the filming's fault. It's just what happens.
Sven really think that they were looking for an excuse? This was going great, truly. The connections and the personalities all laid out just so we don't get to know what happens to them? I really hope that Mr. Hoffman for one, would let the rest of the story he supported telling on a different channel. Sue hbo if you have to, lots of people are coming late to really like this show, season 2 would cement it's viewers.
I have heard that the other is true as well, that Milch is just too difficult in so many ways to work with. Did Deadwood only get to go on because it had enough naked ladies and killings?  Not because it was brilliant?

You are right on many accounts, Cissy. Luck is over and done with, no other network will pick it up, merits of its message built on the communion of human and animal, epitomized by horse in this case, notwithstanding. The death of horses would taint it forever.

Crazies from PETA (I despise them for extremism, it is beyond restrain or decency) sent a letter to L.A. District Attorney's office, blaming a trainer, a vet and - Mr.Milch, by name - for the horses' death. As much as I know from printed media,  Milch was banned from the filming and the set, was only writing scripts.

I will miss and remember the Oasis Motel and Four Amigos - Marcus, Jerry, Lonny and Renzo, most closely associated in my mind with IB and JFC. Those twisted and damaged, and still tender and funny like hell souls sure could use some luck, or, better yet - a visit from Cincinnati, where John is residing. Although he must be busy - "many dealerships in so many sectors".

Sigh.
Milch was banned from being around the work and the horses? That just says an awful lot to me. Nothing good.  You gotta love his crazy genius, I love these losers we all come to remember, to recognize so easily, empathetic ally, except for their respective different broken parts with this crew.

He's poison now I guess, Milch, in the media field. Too much everything. Too much time, too much sacrifice, too much bending of deals and dates agreed upon, basically, too much for the non genius crowd to allow him the room to tell the story.
He was actually being a danger to the horses? Thank you for including the link. 

Argh! A whole story we don't get to know the ending of. JFC's ending ep sure didn't satisfy me at all, and I would think that Mr. Hoffman would not like to see it go that way. If Tom Hanks were the producer, as he is on so many hbo projects, would this show still be cancelled?
I know a lot of people who didn't like or watch Big Love, which he produced, Mr. Hanks, and it had a pretty long run, before and after the writers strike back then. I think there is just more to this than the 3 sadly departed horses.

What an episode, from an alternate -Sopranos -universe, - blood, gore, threats laid out, everyone is unhappy and fighting. It's been filmed by one of Sopranos' directors, so the sentimentality is none and ugliness galore. Should've attracted wide audience eventually, this story arc, but a chance was taken away.

Maybe some pieces of the puzzle would surface, John Ortiz (Escalante) and Alan Sepinwall (blogger, TV critic) promised to share what they learned from the maker of Luck world, Mr. Milch.

One more episode left.  No ending, how familiar, exhausting and saddening, hard to imagine that Milch is working on Faulkner adaptations, still the HBO "loyal soldier."

Good closing song, anyone knows the title? 

Tonight's episode of Luck was amazing. Felt a couple times like my heart was going to beat itself right out of my body!

Sven, yes, there was that naked sort of factual filming in this episode that looked much like Sopranos.
All the people who were/are still watching, we all know that (I know I keep saying this, but it is just so true for me) this show honestly gets
better with each episode. This would have been exactly what hbo has been looking for since Sopranos ended, finally filled that gap
so many people seem to miss from hbo.

I notice hbo isn't getting much praise for shutting this project down.

I am starting to feel like hbo is a sort of bait and switch network. We have great original programming, and we cancel it regularly!
That should be their claim to fame, is as far as I'm concerned.
 

