With ‘F1,' mega-producer Jerry Bruckheimer is still in the driver's seat

Los Angeles Times

3 days ago

The first thing you notice in Jerry Bruckheimer's Santa Monica office isn't the full-size suit of armor from 2004's 'King Arthur' or the shelves lined with awards and celebrity photos. It's the pens: dozens of ornate Montblancs, carefully arranged in display cases.
His wife gives them to him, Bruckheimer explains dryly. After nearly half a century of hits, what do you give the guy who has everything? 'I sometimes write thank-you notes with them,' he says. Alongside neatly stacked copies of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times — which he says he still reads daily, in print — the pens reflect something ingrained in the legendary producer, a fondness for ritual, precision and old-school order.
Now 81, at an age when most of his peers are content to reflect on past glories in between tee times and early-bird specials, Bruckheimer still starts each day with a rigorous workout. ('I pick hotels based on the gym,' he says.) Then it's back to doing what he's always done: assembling the next blockbuster. Across more than 50 films — including culture-shaping hits like 'Beverly Hills Cop,' 'Top Gun,' 'Bad Boys,' 'The Rock,' 'Armageddon' and 'Pirates of the Caribbean' — his work has earned over $16 billion worldwide, cementing his name as shorthand for sleek, pulse-pounding entertainment. His elegant, brick-walled office, larger than the Detroit home where his working-class German immigrant parents raised him, stands as a monument to what that discipline helped build. 'Our tiny little house was about as big as this room here,' he says, glancing around.
For Bruckheimer, success has never been about flash or chance. 'The harder you work,' he says, in what amounts to a personal mantra, 'the luckier you get.'
That philosophy is on full display in his latest production, 'F1,' an adrenaline-fueled racing drama starring Brad Pitt as a retired Formula One driver lured back to the track to mentor a young phenom (Damson Idris) on a struggling team. Shot during actual Formula One races across Europe and the Middle East, and with a budget north of $200 million, 'F1' speeds into theaters Friday with the kind of high-stakes ambition only someone with Bruckheimer's track record could pull off.
From the outset, the project, which reunites Bruckheimer with 'Top Gun: Maverick' director Joseph Kosinski and screenwriter Ehren Kruger, sparked a bidding war among virtually every studio and streamer, ultimately landing as a co-production between Apple and Warner Bros.
'One of the reasons I went to Jerry,' says Kosinski by phone from his car, 'is because I knew I was asking two massive corporations — Apple and Formula One — to work together. They're both incredibly specific about their brands and how they do things. It took someone with Jerry's CEO style of producing to be the diplomat in the middle and actually make it happen. He's seen it all.'
Bruckheimer attributes the early frenzy around the project to the package's pedigree: an appealing story, an A-list star and the global popularity of Formula One. But for Bruckheimer, it's not just about star power or scale. 'It's emotional, it's exciting, it's got romance, it's got humor,' he says. 'It's the reason I got into this business — to make movies that thrill you on that big screen, that you walk out feeling you've been on a real journey and got lost for a couple of hours. That's the goal every time.'
Pitt's character, Sonny, is in some ways a reflection of Bruckheimer: a seasoned pro forever chasing one more victory out of a sheer love of the chase. 'Jerry could easily be on an island somewhere relaxing,' says Kosinski. 'But he'd much rather be on set every day, meeting actors, hassling the marketing team, dealing with the studio. He just loves the job. His passion for it seems kind of endless.'
'F1' arrives at a moment when the Bruckheimer-style movie — star-driven, high-concept, engineered for maximum emotional impact — has surged back into fashion. In truth, it never entirely disappeared. But in an age of franchise fatigue, ironic tentpoles and streaming saturation, the earnest, four-quadrant spectacle had started to feel like a relic — until 'Maverick' reminded Hollywood how potent that formula could still be.
The 2022 sequel didn't just help bring moviegoing back to life after the pandemic; it earned Bruckheimer his first best picture Oscar nomination and raked in a staggering $1.5 billion worldwide. Even he didn't see that coming.
'The early tracking said that you're not going to get young people — nobody under 35 or 40 cares about this movie,' he remembers. 'It ended up surpassing every possible metric. Anybody who tells you they know what's going to be a hit, they don't have a clue. You just don't know.'
'F1' is not Bruckheimer's first time around the racing track. Thirty-five years ago, at the height of his era-defining run with his late producing partner Don Simpson, he made 'Days of Thunder,' a testosterone-fueled NASCAR drama that reunited the 'Top Gun' team of Tom Cruise and director Tony Scott. The film epitomized the Bruckheimer-Simpson formula: glossy visuals, radio-ready soundtracks and MTV-style swagger. Tales of ballooning costs, nonstop rewrites, off-screen indulgence and on-set clashes swirled around the production, becoming the stuff of Hollywood lore.
Asked about the chaos surrounding 'Days of Thunder,' Bruckheimer answers with his trademark restraint, the measured calm of someone who has spent decades managing egos, headlines and costly productions.
'There were definitely rewrites — that's true,' he says. 'As far as the budget going up, Paramount had a strict regime, and it's not like you could go over budget easily. We wrecked a lot of cars, I'll tell you that. I don't think there was one standing at the end.'
