Would super-producer Jerry Bruckheimer buy a movie pitch based on his own life?
Here’s the breathless treatment:
Mild-mannered Jewish kid grows up poor to immigrant parents in Detroit, works his way up from ad agency mail room to producer of Pontiac commercials.
Tries Hollywood, forms partnership with a wild man, duo soon churns out hits like “Flashdance,” “Top Gun” and “Beverly Hills Cop.”
Partner splits and dies early death, skeptics predict Bruckheimer will crash as a solo act. Instead, he moves ever upward with “Con Air” and “Armageddon,” then adds highbrow cachet with “Black Hawk Down,” “Veronica Guerin” and “Remember the Titans.”
Dabbles in buccaneer comedy – one of the most ridiculed genres in Hollywood – and comes up with box-office smash “Pirates of the Caribbean.”
Not sufficiently challenged as the most recognized and highest-paid movie producer in the world, Bruckheimer reaches for television. Within a few years, he’s nearly his own network, setting the record for most shows produced in one season at a total of nine.
And the worst thing people say about him is that he’s a populist with a penchant for cinematic explosions.
Chances are Bruckheimer, 60, would option that autobiography. Not because he’s hopelessly vain – if he is, he’s the most softspoken egotist in decades – but because he would likely make another pile of money on it.
“We’re storytellers,” is Bruckheimer’s bottom-line response to almost every question about his artistic choices. From the multiplex to the channel-changer, Bruckheimer said in a recent interview, he’s a sucker for stories featuring bold heroes who take wild rides to victory.
“It’s the characterization, the camaraderie and the humor,” Bruckheimer said in Denver to promote last Friday’s opening of “Glory Road.” “Because that’s what life is about: emotional triumph.”
“Amazing” output
Entertainment industry executives and observers may praise Bruckheimer in part because his reach is so wide. Few want to publicly distance themselves from a man who oversees so much box-office revenue and so many Nielsen responses.
Yet effusive praise from his peers captures a good portion of the Bruckheimer mystique: He’s popular because he’s so popular.
“His output is amazing, and to consistently deliver quality projects speaks to his ability as a finder,” said Tom Meyer, president of Davie-Brown Entertainment, an industry consulting firm. “Think how much times have changed since ‘Flashdance’ or ‘Top Gun,’ to ‘Amazing Race’ and ‘Pirates of the Caribbean.’ What sets him apart is longevity and volume. Other people tend to be more successful in just one medium or another.”
Bruckheimer’s legendary involvement and work ethic on each project, no matter how he is stretched by various production schedules, brought him to Denver for “Glory Road.” It was just one stop of 10 on a road show using Bruckheimer’s publicity machine for a relatively obscure project dear to his sportsman’s heart.
“Glory Road” tells the true story of the Texas Western college basketball team in 1966. From a time and a place where starting even three black players was a huge risk, coach Don Haskins used five black starters for the NCAA Tournament. The upstart school now known as University of Texas-El Paso made a growling underdog lunge to the national championship game against all-white Kentucky.
And won. Sportswriters consider Texas Western’s run one of the greatest team sports stories of all time.
“Glory Road” was one of many sports ideas pitched to Bruckheimer’s company after the success of “Remember the Titans” in 2000, another true story with racial tensions that starred Denzel Washington.
The allure of intense coach Haskins, the bonding of the team under intense racism, the improbable victories, all caught the attention of Bruckheimer, a dedicated rec-league hockey player.
“It’s such a pivotal moment that no one under the age of 50 has a clue about,” Bruckheimer said. Another key: Because of subplots involving players’ mothers and the coach’s wife, “Glory Road” can “appeal to women too,” Bruckheimer said.
“Pirates” sequel
In movies, Bruckheimer is continuing his recent trend of mixing these “small” movies in with the “bigs.” The second installment of “Pirates,” an early favorite to be one of the year’s biggest box-office draws, opens this summer.
Spending time on a more modest $50 million movie is a luxury Bruckheimer earned over two decades of booming – literally – success.
After going to college for psychology and a mathematics minor, Bruckheimer headed home to Detroit and started low in the ad business, working up to commercial production. A parody he did of “Bonnie and Clyde” for Pontiac made a big splash, so he was off to New York for bigger agencies.
Hollywood was on line 2, however, and Bruckheimer left Manhattan to produce films that began with “The Culpepper Cattle Co.” He also put out “American Gigolo” and “Cat People,” then linked up with co-producer Don Simpson and Paramount.
Simpson was fire to Bruckheimer’s ice, loving the parties and working the studio system while Bruckheimer diligently looked after budgets, scripts and actors. Simpson had the reputation for being the tough cop in the duo, but longtime Bruckheimer collaborator Michael Bay has said in magazine interviews that his friend’s style is as persuasive as “water torture.” Bruckheimer wins out by quiet persistence and great judgment, Bay has said.
