Either You're in or You're in the Way

by Logan Miller

  But we did have a shooting schedule. Pretend as if, and it shall become. And we were pretending as if we had the money.

  It was so unheard of to have a shooting schedule without any money, that people just assumed we had the money.

  It was mid-May. Because of Ed’s schedule we had decided to break up principal photography (the actual filming of the movie) into two segments. Three weeks in September, break for two months, and then return in December and shoot for two weeks with Ed. And EVERYONE thought we were crazy to break it up. Yes, EVERYONE. “Shoot it all in November and December” was the advice from the experts. “Do not break up the shooting schedule. It’s insane.”

  But we thought THEY were insane. From a conventional perspective, they were right. Dividing up principal photography invited countless disasters into our movie; so many that we won’t begin to list them. It would become its own book. But we’ll provide you with one of the more prominent considerations: CONTINUITY.

  Let’s say we have a scene at the quarry. The first part of the scene is with the brothers—Clint and Lane. The second part of the scene is with Charlie (Ed Harris). We shoot the brothers in September. It’s hot and dusty. It’s perfect. Then Ed shows up in December to shoot the same scene, and now it’s raining, the quarry is a mud pit, the grass on the hills has turned from September Gold to Leprechaun Green. We’d be in big trouble. The scenes won’t cut.

  So you see the potential problem…

  By breaking up the schedule, we placed part if not most of the scenes in this catastrophic jeopardy. All the brothers’ scenes could be sunny. All of Ed’s scenes could be raining—September Gold to Leprechaun Green. Ever seen a movie like this? No. You haven’t. Because it doesn’t work. It can’t work. But this is what we were facing. It was supremely plausible and very real.

  And we still thought the experts were wrong.

  So we carefully examined every scene in our script, searching for ways to avoid continuity errors. We were filming in our backyard. We knew the land, the weather patterns, the sunlight of September, and the long shadows of December. We had explored the grassy hills and built tree forts in the mighty oaks, played baseball on every local diamond and horse pasture in West Marin, rode our bikes along the country roads, dug ditches and pulled weeds, slept in the warm grass in September and the cold, damp forests of December, stumbled home drunk on the dirt paths and through horse stables, driven past blooming flowers, cow pastures, and pumpkin fields. We knew every fold, stream, ridge, tree, rock, squirrel, scrub jay, raven, and person in these parts.

  But of course, all this attention to the schedule was tied to the money. No money, no movie.

  So we mass produced our business plan and distributed it widely, with the basic pitch:

  “We’re making a movie with Ed Harris. Do you know anyone who might be interested in investing?”

  “Maybe…”

  “Great, here’s ten. Pass them around.”

  Tim Logan, our blood brother, built us a Web site. It contained the two-minute trailer, brief bios, the Panavision Grant, Kodak and FotoKem endorsements, and an article from a Tucson newspaper. Not too much information, just enough to spark interest, just enough to get us in the room with a potential investor.

  We made a hundred phone calls a day. We needed to raise several million dollars in six weeks. Shooting in September meant that we would need to start spending money in July.

  Gordon told us, “It’s going to take you just as long to raise ten thousand dollars, as it will to raise one hundred thousand, as it will to raise a million, as it will to raise ten million.”

  We followed his advice. We weren’t going to nickel and dime the financing by accepting ten grand here and five grand there. We wanted one investor, at most, four. It was all about getting in front of the right person.

  Were we out of our minds for jumping the schedule to September, a full two months earlier than we needed? Ed was coming in December. If we waited, started filming in late November, and shot the entire movie in one chunk, then we’d have two more months to secure the financing. The self-imposed September deadline had increased the stakes in an already high-stakes game.

  What were we thinking?

  CAN YOU JUGGLE? YES, BUT ONLY CHAIN SAWS

  Finding leads on money was easy. But getting money from them was damn hard.

  Everybody wanted to sit down and “talk” to us about our movie. It was novel. It allowed them to pull up the curtain for a moment and peek at the mechanics behind their most cherished entertainment.