Bruckheimer remembers the shoot as tough but exhilarating, a product of Scott's notoriously seat-of-the-pants directing style. 'Tony was just balls to the wall,' he says. 'Joe [Kosinski] is balls to the wall too, but calculated. Joe's got everything planned out. Tony would get on the set and see something over there and say, 'We're changing it, we're going over there.' It was a little more of a helter-skelter approach, but we somehow got through it. We held it together.'
By the time 'Days of Thunder' was released in 1990, Bruckheimer and Simpson had spent nearly a decade together — a combustible but wildly productive run that had already delivered 'Flashdance,' 'Beverly Hills Cop' and 'Top Gun.' Simpson, with his insatiable appetite for drugs and Hollywood excess, could be volatile and self-destructive. But Bruckheimer credits him with sharpening his eye for story and deepening his understanding of how the business really worked.
'I started in commercials — little 60-second stories — and Don was trained as a story executive,' says Bruckheimer, who began his career in advertising in Detroit and New York. 'He was developing 120 projects every year so he knew every writer, every director. He had this great wealth of knowledge about the business: who's good, who's not good, who can talk a good game but can't deliver. He was great with story and humor. He just was a genius at all this kind of stuff.'
The partnership was a crash course for them both: an informal academy with a class roster of two. 'I went to school during those years — and so did he,' Bruckheimer says. 'He didn't know how to make a movie. He was an executive, so when he walked on set, all he really knew was not to stand in front of the camera. I picked up a lot of what he knew — and vice versa.'
If Simpson was the explosive, sometimes erratic half of the duo, Bruckheimer was always the steady one: disciplined, controlled, methodical. He's known for rarely raising his voice. But he admits even he has limits. 'I try not to,' he says. 'I usually don't. But when people lie to you, when they say something's going to be there and it's not and they keep giving you a bunch of bulls—, yeah, you can raise your voice a little.'
Following 'Days of Thunder,' Simpson and Bruckheimer would go on to make several more hits, including 'Dangerous Minds,' 'Crimson Tide' and 'The Rock' before Simpson's death in 1996 at age 52 from heart failure related to drug use. 'It's unfortunate that we lost him,' Bruckheimer says softly.
After decades in the business, Bruckheimer says he has learned to choose collaborators carefully. 'Life's too short,' he offers. 'We're such a small business, your reputation follows you everywhere you go.'
When his team hires a director or an actor, he says, they always do their research. 'How were they on their last movie? Brad has a phenomenal reputation. Will Smith has a phenomenal reputation — minus that,' he adds, discreetly alluding to the 2022 Oscars slap. 'Tom Cruise too. I've worked with actors who just want to know when they can leave. I try to avoid that.'
The landscape of Hollywood, of course, looks nothing like it did during the '90s Simpson-Bruckheimer heyday. Studios that once ran on instinct and big personalities now operate more like data-driven conglomerates, reshuffling execs and hedging bets in a fractured, streaming-dominated market.
'It's changed a lot,' Bruckheimer says. 'Streaming hit a lot of places hard. They spent too much money and now they've got problems with that. Some of the studios aren't healthy. But the business, if you do it right, is healthy.'
For all the hand-wringing about collapse, Bruckheimer has heard it before.
'There always was doom,' he says. 'When TV came in, people said nobody would go to the theaters again. When I started, it was video cassettes. Everyone said that's the end. Then DVDs — that's the end. I've been doing this over 50 years and that doom has been there every time a new technology shows up. And yet, look at what's happened. Look at 'Minecraft.' Look at 'Sinners.' Look at 'Lilo & Stitch.' If you do it right, people show up.'
He reaches for one of his favorite analogies: 'You've got a kitchen at home, right? But you still like to go out to eat. You want to taste something different. That's what we are. We're the night out,' he says. 'And if we give you a good meal, you'll come back for more.'
By any measure, Bruckheimer has already accomplished more than almost anyone in the business, with a far-reaching empire that spans television ('CSI,' 'The Amazing Race'), video games and sports. In addition to big-budget tentpoles, he has occasionally championed more grounded, character-driven fare, from 'Dangerous Minds' and 'Black Hawk Down' to the recent Disney+ biopic 'Young Woman and the Sea.' But for all his success, he has never stopped looking for the next story. A new 'Top Gun' script is underway. 'Days of Thunder' may get another lap. Even 'Pirates of the Caribbean' is back in motion.
Bruckheimer ultimately credits the directors and actors — and the tight-knit team at his company — with keeping him in the game. 'I'm just the guy who says, 'You're really talented. I want to work with you.' '
Even as a kid, he says, that was his gift. 'I can't focus the way a director or writer focuses — I'm too ADD. But I always put things together. I put together a baseball team and a hockey team when I was very young. I always had the ability gather to people around a common cause.'
As for thoughts of his legacy, he demurs. 'I'm sure I'll be remembered somewhere along there — maybe not, maybe yes,' he says. 'I'm still working picture to picture. You're only as good as your last movie. So you better be on your toes.'