Jerry Bruckheimer

BOOM! Bang! Ka-POW! That’s the sound of a Jerry Bruckheimer movie. He’s one of the most successful producers in Hollywood history, and as you may guess, he specializes in… action!

His upcoming movies include The Lone Ranger, a few war movies, the next installments of the Pirates of the Caribbean (he did all those) and National Treasure series (those, too), a film based on the Prince of Persia game, and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

One you might have seen already is the gadget-goofy guinea-pigs in G-Force. Or the credit-card craziness of Confessions of a Shopaholic with Isla Fisher.

He also produces the reality show The Amazing Race! Your folks might like his cop shows on TV: Dark Blue, Without a Trace, Cold Case, and CSI (he did the original and the NY and Miami versions). Once, he had three shows in the Top Ten!

Jerry’s cop movies, though, have been funnier. He produced the first two Beverly Hills Cop movies with Eddie Murphy, for instance, and the Bad Boys movies with Martin Lawrence.

Sometimes, Jerry’s “heroes” are criminals, though, like in Con Air and Gone in 60 Seconds, both with Nicolas Cage, and The Rock with Sean Connery.

A lot of Jerry’s movies have been about soldiers and their vehicles, too. These include Black Hawk Down (with attack helicopters), The Hunt for Red October (Connery again, plus nuclear subs), Pearl Harbor (battleships)… and Tom Cruise’s Top Gun (fighter jets). Jerry also produced Tom’s follow-up, Days of Thunder, with racecars.

Jerry’s most sci-fi movie was Armageddon, which means “the end of the world”! In this case, it was going to be caused by an asteroid about to hit Earth. Could Bruce Willis blow it up in time? The word “Armageddon,” by the way, is Jewish! The original Hebrew was “Har Megidon,” or “Mount Megidon,” a mountain in Israel where some terrible battles happened.

As you can see, Jerry’s big into action. But some of his best movies are dramas. Two about racial issues take place in high schools— Remember the Titans, about an integrated football team, and Dangerous Minds, about a tough class and a tougher teacher. Enemy of the State is a flashy spy caper. And Jerry’s first huge hit was a musical! It was Flashdance, about a woman who works as a welder but wants to be a dancer, and started the '80s trend of wearing torn sweatshirts. For real! 

Jerry was born in Detroit, and after college worked in an office mailroom! But he first helped produce a movie when he was 27, and never looked back. Some of his movies have made over a billion dollars! Today, they call him “Mr. Blockbuster.” No kidding!

Jerry got into movies though his love of photography. And likes big vehicles in real life, too. He helped preserve the famous sailing ship Cutty Sark by selling photos he took on the set of one of the Pirates movies.

But his degree in is, of all things, psychology. So here’s some insight into the way Jerry thinks, in his own words: “I don't consider what I do ‘work,’ when comparing it to the way my father made his living. 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. But I don't make the movies for [audiences]. I make them because I wanna go see them myself!”

Bonus:

Another Jewish producer we'd like to tell you about is Barry Navidi. His movies are a bit more on the artsy side. He produces Shakespeare movie starring Al Pacino. The first one was The Merchant of Venice, with Al as Shylock, one of the most controversial fictional characters ever. He's Jewish, and this rich guy owes him money. But because of anti-Semitism, it's very hard for Shylock to collect. We can't really say more without giving away the ending. Al is going to be King Lear in Barry's next Shakespeare movie.

In the meantime, Barry is producing Al in a movie based on a play Salome (say: SAH-lo-may), by another British playwright, Oscar Wilde. This one takes place in ancient Israel, and is about what happens to John the Baptist, Jesus' friend. The movie version is called Salomaybe? because it's about making the movie and they don't know if they can go through with it!