Power lunch with Jerry Bruckheimer
Dressing for meetings in Los Angeles is a tricky business. Hollywood producers and studio executives prefer casual clothes, so the suit-wearing English journalist often resembles an undertaker at a disco.
Dressing down, though, carries the risk that the other person will be in more formal attire. So before my lunch with Jerry Bruckheimer I have a decision to make. After much deliberation, I compromise on a shirt and tie with a casual jacket and trousers.
I am the first to arrive at the Buffalo Club, an upscale Santa Monica restaurant a few blocks from the ocean. A few minutes after I am shown to an outside table on the patio, Jerry Bruckheimer strides in. The Hollywood producer is wearing a black leather jacket, an open-necked shirt and jeans. He is slim, with a closely shorn beard, and looks a decade and a half younger than his 61 years. We greet each other and he sits down.
”I see you dressed up,” he says.
I vow never again to wear a tie in Los Angeles and we begin a discussion about his current projects. He has been dividing his time between Washington, where he is filming the sequel to National Treasure, and an editing room in Los Angeles, overseeing the final cut of the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie.
The previous instalment, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, made more than $1bn worldwide, becoming the third-highest-grossing film ever. At the time of our lunch, expectations are high for part three, At World’s End, but as a Hollywood veteran of almost 30 years, Bruckheimer is used to the pressure.
He grew up in Detroit and studied psychology at university, getting a job in an advertising agency mailroom when he graduated. He went on to produce television commercials, working with, among others, the director Ridley Scott. Then in 1971, after winning awards for his ads, he was asked to come to Hollywood to work on a film.
I ask Bruckheimer if producing movies was always his goal. ”I was always looking to be entertained,” he says, in a quiet voice. ”We lead such full lives and a lot of us don’t lead very pleasant lives and don’t like what we do. I assume you like what you do?” Most of the time, I say. ”Right, well, we’re fortunate. My dad worked his whole life as a salesman and that wasn’t what he really wanted to do. He looked forward to two weeks vacation every year and he used to say to me: ’Whatever you do, make sure you do something you really like so you don’t just have your vacation to look forward to.’ And I love movies.”
The waiter arrives to take our order and Bruckheimer asks about the specials. It’s an unusually windy day and the gusts are getting stronger, rattling the canopy above our heads, so we have to speak up to be heard. We both choose the tomato and tortilla soup, after Bruckheimer establishes that it has been made without cream. For his main course, he chooses halibut, substituting spinach for potatoes. I opt for the striped bass.
After arriving in Hollywood, he ”bounced from one movie to another” before meeting Don Simpson, who became his production partner. Bruckheimer is calm and focused, whereas Simpson was fiery and erratic. But they shared a love of film and became friends, with Bruckheimer moving into Simpson’s house when he and his first wife separated.
Flashdance was the first Bruckheimer-Simpson collaboration and was followed by a string of hit movies that brought the action genre to a mainstream audience. Top Gun turned Tom Cruise into an international star, while Beverly Hills Cop launched the career of Eddie Murphy.
The Bruckheimer-Simpson films were huge commercial successes and set the tone for much of the Hollywood output that followed over the next two decades. I ask him if he thought their work changed the industry. ”We weren’t trying to be trailblazers. We just gravitated towards the things that we loved that felt unique and fresh.
”Top Gun is no different from Pirates of the Caribbean - in fact they’re very similar because both movies were working in genres that were dead. Fighter pilot movies had all failed and pirate movies had been dead for a long time. We approached them from a different angle.”
While the duo had similar aesthetic tastes, their personal lives were pulling in opposite directions, with Simpson developing an appetite for excessive living. ”He worked hard when he had to, but... he disappeared sometimes,” says Bruckheimer.
In 1996, midway through the shooting of The Rock, Simpson died of a massive drug overdose. Bruckheimer is quiet for a moment when I ask how the death affected him. ”It was tragic and painful. Like losing a brother.”
He found solace in his work, and, if anything, became more prolific as a solo producer when he started his own company. ”I finished The Rock on my own and it became a huge success, so that gave me a little confidence.” Con-Air, Armageddon and Enemy of the State followed, and were among the biggest commercial hits of the 1990s.