  In effect, WE became their amusement for the day, perhaps the week. We would meet with prospective investors—at their office, their house, for dinner—all hope and enthusiasm. This is the one! But in reality, they had no intention of giving us a dime. We were their jesters, their twin fools.

  We spent countless hours on phone calls and in-person meetings with people who were full of shit. Some of them were even dangerous.

  THE POOL THAT COULD SINK US

  It started as a harmless conversation at a pool party in Vegas. Alcohol was involved. The temperature was hovering at a pleasant eighty-five degrees. They were in the shallow end, strawberry margaritas in hand. He was splashing her. She was splashing him. They were smiling, giggling. He winked at her. She winked back. He was getting laid tonight. And we were about to get screwed.

  He started bragging about our movie, about his involvement. Maybe he was producing it, who knows? He was trying his best to get laid, and movie producers, he presumed, get laid rather easily.

  He refilled their margaritas with fresh slush, and they sat on the edge of the pool, feet in the water, all smiles and lust. The sun was setting. Turns out she’s a conduit to BIG MONEY. HUGE MONEY. She knows the Gettys or Rockefellers or some other whale of wealth. And you guessed it—they’re looking to invest in a movie. He’s hit the jackpot. Sex and money.

  Now, this guy in Vegas is a buddy of a buddy. This doesn’t imply that he’s not a good guy, only that we didn’t know him that well. And we had made the mistake of giving him a business plan.

  “We should call my producing partners, the twins,” he says. “You should talk to them.”

  “I’d love to,” she replies, eyes sparkling in his.

  He pushes himself up and stands at the pool’s edge, offers his hand and lifts her up, balancing his drink marvelously. Then he dries his hand, winks at her again, and calls us on his cell phone, excited. He’s gonna be a PRODUCER!

  “Guys, you gotta talk to this beautiful woman here. She’s a friend of mine. Pitch her on our movie. I think she could help us secure the financing.”

  So she gets on the phone and we pitch her on our movie. It was going good until…

  …we mentioned Ed Harris—the star of our investment.

  “Ohhhh…Ed Harris,” she says. “I know his agent, Agent Man. I’ll give Agent Man a call tomorrow and put in a good word for you guys. Let him know you’re looking for financing. He can probably help.”

  NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  Put in a good word? Lady, you just put our neck in the lock of a guillotine.

  CUT TO—PHONE CONVERSATION—DOOMSDAY TIMES TEN

  (In our neurotic minds, this is how it might have gone down.)

  POOL GIRL: I just talked to the Miller Brothers, you know those guys that are doing the movie with Ed Harris?

  AGENT MAN: Yeah, I know those cocksuckers. What about ’em?

  POOL GIRL: We had a great conversation. Nice guys. I’m gonna try to raise them some money.

  AGENT MAN: For what?

  POOL GIRL: Their movie, of course.

  AGENT MAN: They don’t have any money?

  POOL GIRL: No.

  Agent man is doing back flips across his office. All she can hear is gymnastics.

  Agent man calls Ed. Agent man is more fired up than the day he moved out of the mailroom.

  AGENT MAN: These guys are full of shit, Ed. They don’t have any money. They duped you. Duped u
s. Duped everyone. Their movie ain’t happening…Check out the script I just sent you, Death Hunt 5000. Universal is offering two mil, plus back-end.

  BACK TO US

  Our hearts knocked, creaked, pounded against our ribs. It sounded like the stressing of a submarine falling into the abyss, slowly imploding.

  What had we done? What did we awaken?

  Our survival right now depended on the immediate cooperation of brain and mouth. Noah thought quickly, then spoke: “You know, that’s probably not a good idea to call Ed’s agent.”

  “Why not? I love Agent Man. He’s a great guy. It’ll be great. I’ll say how GREAT you guys are.”

  “No…Please don’t,” Noah said. “We’re in high-level negotiations with Agent Man and his people right now, and your phone call could jeopardize the execution of a contract. There could be legal consequences associated with your actions that are beyond our control. If the deal unravels, our only recourse would be to sue you.”

