From Top Gun to F1: Jerry Bruckheimer on 40 years as Hollywood’s blockbuster producer

If you’ve squealed in excitement at a summer blockbuster in the cinema during the last 40 years, there’s an excellent chance you’ll have watched a Jerry Bruckheimer production. Starting with Flashdance (1983), Bruckheimer and his longtime producing partner Don Simpson presided over more than a decade of thrilling films that slayed the box office, usually with a crowd-pleasing blend of action, comedy and a soundtrack filled with energetic funk-pop or soaring, commercial rock.

Since Simpson passed on to the great soundstage in the sky in 1996, Bruckheimer has been busy producing three more Bad Boys films, one more Top Gun (though another is in the pipeline), one more Beverly Hills Cop, two National Treasure films and the entirety of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise (five films to date). His films have made more than $12 billion, and he’s currently the fourth-highest-grossing film producer ever.

With F1 The Movie, Bruckheimer and Top Gun: Maverick (2022) director Joseph Kosinski have stewarded a thrilling, top-velocity racing movie to our screens with a megawatt-charisma cast led by Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Javier Bardem and Kerry Condon. Pitt and Idris play a has-been (or “never-was”, as he’s dubbed in the film) racer given one more chance and a young driver heading for a big career, respectively. “It’s following Brad Pitt through this drama. We put you inside that car. We had 15 cameras around it,” says Bruckheimer. If this sounds like a film full of CGI – or worse, AI – think again. Bruckheimer explains: “He drove it for real. He trained for four months along with Damson to be able to sit in that car and drive it.”

Ahead of F1’s release, we geared up for some fast chat about Bruckheimer’s biggest hits in a Mayfair hotel, where we found him full of passion for his life’s work and admiration for his collaborators past and present.

Lou Thomas: After three collaborations with director Dick Richards, including Farewell My Lovely [1975], you teamed up with Paul Schrader for American Gigolo [1980]. It was your first solo producer credit. How did you find it working with Schrader and Richard Gere?

Jerry Bruckheimer: Richard’s a great actor. You can ask him to do anything, he’ll do it in front of the camera. Paul Schrader is a real deep thinker, really smart dramatist. I wish all writers were as fast as Paul Schrader is. He’ll do an outline, and next to the first line of the outline he’ll say how many pages this takes, and he’ll write to that outline. Within a month you have a screenplay, or even less.

Did you have any nerves taking it on as your first solo gig?

I have nerves on every one. Every single one of them, you hope for the best, expect the worst. So, you don’t know.

Next, you produced Michael Mann’s debut, Thief [1981]. In that you brought together James Caan, who’d obviously been a huge star after The Godfather [1972], and brought on a first-time director. What sticks out for you now about making that?

Michael Mann is a great visualist. I read a script of his that he wrote long before he directed anything, and I called him up and said, “I want to meet you. You’ve got a great voice.” I was very fortunate that I got to make his first movie.

Though he’d obviously made a splash with 48 Hrs. [1982] and Trading Places [1983], Beverly Hills Cop really launched Eddie Murphy into superstardom. What was it that you liked about Eddie for the role?

Eddie’s got a phenomenal mind. You’ll sit down and he’ll start talking about things that you’ve never heard of, and he’s got this really comedic spin to it. He brought so much to that movie. All he had to do was know the idea of the scene and what dialogue he had to put in, and then he created around it. He’s somebody that you certainly want to be around because of the fun he brings to a movie. He gives his heart and soul to whatever he does, and he certainly did it in Beverly Hills Cop.

On Top Gun [1986] you worked quite closely with the Pentagon to get the planes. How did that all come together?

Initially, it didn’t work out. We went to [Marine Corps Air Station] Miramar, near San Diego, and went to the admiral of the base and said, “We want to make this movie. It’s called Top Gun, about your school here.” He said, “No chance.” He said, “Nothing good can come from my career if somebody gets hurt or the movie doesn’t work.” So, we got shut down.

So, Tom [Cruise] and I flew to Washington and met with the secretary of the Navy, John Lehman, and John said, “I understand what this movie could do for the Navy.” And that admiral was replaced. We got to shoot the movie in a very cooperative [way]. Then the next movie that we did, it was open arms. They said, “Whatever you guys want, how can we help you?” Because recruiting went up 500% after we made the first movie.

You made six films with Tony Scott. What do you think was the key to your collaboration, and what do you miss about him the most?

He was a good friend. You always miss friends. Tony lights up the screen with his images, and he’s somebody that works so hard. And when people say they work hard, they have no idea of Tony. Tony would get up four in the morning, do his storyboards, come to the set, and work until midnight, one o’clock. Then he’d have three hours sleep, do his storyboards, come to the set. It was a pattern. 

