Hollywood Top Gun Leads Charge Onto Small Screen

As a Hollywood movie producer, everything about Jerry Bruckheimer is big.

There are his splashy effects -- an airliner careening down the Las Vegas Strip in “Con Air,” an asteroid plunging toward Earth in “Armageddon.” Eye-popping budgets, as in $200 million to make and market “Pearl Harbor.” Tom Cruise piloting to megastar status in “Top Gun.”

But now Bruckheimer is thinking small -- as in small screen.

In just three years, Bruckheimer has become the most successful player in an emerging trend of high-profile filmmakers migrating to TV. They are seduced by money, the freedom to make edgier shows and a prestige the medium has historically lacked.

Bruckheimer’s “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” on CBS is TV’s No. 1 show. His “CSI: Miami” spinoff is the most popular new drama, followed by his missing-persons program, “Without a Trace.” In TV drama, Bruckheimer now rivals such established heavyweights as Dick Wolf, Steven Bochco, John Wells and David E. Kelley.

On Thursday comes Bruckheimer’s fifth prime-time offering, “Profiles From the Front Line,” an unabashedly pro-military “reality” TV show on ABC that follows U.S. Special Operations troops as they scour the Afghan countryside for members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

“Profiles” has triggered its share of controversy, with news outlets questioning why the Pentagon and Defense Department granted Bruckheimer access denied to them. Already, he has Pentagon permission for his camera crews to shadow U.S. troops in Iraq, should war break out.

Bruckheimer, like a general, has the unique ability to mobilize a vast array of production forces to whatever TV enterprise he undertakes, while simultaneously overseeing his signature blockbusters.

It’s not just the hip MTV-style editing, the quick-burst flashbacks and pulsating rock music scores that characterize his shows. Just as important is his ability to recruit Hollywood’s top filmmaking talent -- directors, stars, writers, cinematographers and special-effects experts.

Said actor David Caruso, whose languishing career was reignited with “CSI: Miami”: “If you have a chance to work for Jerry Bruckheimer, you don’t pass it up.... It’s feature-quality TV.”

Not all moviemakers find that success at the nation’s movie houses translates to America’s living rooms.

“Titanic” director James Cameron flopped with “Dark Angel,” as did “Men in Black” director Barry Sonnenfeld’s “The Tick.” And “Ali” director Michael Mann’s “Robbery Homicide Division” failed.

Even Bruckheimer stumbled early on with such misfires as “Dangerous Minds,” based on his 1995 hit movie, and the short-lived syndicated action series “Soldier of Fortune.” One of his current shows, the reality-based “Amazing Race,” struggled in the ratings last year, but CBS is planning another installment.

The pitfalls haven’t stopped a continuing parade of top producers and directors from venturing into a medium they once deemed inferior.

“Spider-Man” producer Laura Ziskin is among them. She is developing a number of TV series, including one about a 25-year-old Tarzan loose in New York. “Television is no longer a ghetto,” she said. “It’s exciting.”

For filmmakers, such critically acclaimed fare as “CSI,” “The Sopranos,” “E.R.” and “The West Wing” represents a creative refuge from today’s play-it-safe movie business, which is increasingly obsessed with churning out clones of previous hits or big “franchises” that spawn sequels, toys and fast-food promotions.

“Features take forever. In television, you develop the scripts, the networks read the scripts and they either want a pilot or they don’t. If they want a pilot, you’re off and running,” said Bruckheimer, whose hit “Beverly Hills Cop” languished for 10 years before it was finally made.

Veteran TV agent Lee Gabler of Creative Artists Agency, which represents Bruckheimer, says he has seen television move to the creative -- and financial -- forefront.

“Years ago, feature writers and producers looked at TV as a stepchild,” he said. “But because of all the money involved, it’s now an arena they like to play in.”

A hit such as “CSI” could reap a producer tens of millions of dollars. In addition to generating immediate ad revenue, a hit show can have a long afterlife on TV as a syndicated show or a cable rerun and through sales of DVDs. It also can spin off new hit shows, as “CSI” already has done with its Miami version. The result can be a lucrative pie split by networks, producers, agents and actors.

That money also provides an incentive for talent agencies to push more of their top film producers into television. An agency gets a 3% fee for packaging shows for networks. If the show hits, it can reap another 3% of the client’s profits down the line.

Bruckheimer’s adrenaline-laced approach to television flows from the same pop culture taste buds that made him one of Hollywood’s most bankable producers, first with his late partner, Don Simpson, and now as a solo act.