Simpson and Bruckheimer’s first splashy hit was “Flashdance,” about a female Pittsburgh welder with a molten body and a weakness for soaked sweatshirts who dreams of becoming a ballet dancer.
Today Bruckheimer talks about “Flashdance” with the nostalgia of a producer looking back on a simpler time.
“It opened at $4 million, which even in those days (1983) wasn’t a good opening,” Bruckheimer said. “Then it went to $5 million, then 4 again. But it kept going that way for a year. Soon it was $92 million.”
Word of mouth persuaded large, single-screen theaters to keep the movie for a long time, a luxury since reserved for rare hits like “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.”
“Now you don’t get the chance,” he lamented. “You’re opening in a 500-seat house, and the next weekend you’re in a 200-seat house. Even if you’re selling out, you don’t get the grosses.”
Bruckheimer doesn’t expect America to weep for him. After all, he and Simpson are largely responsible for the “tent pole” mentality gripping Hollywood, with studios planning their year around a couple of movies costing $150 million each. That kind of spending must deliver big bangs for the buck, bangs that Bruckheimer and Simpson provided in a string of hits like “Beverly Hills Cop,” “Top Gun,” “Days of Thunder” and “Bad Boys.”
Aftermath of partnership
Bruckheimer’s partnership with the hard-living Simpson dissolved in the mid-1990s; Simpson died 10 years ago this month. Theater owners who loved their revenues from the duo worried Bruckheimer wouldn’t find as many hits on his own, said Chad Hartigan, a box-office analyst with ReelSource in Los Angeles.
Along came “The Rock,” and “Con Air,” followed quickly by the critically panned but wildly lucrative “Armageddon.” Bruckheimer then branched out a bit, to “Remember the Titans” and “Black Hawk Down,” among others.
“He’s still definitely the most bankable name as far as producers go,” Hartigan said. “He’s one of only two producers who gets his name on the trailers and the posters in a way that’s usually reserved for directors,” the other being director Ron Howard’s collaborator Brian Grazer, Hartigan said.
Observers like to speculate that Bruckheimer pines for Oscar credibility. “Black Hawk Down” received two Oscars, but the critical consensus on many of the producer’s movies is that they are middling entertainments lacking depth.
Academy recognition “is really the only thing he hasn’t accomplished,” Hartigan said.
Yet when asked what movie challenge he would still like to try, Bruckheimer doesn’t mention awards. “I’d like to do an out-and-out comedy,” he said. “Our version of one.”
“I wouldn’t bet against him on any entertainment project,” said Meyer. “Even Broadway. Maybe he wants to do that.”
Movies take a back seat
Meanwhile, Bruckheimer’s film efforts are further apart than they used to be. Overseeing nine network shows at once will do that, even when some are canceled early, like “Skin.” TV is harder than movies, Bruckheimer said, because of all the things he can’t control.
“The competition for talent, for good writers and good plots; getting good lead-ins from other shows – there’s all this stuff I knew nothing about,” he said.
While Bruckheimer’s first TV effort, “CSI,” was hailed as a fresh show and a comeback at the time for CBS, critics are again underwhelmed by the quality across his schedule.
“CSI,” “Cold Case” and “Without a Trace” are all crime procedurals of one kind or another, even if distinguished by Bruckheimer’s reputation for making TV sets as polished as his movie locations, said Joseph Jaffe, author of “Life After the 30-Second Spot.”
“There is somewhat of a formula,” Jaffe said. “If you’re being cynical, you could say they’re really no different than the 17 versions of ‘Law & Order.”‘
But Jaffe praises Bruckheimer’s ability to ride herd on different media even as moving images shrink and expand from big screen to DVD, TV to iPod, and Internet to giant-screen plasma.
“It’s the ability to be a storyteller” – there’s that word again – “the commonality is explained in one word: generalist,” Jaffe said. “I don’t know that you’re in the movie business anymore, or the TV business, or the ad business. You’re in the content business. It’s a democratization of content, and individuals like Bruckheimer who can take advantage of that” will stay ahead, Jaffe said.
As producer-directors Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson have done, Bruckheimer said his company “is toying with” more intense development of original video games. “It’s another form of entertainment, another form of storytelling,” he said. “Computer power doubles every few months, and we have more and more interesting tools.”
Bruckheimer is far too composed to say the increasing portability and decreasing permanence of video images worries him. It’s a downloadable world, and we’re just living in it.
“It’s all good,” he said. “It might change how it’s distributed, but it will reach more eyeballs. Some people who have never watched it will watch it.”
Staff writer Michael Booth can be reached at 303-820-1686 or mbooth@denverpost.com.
