With Jake taking a movie shooting in July, it is the biggest indicator that Austin has finished up with OTH and is moving on. So what's next?
Austin has talked about how proud he was of JFC, how much he like working on the show, and how much he liked working with Milch, both on Deadwood and JFC. We know that working with Milch on JFC had created the best performance Austin's done to date.
We've said it once and say it again.
Get back to Milch.
As luck would have it, Milch is back with HBO and working on a new series. Not the NY cop drama In the Ninth, but a show about the world of house racing called Luck.
Milch teamed up with longtime friend Michael Mann to shoot the pilot last year, which HBO was enthused about enough to order a season to premiere later this year. Their friendship "goes back to the days when Milch was running 'Hill Street Blues' and Mann was doing the same with 'Miami Vice.' "
Luck is look at horse racing -- the owners, gamblers, jockeys and industry players as only Milch can. "The pilot is about a bunch of intersecting lives in the world of horse racing," Milch told Daily Variety. "It's a subject which has engaged and some might say has compelled me for 50 years. I've joked that if I just can make $25 million on this show, I'll be even on research expenses. I find it as complicated and engaging a special world as any I've ever encountered, not only in what happens in the clubhouse and the grandstand, but also on the backside of the track, where the training is done and where they house the horses."
The lead character is Ace Bernstein, played by Dustin Hoffman , who Milch has described as "a guy versed in all the permutations of finance, elicit and otherwise. When he is released from jail for securities violations, he resumes his place at the race track, where he is a figure of long-standing repute."
Co-starring in the series is Nick Nolte, and the pilot, also featured Richard Kind, John Ortiz, Kevin Dunn, Jason Gedrick, Richie Coster, Ian Hart, Tom Payne, Kerry Condon and Gary Stevens.
The theme in Luck is the idea that a horse crossing the finish line before another can change a man's life and how all the show's characters even peripheral ones are "invested in that illusion: jockeys, owners, trainers, low-lifes, misfits, criminals," gamblers alike. The similarity to his series Deadwood is much the same, every man for himself, as long as every man agrees it's a prize worth winning.
Milch along with creating and writing the series, is an executive producer, along with former HBO programming topper Carolyn Strauss and Mann.
They have shot 6 episodes of the first season at the Santa Anita Race Track and around the LA area.
The world of horse racing and the track is nothing new for Milch "When I was a kid, my dad used to take me out to the race track and so many formative experiences have to do with associations like that. My relationship with the track was, I would say, at least fractionally as complicated as my relationship with my old man. So it kept me coming back." In addition he's owned close to 100 horses, racing his horses all over the world, and has one the Breeders' Cup race twice in 1992 and in 2001.
Milch does like to use people he has worked with before to cast in his projects.
Austin's a wee bit tall to play a jockey, but it would be nice to see him step outside the box and get a couple episodes as someone very unexpected.
If he does he'd have his own Milch/HBO trifecta.