Their 1983 sleeper hit “Flashdance” spawned millions of shoulder-less T-shirts and a memorable soundtrack for the aerobics generation. “Top Gun” made Cruise a superstar and helped boost military recruitment. “Beverly Hills Cop,” with Eddie Murphy and Judge Reinhold, gave a big boost to buddy movies. “Dangerous Minds,” starring Michelle Pfeiffer as an inner-city teacher, helped make hip-hop music mainstream.

“He has a golden touch,” said CBS TV chief Leslie Moonves, whose network airs three Bruckheimer dramas. “He’s our No. 1 supplier.”

Bruckheimer’s gut feeling for what works, and what doesn’t, guides him as he reads every script and watches every pilot to ensure it has the touch that TV executives want from him. Bruckheimer groused to CBS that the still photos for “Without a Trace” ads were “too glossy and shiny” and didn’t distinguish the show from any other. Another time, he complained that street kids looked “fake” in one of his shows’ episodes.

After Warner Bros. TV chief Peter Roth saw the pilot for “Without a Trace,” he complained it wasn’t “Bruckheimerized” enough. “The pacing was much slower, the music was plodding,” Roth said. “When I watched the next cut a week and a half later, I leaped out of my seat.... It was hydroplaning.”

Bruckheimer hardly looks like someone Hollywood would cast as the man behind some of the industry’s loudest and brashest productions, with worldwide ticket sales of $12.5 billion.

He speaks in a soft, sometimes barely audible voice and shuns the Hollywood flash. He and his writer wife, Linda, like to sneak off to their horse farm in Kentucky.

His production headquarters also lack flash, located at the end of a cul-de-sac near a Salvation Army building in an industrial section of Santa Monica. If it weren’t the only place on the block with valet parking, its ties to Hollywood would be invisible.

With Bruckheimer, the question is less why he got into TV than what took him so long. Growing up in Detroit, he was weaned on such shows as “Wanted: Dead or Alive,” “Bonanza” and “I Love Lucy.”

“That little box was my form of entertainment,” he said.

One of Bruckheimer’s first “films” was a 60-second spot he made as a commercial producer for Pontiac. After working as an ad executive on Madison Avenue, he produced his first movie, the 1975 thriller “Farewell, My Lovely.”

He focused almost exclusively on movies until after Simpson died of a drug overdose in 1996. Bruckheimer recalls being at a crossroads. “Once Don passed away, I wanted to be more productive,” he said.

Critical to Bruckheimer’s TV business was his introduction to Jonathan Littman, a former executive at Fox TV who oversaw such hits as “The X-Files” and “Beverly Hills 90210,” who is now Bruckheimer’s TV chief.

Bruckheimer is quick to acknowledge Littman’s role in his TV success, underscoring the argument of network executives that good filmmakers need to be tag-teamed with TV executives who know the turf.

Juggling the worlds of TV and movies gives Bruckheimer a fast-paced life that flips from one discipline to the other. One minute he’s reading TV scripts, the next visiting the Palos Verdes location of his upcoming big-budget adventure movie “Pirates of the Caribbean” or flying to Miami during the recent production of “Bad Boys 2.” With both those films slated for release this July, Bruckheimer also is in the throes of casting two other large-scale upcoming productions, “King Arthur” and “National Treasure.”

In both his movies and TV shows, the “Bruckheimer look” doesn’t come cheap. His films routinely cost more than $100 million to make. The two “CSI” shows and “Without a Trace” all cost a hefty $2 million-plus an episode. Much of it is owed to the production costs that come from using feature techniques such as multiple cameras, sophisticated lighting and fancy visual effects.

“It’s a constant battle with costs both in movies and television,” Bruckheimer said. Whereas on a movie “you’re quibbling over the last $4 million or $5 million ... in television you’re fighting over a lens that costs $3,000 -- it’s all relative.”

Money was the reason why “CSI” began as something of an orphan. Walt Disney Co., where Bruckheimer has made movies since 1991, and its ABC network were spooked by the costs and didn’t believe it was of interest to viewers overseas, so they bowed out at the eleventh hour.

Rivals believe that decision could cost Disney $500 million or more when spinoffs are factored in.

In a statement, ABC said: “At the time, the only way the economics of this series made sense was if the show became the biggest hit on television. You can’t run a television studio based on the premise that you make money only if the show reaches mega-hit status.” But, ABC added, “since it actually became one of the biggest hits on television, in hindsight we would have preferred to keep the show.”

Bruckheimer insists he isn’t bitter about his doubters.

“It’s their loss,” Bruckheimer said. “Sometimes it’s not good to bet against us, and they bet against us.”