LOS ANGELES – David Milch had the script for a horse racing drama kicking around in his head for 30 years. The screenwriter and producer was just too busy living it to put words to paper.
As a 6-year-old, Milch first accompanied his father to the racetrack in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. He was too young to wager, but Milch’s father worked things out anyway.
“`You want to gamble, don’t you? Well, you can’t gamble because you have to be 18 years old,’” Milch recalled his father telling him. “`I’ve set it up with Max the waiter. He’ll run your bets for you.’”
That mixed message sent Milch off on a lifelong fascination with the track and an eventual gambling addiction. Along the way, he owned two Breeders’ Cup champions.
Milch’s portrait of horse racing’s seedier side comes to life in the drama series “Luck,” starring Dustin Hoffman and Nick Nolte, debuting Sunday on HBO at 9 p.m. EST.
He couldn’t write it sooner “because I had to quit gambling,” he said.
The nine-episode first season was filmed at sun-dappled Santa Anita in suburban Arcadia, an art deco racetrack set against the San Gabriel Mountains. Milch has won and lost money there, but he said he never
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