Our soup arrives - it is thick, tasty and slightly spicy, with pieces of tortilla arranged in the middle of the bowl. I ask Bruckheimer about his other business: television, into which he moved at the end of the 1990s. After being pitched CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, he knew he had a hit on his hands when he met the show’s creator, Anthony E. Zuiker. ”He had been driving a tram in Las Vegas and had this idea for a show about forensics, so the police department allowed him to go on some ride-arounds with their CSI crews.
”One day he went into a crime scene and there was a dead body on a bed. The detectives checked out the room and removed the body, leaving him in the room by himself. All of a sudden a hand comes out from under the bed... the murderer was still in the room!”
Bruckheimer took the pitch to the main US networks to see if he could get it on the air. CBS picked it up in the US and it has become the network’s biggest hit. CSI and its spin-offs, such as CSI: Miami, have been sold globally, generating an estimated $2bn dollars. The franchise has also helped propel CBS from last place in the US network rankings to top spot. ”CSI: Miami is the biggest show in the world - 60 million people watch it weekly. It’s crazy.”
CSI led to other Bruckheimer-produced television hits, notably Cold Case and Without a Trace. But despite his television success - two years ago he had 10 different shows in US prime-time slots - he has continued to produce movies, earning an estimated $5m per picture. Is it difficult to work on two different fronts?
He shrugs as if it is the easiest thing in the world. ”It’s all about the idea. I love process and the fact that these things work is gratifying.” Television and film are ”all the same, really: one you get for free and one you have to pay for”.
Hollywood is full of loud, obnoxious characters but the surprising thing about Bruckheimer is how un-Hollywood he is. He speaks softly throughout our lunch, far removed from the stereotype of a cigar-chomping, loud-mouthed producer. With wind rattling through the patio I have to lean closer to hear him.
I mention this to him. After all, don’t you have to get angry to get things done in Hollywood? ”The perception of the producer is a guy who is very bombastic, which, if you know me you know isn’t right.” A producer, he says, ”has to be watchdog. You have to say: ’no, this isn’t what we wanted to do’, or ’yes, this is fantastic, let’s incorporate it’. You try to be honest and diplomatic.”
At that moment, the wind grows stronger, violently lifting the canopy off its base. We both stop eating while waiters struggle to pull the canopy poles back to earth. ”We’re going to get blown away here,” says Bruckheimer. As if on cue, the wind dies down.
Our fish arrives. Bruckheimer says his is ”delicious”. So is mine. We move on to talk about film critics. While Bruckheimer’s work has generally found favour with audiences, reviewers have often been less than complimentary about action and adventure films. ”I’ve learned from doing this for so long not to read [the reviews]. You know in your heart what you’ve done, the kind of movie you’ve made. But the ultimate critic is the audience because they have to pay to see it. So when an audience pays nine or 10 bucks to see a movie and they don’t like it, they let you know. That’s the ultimate failure.”
Not every film he has made has struck box-office gold, yet his successes far outweigh the occasional flop. Over mint tea, I ask him how he manages to pick hits. ”I just know what I like. I have no idea what other people like.” But what you like tends to be what most other people like, I say. ”For now. I’m enjoying the wave right now and eventually it will crash. Or maybe it won’t - you never know. I was told when we made Flashdance that this only ever happens once, it will never happen again. After we made Top Gun you think you’re never going to have a picture as big as that. And then Pirates comes along.”
He is married, with a stepdaughter. Like a true Detroit native, he loves ice hockey, playing with a group of friends every Sunday night. He says he steers clear of the Hollywood party scene and has a weekend in the editing room ahead of him as he finishes the last edits of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. (The movie broke box-office records in its opening week at the end of May, generating more than $400m worldwide.)
Maybe he is so prolific, I suggest, simply because he works too much. ”If you take someone who goes to work at eight, comes home at 4.30, then I’m a workaholic because I work seven days a week. But I get free time, I get a chance to play hockey, spend time with my wife and my daughter, my friends. Workaholics don’t have time for anything.”
And with that, it’s back to the job. We get up to leave and Bruckheimer puts on a pair of sunglasses. The editing room awaits and he has a blockbuster to finish.
Matthew Garrahan is the FT’s Los Angeles correspondent.
