There are producers, and then there’s Jerry Bruckheimer. One of the few household names in his field, Bruckheimer – along with his original producing partner Don Simpson, and then solo after Simpson’s passing in 1996 – has produced many of the most enduring blockbusters of all time, including Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop, Armageddon and Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of Black Pearl. He’s at it again this weekend, with his latest action-adventure, The Lone Ranger. Armie Hammer stars as the title character, and Bruckheimer’s Pirates star Johnny Depp plays his re-imagined Cherokee partner Tonto.
An audience with Jerry Bruckheimer was granted in Santa Fe, NM, and I jumped at the chance to talk about Bruckheimer’s plan to breathe new life into a pulp hero when so many other cinematic adaptations of the genre have fizzled. We also discussed how he feels about the industry’s reporting of The Lone Ranger‘s production woes, the story additions that director Gore Verbinski contributed the screenplay, and whether there’s a future for Top Gun 2 after the original film’s director, Tony Scott, died last year while prepping the sequel.
CraveOnline: There’s a quote you said once and I was thinking about it when I watched The Lone Ranger. “If I made films for the critics or for someone else, I’d probably be living in some small, Hollywood studio apartment.”
Jerry Bruckheimer: Right. That’s true.
What was it about The Lone Ranger that you made for you? What made you wanna make this particular movie?
He’s an iconic character. He’s been around since 1933 and still is around. Even though he’s not like Superman or some of the Marvel characters, he’s still there and the classic media still makes a lot of money off selling pieces of the Lone Ranger. So, he’s still there and it’s kind of a man fighting evil, you know? That’s what most of our heroes are.
He comes from more of an age of a pulp hero, and there’s been a sort of difficulty reintroducing some of those heroes to mainstream audiences in the last few decades. I’m thinking of like, The Phantom, The Shadow, The Green Hornet. What was your effort to make The Lone Ranger more accessible? What were your concerns?
Well, I think the fact that we introduced more humor to it. The fact that we wanted to make more of an Odd Couple relationship between the two of them, rather than Tonto being a servant, like he was in the original. To make Tonto the wise one who knows the ways of the West. And you have this character who believes in the letter of the law, which is not [normal] to the West, and so you have this conflict between the two of them against the backdrop of the way the West was, which was pretty violent.
You had this really remarkable success with the Pirates of the Caribbean movies and what was especially remarkable about them was everyone had kind of written off the pirate genre. And while there’s still really good westerns being made all the time, there’s an attitude about that, about the western. Is it just, “Make it bigger?” Make it more like a summer blockbuster? Was that sort of the concern here?
No, I think it’s just all about the storytelling. If you have an engaging story, it doesn’t matter if it’s in the West, or on a pirate ship, or on a spaceship. It doesn’t matter. You create interesting characters and a good plot and themes, you have a shot. Beyond that, we don’t know. We’re dramatists. We try to create drama and give them interesting characters. This one happens to be in a Western setting, that’s all.
You made a similar attempt with Prince of Persia, which I thought was a really handsome production.
It was beautiful.
Yet, I feel like it didn’t quite catch on. Was there a lesson to be learned from that film?
You always learn from your movies that don’t quite capture an audience. You know, I think that we all make mistakes.
Was there anything in particular?
It still made close to $400,000,000. That was pretty good.
Right. It’s kind of remarkable how much money a movie can make and still to some people in the industry, some of these industry pundits, where it can be considered if not a flop, then not a great success.
I know. It’s about expectations. People put expectations on you, which aren’t realistic sometimes. And that’s what you get caught up in. It’s more the press that give you these expectations, and your competitors. So, your competitors say, “This picture has to do X to break even, and it has to do that.” It’s exaggerated. Just part of what the media feeds on. A journalist will be talking to one of the other studios. “Oh, that picture costs X,” which is sometimes not true, “And it’s gotta be wide to be a big hit.” So, you have this expectation built in which sometimes is not based on reality.
I can imagine it must have been frustrating, early on, while you were producing this. There were some news stories about budget cuts and everything. Is that just frustrating? After you’ve been doing this as long as you have and making blockbusters as long as you have, does that just roll off your back? How does that affect you?
Well, you don’t like to read it but you have to deal with it, so you deal with it. It’s unfortunate that people feed off the cost of a movie more the media when it doesn’t affect the audience. The audience pays 10 or 12 bucks to go see the movie. So, if the movie costs 20 million or 200 million, it doesn’t matter. They don’t pay any more, so what difference does it make? If you give them something for 200 million that’s spectacular, and they get it for 10 bucks, that’s a benefit to them. I don’t know what it means but I think it means more to the factory of grinding out stories than it has to do with the public.
I’ve always loved so many of your movies over the years and I do get this sense that you are making movies for us. You’re not making movies for a limited people or maybe a people with an agenda. Is there a formula in your head, at all? Can you tell me a little bit about it? I don’t want to give away your secrets.
I just make movies that I want to see. I don’t know what you like, or what an audience likes. I just base it on, “Is that an idea that’ll get me to leave my TV set and video games and sports and stuff like that, to get my ass out of the house and go see it?”
Is that like, a gut feeling?
It’s all gut.
