Talking with Alan Sepinwall: "It was HBO, definitively. There was back and forth about it, but their feeling was so clearly that the situation was untenable, that there was really no protracted dispute. We were presented with an accomplished fact. And I don't say that with any resentment. They made the decision they felt they had to make."

"I would just say that you’re coming up against certain deep, fundamental biological truths: that any living thing is subject to the laws of mortality, and that there was nothing that was done with any of these horses that was unnatural, nothing that was other than what they had evolved to do. [In claiming otherwise], there’s a kind of moral and emotional fastidiousness that is entailed, which at a certain point becomes absurd. Organic matter depends upon the appropriation and consumption of other organic matter. There are just truths that obtain whether we find them pleasant or not. The kind of flinching from any form of art or experience that PETA seems to advocate is ultimately life-hating."

"HBO officials say their programming department has yet to make a final decision as to whether the pilot, which was written by Milch of 'Deadwood' fame and directed by Michael Mann, will be picked up as a series. But racetrack officials believe there is 'a very strong possibility' that HBO will go forward with the high-stakes drama, which would also star Nick Nolte as a horse trainer."