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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. 

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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

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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

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 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#

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

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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

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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

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'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

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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

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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

[Sven2]

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

[Sven2]

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

[Sven2]

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/

[Sven2]

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/

[Sven2]

'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

[Sven2]

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