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/more-sports/eighteen-horses-broken-aqueduct-nov-30-racing-brass-struggles-explain-article-1.1041699?localLinksEnabled=false (http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/more-sports/eighteen-horses-broken-aqueduct-nov-30-racing-brass-struggles-explain-article-1.1041699?localLinksEnabled=false)

You would think that with all the great scripts and acting, they would find a way to shoot around the races. Mechanical/latex horse torsos have been used in Seabiscuit, Braveheart, etc. throughout the years. While I admire Milch and Mann's "authentic" shooting of the race sequences, I am more impressed with the acting, dialogue and character development. I am always more impressed with plot, than I am with special EFX. There is much more going on here than just 3 horse deaths. Milch and HBO are poison when coupled.

Oh! Hi Cissy!

Hi Wave!
It's good to 'see' you again!

I agree with you. Yes, from the first tantalizing hint of this story coming to us from Milch and hbo, I was waiting for those horses, waiting for the races, and they have been awesome. Tonights episode certainly would have decided many watchers who were still figuring out if they liked it. or if they could make out the audio.
But, you're right about the races, seeing them, hearing them, just wonderful. Still, we have stronger relationships with the characters than we do the horses, we're more invested in where the people end up,  in the characters stories, and since that's already been decided on and partly written, why throw it away? Why not give it a chance? This really would have worked, CGI anyone? For long shots in the races? Maybe use footage of actual races already run when you want a close up, or to put your actor on the horse instead of the actual jockey that was there? You know, adjust stock footage to fit what the story needs to say in the race. 
If horse deaths were uncommon statistically to the usual at that certain time of year? I'd very sadly say, it's got to stop. But that isn't the truth, the truth is exactly what you said it is. I agree totally with you. There is a whole story in why this show was really cancelled that includes the horses and the people,  Maybe they'll make that tv-movie one day, eh? We would all watch I betcha! On second thought, we shouldn't hold our breaths though o-<

I'm very conflicted about watching the remaining "Luck" episodes in my DVR.(I'm 3 behind) I probably will, but am not looking forward to the anger and disappointment sure to follow the final episode. I'm wondering if it might be better to wrap it all up now and just be sad, rather than seeing it through and then wondering for years about "what might have been". Either way, HBO is exiting my life for good this time. I have grown to hate TrueBlood over the years and would actually be rooting for Russell (the ancient vampire) to kill off the whole cast, especially Sookie.

If you are on Ep. 5, you'll miss the birth pangs of a great show! No, Wave, you are not weak of heart, and the heart must feel - love and loss are twins anyways.

I am watching every re-run - as we already learned, Milch is addictive!

Spent the early morning watching and re-watching the past 3 eps. of Luck.

Previews of this Sunday just look like this series is goin' strong. Blood to be paid and all. Maybe that's in the 2 eps we do or do not get to see. I've heard both. Crossing fingers. I tried the toes too, but they got all cramped up and it hurt.

Wave, I have to say, it's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. I'll never be sorry I watched JFC, I might be frustrated, even pissed majorly, I love that show, you know that, you all know that. Broke my heart when I got past pissed.
This is gonna do the same. But not to see it? I don't think I could do that. Remember how it felt, I know you do, that opening from JFC, Dylan and the sky, clouds, waves... we knew that wasn't leading to a happy place, but would you rather have never experienced that? How about Bill and Freddy playin that sweet God Bless the Child up there in the night? And of course, 'Fuck room 24!'  How about Zippy coming home to Bill in Lois's room? I wouldn't trade it. I don't think any of us here still today would.
I got faith that way. smile.

It's so good to see all of you again. I've been the less for spending no time here. I'm glad I know that know.
I can't find my way around at all, that's why my posts go on strange pages. Sorry, truly. If I don't respond to something, try to tell me where to look? All newbie here again. Hope a few folks caught BVH surfing Wednesday night, I know I posted it somewhere here....

Had to say, while I am here, I miss all of you like crazy. Seriously!
Fall is just about here, hope we are all chatting or being in touch
with each other.... a sfam told me there was no more 'us'.
I can't believe that.
It would be too sad.

Big Love to all of my bro's and sis's fam!