The Buffalo Club, Santa Monica
2 x mineral water
2 x soup of the day
1 x striped bass
1 x halibut
1 x mint tea
Total: $104.46
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
***
Dressing down, though, carries the risk that the other person will be in more formal attire. So before my lunch with Jerry Bruckheimer I have a decision to make. After much deliberation, I compromise on a shirt and tie with a casual jacket and trousers.
I am the first to arrive at the Buffalo Club, an upscale Santa Monica restaurant a few blocks from the ocean. A few minutes after I am shown to an outside table on the patio, Jerry Bruckheimer strides in. The Hollywood producer is wearing a black leather jacket, an open-necked shirt and jeans. He is slim, with a closely shorn beard, and looks a decade and a half younger than his 61 years. We greet each other and he sits down.
”I see you dressed up,” he says.
I vow never again to wear a tie in Los Angeles and we begin a discussion about his current projects. He has been dividing his time between Washington, where he is filming the sequel to National Treasure, and an editing room in Los Angeles, overseeing the final cut of the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie.
The previous instalment, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, made more than $1bn worldwide, becoming the third-highest-grossing film ever. At the time of our lunch, expectations are high for part three, At World’s End, but as a Hollywood veteran of almost 30 years, Bruckheimer is used to the pressure.
He grew up in Detroit and studied psychology at university, getting a job in an advertising agency mailroom when he graduated. He went on to produce television commercials, working with, among others, the director Ridley Scott. Then in 1971, after winning awards for his ads, he was asked to come to Hollywood to work on a film.
I ask Bruckheimer if producing movies was always his goal. ”I was always looking to be entertained,” he says, in a quiet voice. ”We lead such full lives and a lot of us don’t lead very pleasant lives and don’t like what we do. I assume you like what you do?” Most of the time, I say. ”Right, well, we’re fortunate. My dad worked his whole life as a salesman and that wasn’t what he really wanted to do. He looked forward to two weeks vacation every year and he used to say to me: ’Whatever you do, make sure you do something you really like so you don’t just have your vacation to look forward to.’ And I love movies.”
The waiter arrives to take our order and Bruckheimer asks about the specials. It’s an unusually windy day and the gusts are getting stronger, rattling the canopy above our heads, so we have to speak up to be heard. We both choose the tomato and tortilla soup, after Bruckheimer establishes that it has been made without cream. For his main course, he chooses halibut, substituting spinach for potatoes. I opt for the striped bass.
After arriving in Hollywood, he ”bounced from one movie to another” before meeting Don Simpson, who became his production partner. Bruckheimer is calm and focused, whereas Simpson was fiery and erratic. But they shared a love of film and became friends, with Bruckheimer moving into Simpson’s house when he and his first wife separated.
Flashdance was the first Bruckheimer-Simpson collaboration and was followed by a string of hit movies that brought the action genre to a mainstream audience. Top Gun turned Tom Cruise into an international star, while Beverly Hills Cop launched the career of Eddie Murphy.
The Bruckheimer-Simpson films were huge commercial successes and set the tone for much of the Hollywood output that followed over the next two decades. I ask him if he thought their work changed the industry. ”We weren’t trying to be trailblazers. We just gravitated towards the things that we loved that felt unique and fresh.
”Top Gun is no different from Pirates of the Caribbean - in fact they’re very similar because both movies were working in genres that were dead. Fighter pilot movies had all failed and pirate movies had been dead for a long time. We approached them from a different angle.”
While the duo had similar aesthetic tastes, their personal lives were pulling in opposite directions, with Simpson developing an appetite for excessive living. ”He worked hard when he had to, but... he disappeared sometimes,” says Bruckheimer.
In 1996, midway through the shooting of The Rock, Simpson died of a massive drug overdose. Bruckheimer is quiet for a moment when I ask how the death affected him. ”It was tragic and painful. Like losing a brother.”
He found solace in his work, and, if anything, became more prolific as a solo producer when he started his own company. ”I finished The Rock on my own and it became a huge success, so that gave me a little confidence.” Con-Air, Armageddon and Enemy of the State followed, and were among the biggest commercial hits of the 1990s.
