That wasn’t the last time somebody wanted to give Don Simpson a spanking. But decades later, he and his partner, Jerry Bruckheimer, are among the most successful movie producers in history. The ’80s were one long, nearly perfect summer as the pair made “Flashdance,” “Beverly Hills Cop” and “Top Gun.” The ’90s, however, were beginning to look like a nuclear winter. Simpson and Bruckheimer went almost five years without a hit-without a movie, practically. But two weeks ago, they released “Bad Boys,” a slick, entertaining action comedy of the “Beverly Hills Cop” and “Lethal Weapon” variety. (Martin Lawrence and Will Smith, who have an irresistible chemistry, are Miami detectives trying to crack a heroin heist-as if the plot matters.) Next month, Simpson and Bruckheimer will unveil “Crimson Tide,” a promising submarine thriller in which Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman take turns relieving each other of command. “Bad Boys” made $15.6 million opening weekend–a record for 1995 - and “Tide” should be a blockbuster. So Hollywood’s own bad boys are back. And, as Bruckheimer puts it. Simpson “is still trying to rewrite the ending of “The Greatest Show on Earth’.”
In person, Simpson and Bruckheimer seem to have no business being in business together. Bruckheimer is thin and pale. Simpson is beefy and sports a Naugahyde tan. bruckheimer smiles nervously and doesn’t say much.
Simpson bites his nails, fidgets like a chain smoker out of cigarettes and once told a reporter, “F–k with me, and I’ll tear your f—ing head off.” How did they find each other? Bruckheimer grew up in Detroit, the son of a clothing store clerk. He worked as an advertising executive, then moved on to movies and produced “Cat People” and “American Gigolo,” among other things. Simpson grewup in Alaska, the son of a caribou-hunting guide. (He brags about being convicted of robbery, auto theft and check forging as a teen.) Simpson went to Hollywood to be an actor, but ended up becoming one of the youngest executives in town. In the early ’80s, Simpson quit his job as the chief of production at Paramount Pictures so he could: make “Flashdance” with Bruckheimer, who’d been producing movies for the studio. Then came the hit parade. “Flashdance,” “Beverly Hills Cop I and II,” “Top Gun” and “Days of Thunder” are said to have made more than $3 billion in worldwide ticket, video and record sales. That helped make Simpson the man he is today. “Don is out of his mind,” says a friend. “Before he had anything to show for it, he was brash and dynamic and arrogant. Success only amplified that.”
Simpson and Bruckheimer symbolized everything right and wrong with Hollywood in the ’80s. They produced huge movies that made huge stars out of Eddie Murphy and Tom Cruise. They bought mansions. They drove matching jet-black Ferraris and wore matching jet-black outfits. For a time, Simpson dressed exclusively in black Levi 501 jeans-which he’d throw out after two washings, insisting they were no longer black enough. in 1988, the producers forged a deal with Paramount so lucrative they called it a “visionary alliance.” They’d be given $300 million to make five movies -at a time when the average movie cost $20 million. They didn’t have to tell the studio what movies they were making. They couldn’t lose.
Then they lost. In 1989, Tom Cruise’s racing movie “Days of Thunder” was rushed into production without a finished script, and the budget quickly ballooned to about $70 million. Simpson and Bruckheimer remained cocky even as the media gloated about troubles on the set. Their former Paramount colleague Jeffrey Katzenberg was finishing a competing summer release for Disney, “Dick Tracy.” Simpson sent a taunting fax: “You can’t escape the ‘Thunder!”’ Katzenberg responded in kind: “You won’t believe how big my ‘Dick’ is!” Wishful thinking, on both sides. “Dick Tracy” was a disappointment. Simpson and Bruckheimer made $20 million on “Thunder,” but Paramount didn’t break even. Then a former assistant brought a lawsuit against the producers, alleging drug use and abusive behavior. The suit was tossed out of court, but damage was done. Paramount and the producers soured on each other. Simpson and Bruckheimer signed with Disney.
The producers didn’t exactly make magic at the Magic Kingdom. Simpson gained a lot of weight and kept dropping out of sight. Bruckheimer made excuses for him, but Hollywood assumed the partnership was falling apart. Today, the producers blame their fallow period on a penny-pinching Disney, particularly on their old friend Katzenberg. They insist they had first shot at “Disclosure,” “Presumed Innocent” and the upcoming “Apollo 13.” They claim Disney balked every time. “Disney just wasn’t in the big movie business,” says Simpson. “That is our business.” Katzenberg, now with DreamWorks, concedes the point. “The agenda at Disney fluctuated, and these guys got caught in the crunch.”
“Bad Boys” and “Crimson Tide” are certainly big movies, but both had misadventures on the way to the screen. “Boys” was originally a Disney project for Dana Carvey and Jon Lovitz. Then they dropped out, and the project languished fora year before Simpson and Bruckheimer took it to Columbia Pictures. (The script was rewritten for Lawrence and Smith, of course. It’s hard to imagine Carvey and Lovitz knocking on the door of a posh Miami mansion and shouting, “Don’t be alarmed! We are Negroes!”) “Crimson Tide” went through even more trials and errors. Quentin Tarantino, Robert Towne and Steve Zaillian were all called in to juice up the script, and the leads weren’t cast until production was about to begin. Simpson and Bruckheimer thrive on this stuff. “Beverly Hills Cop” went through 36 rewrites and was supposed to be a Mickey Rourke movie.
It seems pointless to add that renewed success hasn’t mellowed the producers: one of them doesn’t know from Mellow, the other’s been mellow all along. Two years ago, Bruckheimer married the woman he’d been living with for more than a decade, magazine editor Linda Bruckheimer. Simpson still drinks with the boys, brags about dating Penthouse Pets and has room service delivered to his house from the swank Bel Air Hotel. Some of this seems like a put-on. “Don has this bad-boy image that he’s marketed,” says producer Steve Tisch, a longtime friend. “He’s read a lot about old Hollywood. He’d like to immortalize himself and be talked about 30 or 40 years from now as one of the great, colorful Hollywood legends.” No doubt people will talk about him for years to come. it looks like they’ll even talk about a couple of his movies.
