Fresno Famous

In the beginning there was the dream — the Miller brothers and their movie, the one they vowed to make, odds be damned, as a tribute to their father.

There was also the Dream — the one with a capital D — where they'd make the movie, only it would star Ed Harris. But that was the next-to-if-not impossible one that they didn't talk so much about.

The fact either came true could be seen as lottery-style good fortune.
But then, you'd have the Miller brothers all wrong.

“Nothing just fell into our laps,” says Noah Miller, who along with Logan (they're identical twins) are on a media blitz for “Either You're in, or You're in the Way,” a written chronicle of the whole ordeal, which was released April 28. Already they've been featured on the Today Show and Fox News and will give a screening of the movie at Bookstock 2009, a music, art and music festival, June 6 at AT&T Park.

Before that though, the brothers will be in town signing copies of the book from 5 to 7 p.m., May 8 at the Fig Garden Bookstore.

Talking with the brothers, here's what you glean about dreams: First, you can't convince everyone. So you shouldn't even bother to try.
“You're either in, or you're in the way.” It's the title of their book for a reason and it was the brothers' mantra, though when they say it, it comes out sarcastically funny and you get that they mean it a totally tongue-in-cheek kind of way.

Also: getting the dream isn't luck. Because even as things start lining up, even after you've trapped Ed Harris in a two-on-one in the lot behind San Francisco's Castro Theater, shown him your two-minute movie trailer and given him the script, even nine days later when he's actually agreed to be in your movie, there's work to be done.

Because suddenly you have obligations — real ones — actors who've signed on and a crew and scheduled shooting days. Never mind you've got no money, that you're $45,000 in debt. That's you're little secret.

One that kept that brothers up at night.
“So many times it looked like everything was lost.”

You're not sure which brother says this, but they assure you its OK. They're in this thing together. And they finish each other sentences anyway.

In the end, the money comes in, and the movie gets made and the story of just how gets told and told again until someone convinces the brothers to write the book. Which gets picked up by an agent and then bought, and published.

It's almost all too much for two guys who are used to scraping by, to working and then working harder, just to get to pay the bills and eat and make it to the next day. They would wake up at 5 a.m. every morning to write the book. They had to. The rest of the mornings (the rest of the day, really) were spent editing the movie.

In fact, the brothers haven't slept more than seven hours a night in six years. If they get more than six it's a reason to celebrate.
“Like ‘Ode to Joy' starts playing,” Noah says, and the brothers break into song and you picture them doing an arm-flailing happy dance.
“You're just living life. You don't know it's a great story.”

And there's still work to do. Books don't just magically appear on the best-sellers list. They're first-time authors, no names. So they have to hit the road. They'll be in 20 cities before the big debut at Bookstock. And the movie is in a sort of limbo — they need to sell it to a distributor and get it in theaters.

Then, there's the 11 other scripts they've written.
“Ideas, we have plenty of those.”

So, you'll excuse the brothers if they're still getting used to the Dream as reality — the interviews and book signings, the Today Show spots. There's a period of acclimation, they say.
“We're working on it.”