Our soup arrives - it is thick, tasty and slightly spicy, with pieces of tortilla arranged in the middle of the bowl. I ask Bruckheimer about his other business: television, into which he moved at the end of the 1990s. After being pitched CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, he knew he had a hit on his hands when he met the show’s creator, Anthony E. Zuiker. ”He had been driving a tram in Las Vegas and had this idea for a show about forensics, so the police department allowed him to go on some ride-arounds with their CSI crews.
”One day he went into a crime scene and there was a dead body on a bed. The detectives checked out the room and removed the body, leaving him in the room by himself. All of a sudden a hand comes out from under the bed... the murderer was still in the room!”
Bruckheimer took the pitch to the main US networks to see if he could get it on the air. CBS picked it up in the US and it has become the network’s biggest hit. CSI and its spin-offs, such as CSI: Miami, have been sold globally, generating an estimated $2bn dollars. The franchise has also helped propel CBS from last place in the US network rankings to top spot. ”CSI: Miami is the biggest show in the world - 60 million people watch it weekly. It’s crazy.”
CSI led to other Bruckheimer-produced television hits, notably Cold Case and Without a Trace. But despite his television success - two years ago he had 10 different shows in US prime-time slots - he has continued to produce movies, earning an estimated $5m per picture. Is it difficult to work on two different fronts?
He shrugs as if it is the easiest thing in the world. ”It’s all about the idea. I love process and the fact that these things work is gratifying.” Television and film are ”all the same, really: one you get for free and one you have to pay for”.
Hollywood is full of loud, obnoxious characters but the surprising thing about Bruckheimer is how un-Hollywood he is. He speaks softly throughout our lunch, far removed from the stereotype of a cigar-chomping, loud-mouthed producer. With wind rattling through the patio I have to lean closer to hear him.
I mention this to him. After all, don’t you have to get angry to get things done in Hollywood? ”The perception of the producer is a guy who is very bombastic, which, if you know me you know isn’t right.” A producer, he says, ”has to be watchdog. You have to say: ’no, this isn’t what we wanted to do’, or ’yes, this is fantastic, let’s incorporate it’. You try to be honest and diplomatic.”
At that moment, the wind grows stronger, violently lifting the canopy off its base. We both stop eating while waiters struggle to pull the canopy poles back to earth. ”We’re going to get blown away here,” says Bruckheimer. As if on cue, the wind dies down.
Our fish arrives. Bruckheimer says his is ”delicious”. So is mine. We move on to talk about film critics. While Bruckheimer’s work has generally found favour with audiences, reviewers have often been less than complimentary about action and adventure films. ”I’ve learned from doing this for so long not to read [the reviews]. You know in your heart what you’ve done, the kind of movie you’ve made. But the ultimate critic is the audience because they have to pay to see it. So when an audience pays nine or 10 bucks to see a movie and they don’t like it, they let you know. That’s the ultimate failure.”
Not every film he has made has struck box-office gold, yet his successes far outweigh the occasional flop. Over mint tea, I ask him how he manages to pick hits. ”I just know what I like. I have no idea what other people like.” But what you like tends to be what most other people like, I say. ”For now. I’m enjoying the wave right now and eventually it will crash. Or maybe it won’t - you never know. I was told when we made Flashdance that this only ever happens once, it will never happen again. After we made Top Gun you think you’re never going to have a picture as big as that. And then Pirates comes along.”
He is married, with a stepdaughter. Like a true Detroit native, he loves ice hockey, playing with a group of friends every Sunday night. He says he steers clear of the Hollywood party scene and has a weekend in the editing room ahead of him as he finishes the last edits of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. (The movie broke box-office records in its opening week at the end of May, generating more than $400m worldwide.)
Maybe he is so prolific, I suggest, simply because he works too much. ”If you take someone who goes to work at eight, comes home at 4.30, then I’m a workaholic because I work seven days a week. But I get free time, I get a chance to play hockey, spend time with my wife and my daughter, my friends. Workaholics don’t have time for anything.”
And with that, it’s back to the job. We get up to leave and Bruckheimer puts on a pair of sunglasses. The editing room awaits and he has a blockbuster to finish.
Matthew Garrahan is the FT’s Los Angeles correspondent.
The Buffalo Club, Santa Monica
2 x mineral water
2 x soup of the day
1 x striped bass
1 x halibut
1 x mint tea
Total: $104.46
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
***
posted by Ronnie Rocket @ 7:46 AM
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