  Our guy at the pool party tossed his margarita into the air—chances of him getting laid destroyed: “Whoa-whoa-whoa…What’s going on here, guys?”

  “Yep…We gotta be real careful. We’re trying to close this deal. Our attorney’s a killer…”

  Silence at the pool in the desert. The margarita glass finally lands and shatters.

  “Why don’t we resume this phone call next week when the deal is signed?” Noah said. “Then we can disclose all the relevant details of the pending situation.”

  We hung up. Called Pool Guy back. “If she calls, you die.”

  Then we called our friend who recommended Pool Guy. “If she calls, you die too.”

  FIGHTING GHOSTS

  It was 1:34 A.M. Logan couldn’t breathe. He’d been waking up each night gasping. The stress was suffocating. He was fighting ghosts. What if we don’t get the money? What if Ed backs out? What if his agents and attorneys find out we don’t have any financing yet?

  We’d crossed the event horizon. The tidal forces had grabbed hold and wouldn’t stop pulling until we either succeeded or failed. All our credibility would be destroyed if we failed to raise the money. There were too many players involved now.

  We had to close the ring.

  Logan climbed out of his sleeping bag on the floor, sweating and gasping, turned on the lights and went into the bathroom. His face was drawn from stress. He washed it. He started taking deep breaths and long exhales, trying to calm his anxiety. After several minutes he turned off the lights, laid back on the floor, and tried to ease his mind by focusing on his breathing.

  These episodes, waking in the middle of the night, gasping and heaving from anxiety, would be the norm for the next few months. It was just something Logan battled throughout the uncertainty of preproduction.

  While Logan kept his stress internal, Noah raged. His stress was directed outward. He cursed all obstacles with the fury and defiance of an abolitionist sermon. Noah was in earnest. He would not equivocate. He would not excuse. He would not retreat a single inch. And he let everybody know it.

  Noah made our fight apocalyptic, a fight for our souls, a fight for eternity—a fight for our father.

  Grandiose?

  Delusional?

  Maniacal?

  From a clinical perspective: YES, absolutely. But that’s how Noah framed the struggle. And it worked for him.

  What’s your life worth?

  How much do your goals matter?

  What will you do to achieve them?

  And sometimes Noah would go WAY out there. He would think of us as a river that had been dammed by some giant concrete wall, the water our knowledge and determination, continuously rising into this great reservoir of potential energy. Eventually it would burst. As long as we kept expanding our knowledge, the dam would break.

  He drew confidence from one of the laws of thermodynamics: KE = 1/2 mv2

  The brotherhood was the kinetic energy. Each actor on board increased our mass. And our velocity increased with every phone call we made, every investor we pitched, every location we scouted, every book we read, every person we consulted, every e-mail, positive thought, rewrite on the script, every atom of energy directed toward our goal.

  Why wouldn’t the laws of motion apply to our movie? Noah assumed they did. Either we were going to explode in a ball of fire or make our movie.

  Then Noah started writing quotes on note cards and tacking them to the wall:

  Thoreau: “Go confidently in the path of your dreams, live the life you’ve imagined.” We couldn’t think of any more powerful words to guide and fix our minds upon. “Live the life you’ve imagined” seemed to capture it all.

  Emerson: “To be great is to be misunderstood.”

  Nobody understands us! We’re doing a great job, brother.

  Frederick Douglass: “For it’s not light that is needed, but fire; it’s not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind and the earthquake in our hearts.”

  Yes! We are a natural disaster!

  Thomas Paine: “I like the man that smiles in trouble, that gathers strength in distress, and grows brave by reflection. ’Tis the business of little minds to shrink.”

  We weren’t going to shrink. But damn if it didn’t feel like we were in distress.

  BOGGED DOWN IN THE NORTH

  BY THE FIRST week of June, we had given business plans to friends, family, friends of friends, neighbors, practically tossing them out of our car like newspapers, and were quickly running out of leads. We’d met with several Bay Area movie investors and had been laughed out of the room. We’d been called “cocky and arrogant,” told we needed “expert producers and an expert director,” informed that “CAA will never let YOU GUYS direct Ed Harris,” and asked “Why are you doing this? Why humiliate yourselves?”

