Interview With Jerry Bruckheimer

Few men exemplify Hollywood muscle so completely as producer Jerry Bruckheimer. To his fans he is one of the most trusted storytellers in the industry, a byword for excellence and a patriot who is working for a closer accord between Hollywood and Washington. To his critics he is a propaganda tool of the Pentagon and a pedlar of the sort of crass, high-carnage spectacle that eerily prefigured the events of September 11. They have seized on Bruckheimer's upcoming television series as proof that he is too deep in the pockets of the defence department: it is a "reality soap" about US soldiers in Afghanistan called Profiles from the Front Line, and has the full co-operation of the military.

Whichever camp you fall into, public opinion is on Bruckheimer's side. His career revenues of $12bn make him the most successful producer in the world, ever. With his notoriously hard-living partner, Don Simpson, he revolutionised popular cinema by giving us Flashdance, Beverly Hills Cop and Top Gun. After Simpson's death from drugs in January 1996, Bruckheimer barely missed a beat, applying his Midas touch to the likes of Con Air, Armageddon, Pearl Harbor and Black Hawk Down. In person he is small, lean and watchful as a wolf. He speaks softly, with no need to emphasise or ingratiate. He is a man who is used to being listened to.

Or perhaps he is just content to let his films do the talking. Bruckheimer's movies tend to be as noisy and attention-seeking as their creator is reserved. He knows that the world regards his work as "big, loud, in-your-face popular entertainments", although he adds that this overlooks some of the more contemplative, high-minded pictures he has made, such as Remember the Titans or his forthcoming film on the murdered Irish journalist Veronica Guerin.

That said, you would never mistake him for an arthouse devotee. If Ingmar Bergman, say, phoned him up and asked him to produce his latest film about an old woman who suffers a crisis of faith at a remote cottage in Sweden, would Jerry bite? "I'd have a problem with that," Bruckheimer admits. "Of course, it depends on the subject matter. I'm not saying I'd turn down Ingmar Bergman. But if that's what the film's about, then I'd find that very hard to understand." Given the choice, he says, he prefers stories about triumph because they parallel his own history.

Take CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, a programme executive-produced by Bruckheimer for American TV (and screening here on Channel 5). A tale of forensic investigators in Las Vegas, the show provides a steady stream of high-concept murders, fraught adventures and last-gasp victories. Scenes culminate in a squall of electric guitar, and even the show's most maternal character confesses that her job makes her feel "like King Kong on cocaine".

In the US, CSI has already made waves, knocking ER and The West Wing from the top of the ratings. But another of Bruckheimer's TV projects is attracting less positive feedback. Profiles from the Front Line, scheduled to air this summer, charts the experiences of US servicemen chasing al-Qaida terrorists through the mountains of Afghanistan. The show is reported to have been personally signed off by Vice-President Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, the secretary of defence, and to enjoy "the unparalleled support and co-operation of the defense department". Co-producer Bertram van Munster says that Profiles from the Front Line will be "patriotic in nature". Bruckheimer has described it as "a salute to our military".

All of which has provoked deep concern within America's news media. Critics regard the programme as part of a government ploy to restrict access for legitimate journalists and turn the reporting of the war on terrorism into a form of "militainment", with Bruckheimer as the Pentagon's official house producer. Dan Rather, the CBS news anchorman, has spoken out against the principle behind the show. "I'm outraged by the Hollywoodisation of the military," he told the Santa Monica Mirror. "The Pentagon would rather make troops available as props in gung-ho videos than explain how the commanders let Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida leaders escape or target the wrong villages."

Bruckheimer explains how the project came about. "The defence department acknowledged that this is a series they embrace and sent out a message to their various commanders saying that if they would be interested in allowing us access, then they would support it. And most of the commanders came and said, 'Sure, come along.'" The payback, allegedly, is that the defence department has a veto on what footage is screened. "No, not true," says Bruckheimer, although he does add that the authorities have a right to be reassured. "Put it this way. If I were to rent your apartment, I'm not going to trash it, it wouldn't be right. So I'm not going to go and expose all their blemishes." He concedes that both sides have done "very well" out of the deal.

But what if he inadvertently stumbles upon some human rights violation, or some mammoth military cock-up? Would he screen it? Yes, he says - "so long as it's not something they would consider sensitive". Surely you could safely assume that they would? "Yeah, but we're not looking for that," Bruckheimer sighs. "And anyway, I don't know what the show is going to be yet. We've had six or seven camera crews in Kandahar, in the Philippines and on a nuclear submarine, all shooting a ton of footage. The first batch only came in last week."

The way Bruckheimer pitches it, Profiles from the Front Line already sounds worryingly like a recruitment ad. "I think we look to the military as something that protects our shores," he says. "And I think you want the best and the brightest protecting your home and family. We also want to attract the best and the brightest to the military, so we don't want to make them look terrible. I think we all want that. You do too."

The spectre that looms behind all this controversy is September 11. At the time, Bruckheimer's big-budget disaster flicks were seized on as a reference point by reporters struggling to describe what they were seeing. The satirical online magazine The Onion even ran a spoof news story about the event, headlined "American Life Turns Into Bad Jerry Bruckheimer Movie". The piece quoted fictional onlookers who wondered when Bruce Willis was going to blow up the bad guys, and suggested that the Pentagon should assemble a ninja task squad full of "hot babes". Despite being a voracious reader of newspapers and magazines, Bruckheimer says he did not catch that particular article. "But I'll tell you, when I saw the event myself, I didn't think it was real either. At least I hoped it wasn't."

Politically speaking, Bruckheimer says he has always been "more to the right than the left. I supported Bush in the last election." By contrast, he describes his parents - German-Jewish immigrants who arrived in the US in the 1920s - as "very strong Democrats... They were very poor. They looked to the government to give them relief, even though they never took it." It is tempting to see his politics as a reaction to his impoverished upbringing. In the past he has said of his parents: "They were always scraping to get by. I didn't want to be poor, to tell you the truth."

Today there seems little danger of that. Bruckheimer claims that since 1982 he has made only one film that was not a big success (1984's Thief of Hearts, with David Caruso and TV-movie queen Barbara Williams). And naturally, he equates success with bums on seats, cash in tills. "Let me tell you: if I got great reviews but nobody showed up, I wouldn't be sitting here now. You'd be interviewing someone else."

Even so, you can't help wondering how much success he regards as enough, and just how many millions he really needs. To put it another way: what exactly makes Jerry run? Bruckheimer mulls this over for about a nanosecond. "I'm motivated by the fear of failure," he says. "That's what it is. I always think my next film's going to fall flat on its face, and I have to overcome it. I wake up every day feeling that I'm going to fail."

Series one of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation is released on video and DVD on July 1.