And that would lead to buying even more theaters elsewhere later.

In showing how one thing leads to another, filmmaker Richard Dutcher held a premiere of his movie "God's Army" at Jordan Commons. Miller met him there and loved the movie. When Dutcher looked for financial backing for more films, Miller said he wanted to support his work — and Miller backed Dutcher's films "Brigham City" and "God's Army II."

He says they ended up parting ways when Miller was not comfortable with plans for a Dutcher-envisioned movie about Joseph Smith. "The budget kept going up," Miller says. He adds that he wishes Dutcher well.

But the movie-making ventures with Dutcher also led him to produce a series of films based on "The Work and the Glory," books by Gerald Lund about early Mormon history.

"I usually don't have time for novels, but I started reading them to see why everyone else was. After the first 100 pages, I was hooked," Miller says. He says Lund had refused to sell movie rights to anyone who would not give him final say on content — and no one would do that. He says he was happy to do so in another deal from the heart.

The bridge builder

Helping a school district by buying land, preserving the Jazz and helping filmmakers he likes demonstrate a key to success that Miller calls being a "bridge builder."

A poem by that name, by Will Allen Dromgoole, is his favorite. It talks about an old man who builds a bridge across a chasm not because he needs it but because some youths who may follow will. Miller becomes emotional and tearful when he reads it for a reporter.

He loves the poem so much that he commissioned a statue of a bridge built by the bridge builder — and gave employees and other guests miniature copies of it at a silver anniversary celebration of his first business.

Some of his charity demonstrates his desire to be a bridge builder, including constructing and donating the entire Larry H. Miller Campus for Salt Lake Community College; developing and donating the Larry H. Miller baseball field at Brigham Young University; and establishing the Larry H. Miller Education Foundation.

He says he also tries to be a bridge builder with some business dealings, including buying the Salt Lake Stingers minor league baseball team and renaming it the Salt Lake Bees — the name of the team he cheered for when he was a teenager.

"It was a labor of love," he says.

Another is the construction of a new $80 million race track that opened this spring, the Miller Motorsports Park near Tooele. Miller, a former drag racer himself, is near giddy as he talks about how it is bringing big-time racing of many types to Utah for fans like himself.