  We told them off. They could all go blow each other in the Land of Experts. We were fast building a reputation as a couple of stubborn kids who had “no idea how this business really works” by pseudoproducers who were more focused on hobnobbing with celebrities than putting out a quality movie.

  We’re not living in reality? Great! Fantastic! Best news we’ve heard in weeks. It must mean we’re going somewhere. Drive it till the wheels fall off. Then yank the engine and throw it in a boat.

  But no matter how defiant we were, each day brought us closer to September. And each day seemed to bring us further away from the money.

  DRINK AND BE MERRY

  We drove up Highway 1 to the Russian River with our blood brother Tim. We needed to get away for a few hours, forget about our frustration, hang out on the edge of things, float away on the winding roads, ocean cliffs, and redwoods, lose ourselves for the afternoon.

  On our way up the coast we stopped in Bodega Bay and got a bottle of red wine and a loaf of sourdough, sat on the pier and hung out for an hour, breathing in the salty air, listening to the seagulls, watching the fishing boats chug into the harbor, the diesel rainbows on the tide.

  We started to relax, a sensation dormant for months, the fermented grapes working their spell. Tim was full of wisdom and sound advice. He told us he knew we’d raise the money, that he didn’t have a doubt in his mind we’d make the movie and that it was going to be terrific. His confidence was reassuring. This wasn’t any bullshit. It was the conviction of someone outside the movie industry who was looking at the enterprise in simple terms. He said how much he admired our determination.

  It was the remedy we needed; step outside, hear another voice besides our own, free ourselves from the tentacles of frustration, and receive the insight of a great friend.

  The drive awoke old memories. It was a drive we’d taken many times with our father. He’d pick us up after work on Fridays, sweaty and brown from roofing dust, fingernails black with tar. We’d all cram into the front seat of his little truck and make the two-hour drive up the coast, chewing beef jerky and sipping Orange Crush. We’d arrive at the campsite along the Russian River after nightfall and gather wood along the bank.
Dad would always bring a few wood shingles from the job site for kindling, cut shavings with his Buck knife, and in a short time we’d set up the tent in the glow of firelight. We’d rise in the silver dawn and fish all morning, and when it got hot we’d go swimming in the green pools under the willows.

  The trip with Tim brought us back to those good times and dispelled the troubles and frustration we were having now. Later in the afternoon the sun warmed the redwoods above the Monte Rio Bridge and we jumped off the concrete slab and swam in the cool waters below.

  THE SIX-YEAR MAC

  WE BROUGHT ON casting directors Billy DaMota and Michelle Metzner to fill the acting roles that were still open. They gave us a considerable break on the up-front payment. Our movie was extremely appealing to them; Ed Harris, Robert Forster, and Brad Dourif would look great on their résumés. We retained them for a few hundred dollars.

  In Touching Home, Mac is one of the brothers’ best friends. He provides the comic relief, central to the dramatic rhythms of the movie. Without skillfully placed laughs, without scenes that lightened the audience, our movie risked being a linear descent into emotional ruin.

  Six years earlier, our buddy Jeromiah Running Water Zajonc (you’ll meet this champion soon) was working on a Showtime series called Going to California. Jeromiah invited us to a screening at the Directors Guild of America (DGA). There was one actor that caught our attention. He was onscreen for only a few minutes, but we felt he was the most talented guy in the show. His name was Evan Jones. And he was “Mac,” though he didn’t know it at the time. We remembered his name and followed his career over the years, always thinking that he would play Mac when the time came for us to make Touching Home.

  So naturally, when our casting directors asked us who we wanted for Mac, we typed one name in the e-mail: EVAN JONES.

  Billy DaMota knew Evan’s agent at ICM and sent him the script on Friday. Evan’s agent called Billy on Monday and said Evan liked the script and wanted the role. So we flew Evan up to Northern California on a credit card and picked him up at the Oakland Airport.