It was also your first collaboration with Tom Cruise. Tom was a star then, but did you have any inkling that he would become this kind of daredevil stuntman that he’s become over the years?

You saw that when we made the first Top Gun – he was willing to do anything. He’s missing a fear gene. He’s just unbelievable. I mean, you saw in Mission: Impossible [The Final Reckoning], he’s hanging out of a plane! That’s one of the greatest cinema sequences ever. It’s just phenomenal. I don’t know how he did it, but he did it.

Is that why you stick to producing, so that you don’t have to go and do stuff like that?

Oh yeah, I like to be two feet on the ground. You’re not going to see me hanging out of a plane.

Bad Boys [1995] was your first collaboration with Michael Bay and Will Smith. At the time, it must have seemed slightly risky. You had a star, but he was best known for his TV work, and a debut director again. What convinced you that things would be a success with Bad Boys?

I never know. It’s the audience who knows. I never know. I know we made a real fun, engaging movie and Michael’s a real talent – he’s a visual artist, and Will and Martin [Lawrence] are hysterical together, but the audience decides what hits. We don’t know. If we knew, every movie I’d make is a hit. So, it just shows you.

Next, you made The Rock [1996]. What was it like shooting on Alcatraz?

It was cold, very cold there, but it’s an interesting place. I think you feel that the ghosts of the past are still there when you walk around that place. But it’s a great set for a movie because it’s real. A lot of people came out of that place, unfortunately. Or went into it. A lot of them didn’t come out.

That film is dedicated to your producing partner Don Simpson. How would you describe your relationship with Don?

It was a great yin-yang between the two of us. He was a great storyteller. I know how to make movies, and I learned so much about storytelling and characterisation from Don. Plus, he’s another guy who had a real outgoing personality. He was a lot of fun, and a very funny character.

I watched Enemy of the State [1998] again recently, and it seems prescient as a look at the burgeoning surveillance era and its paranoia. How important to you is it that the films you make, particularly that one, have a lasting relevance?

We love to make movies about things that you’ll never be a part of and show you how they actually work. It’s a process movie. So, that kind of showed you how they can chase somebody and find somebody. It’s interesting. Just like F1, we drop you into a world that you’ll never be a part of, and show you how it works. It’s not a documentary, but it’s romantic, it’s funny, and it’s got an enormous action.

This film sees you return to the racetrack for the first time since Days of Thunder [1990]. What was the hardest thing about putting this together?

Getting F1 to lean in. It’s always the problem. F1, if you don’t get access to the tracks, access to their teams, you have nothing. So, Brad, Joe [Kosinski] and myself flew to England and met with Stefan [Stefano Domenicali, Formula One Group CEO], in the very beginning, I think, three years before we made the movie, and said, “Here’s the movie we wanted to make.”

Joe did a reel of how we did Top Gun, how we skinned the planes [gave them a new cover], because we obviously didn’t have the adversary planes. We showed them that. Then we took a piece of an F1 race and skinned the car and showed them how we’d insert our car into their races. And then we went to all the team principals, met with them, and then the drivers, and showed them the same film: “We want to be part of your world.” But since seven-time world champion Sir Lewis Hamilton was a part of the movie, they were all reticent they were going to be the villains. So, we had to convince him that the real drama is between our two drivers, just like it is in their teams. Every driver wants to be the number one driver.

Why did it take so long for you to work with Brad?

I wish I had movies that he wanted to do earlier. I just didn’t. And he was always busy. So, that’s unfortunate. But I finally got my chance with this.

There’s a lot talked about the state of the industry, because of AI and streaming and comic book films and so on – every week someone seems to be talking about the death of cinema. What do you think about the current health of the industry?

Every industry goes through cycles and goes through retooling. We’re going through that now. There’s so many different things that are coming at us. But when I first started in the business, even before I was in the business, when I was a little kid growing up, they said television was going to be the death of movies, the first time television came out. Nobody’s going to go to the movies anymore.

Then it was VHS, right? Tapes. That was going to be the end of movies. Then it was DVDs. You don’t have to go to the theatre, you could buy the DVDs. We’re still making movies. Then it was streaming. Streaming was going to kill the movie business. You saw how the summer started with Minecraft, with Sinners. A lot of big movies came out. All of a sudden people are going back to the cinemas because if you tell them a story that engages them, and they have a good time, they’re going to come back again.

F1 The Movie is in cinemas, including BFI IMAX, from 25 June.