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Today's NY Times profiles soft-spoken superproducer Jerry Bruckheimer, noting how Disney's mandate to cut costs threatened even his sure-thing Pirates of Caribbean sequels ("They almost got canceled many times; money, budget, you name it.") and ultimately resulted in their being hamstrung with a combined budget of barely half a billion dollars, scuttling his plans to stock an authentic pirate ship with hundreds of animatronic buccaneers made of solid gold and encrusted in diamonds. Despite these troubling limitations on Bruckheimer's vision, this summer's Pirates installment eventually found modest success, in no small part due to their leader's inherent understanding of what audiences want:

In August, Mr. Bruckheimer met with the "Pirates" script writers Ted Elliot and Mr. Rossio, who wanted to give Will Turner more dialogue to develop the character. (Mr. Turner is played by Orlando Bloom.) Mr. Bruckheimer resisted, fearing moviegoers would be confused.

"He is willing to go with us down the road of complexity," Mr. Rossio said. "But at times we feel he is constraining us from doing things for fear they are too complex. It's common for us to polarize, although we end somewhere in the middle."

Mr. Bruckheimer said of the exchange: "I understand what they were saying but, the difference is this: I am the audience."

Having correctly shrugged off his screenwriters' precious, short-sighted desire to needlessly confuse moviegoers with "words," Hollywood's Sun King ("L'assistance, c'est moi" is now embroidered on the back of his chair on set) then ordered that Orlando Bloom instead be fitted with enormous dentures, knowing that a set of Bruckheimer Chompers™ effectively replaces pages of plot-slowing, character developing dialogue.