[Sven2]

'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

[Sven2]

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

[Sven2]

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

[Sven2]

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. 

[wavewatcher]

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.

[Water Lily]

I missed it, but will try to catch up.

[Sven2]

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.

[Water Lily]

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.

[Sven2]

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.

[Sven2]

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

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.

[wavewatcher]

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.

[Sven2]

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?  :)

[Sven2]

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.

[Cissy]

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.

[Sven2]

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?