Jerry Bruckheimer, the producer whose attention-span-impaired taste aligns so seamlessly with that of easily entertained moviegoers that he's made enough money to shower in two-carat diamonds and spend each night of the next decade sleeping in a freshly constructed, $40 million mansion surrounded by a moat of molten gold, recently opened up to LAtimes.com about his process for selecting projects:
The Defamer Special Correspondent on Possibly Suggestive Superproducer Small-Talk submits this snippet of conversation overheard at a fashion show last Friday (as well as the accompanying pic), lamenting that no free drinks were exchanged in the course of the following brief conversation:
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:
Back on Wednesday, we were finally willing to be convinced that an actual human corpse turning up at a CSI: NY shoot in downtown L.A. was just an eerie coincidence, after a brief but enjoyable dalliance with a conspiracy theory that the whole thing was nothing more than a PR stunt. But now we're once again finding ourselves suspicious that master TV manipulator Jerry Bruckheimer really will feed us the same story over and over again until we finally stop tuning in, as another dead body has found its way to a different CSI franchise's set:
Not long after an anonymous, possibly condo-promoting tipster accused the shadowy, alleged media manipulators behind CSI: NY of conveniently-stumbled-upon-corpse-fraud , another reader, claiming to be a resident of the very downtown building in which the show is filming, offers this argument for the body's possible authenticity:
As we read People's story about how CSI: New York crew members stumbled upon an actual corpse at a downtown L.A. location shoot, we secretly feared that a mysterious dead body turning up near the set of a show about uncovering the stories behind mysterious dead bodies might prove a little too elegant a coincidence to be true. A Defamer operative is already claiming that "discovery" is nothing but a cynical PR stunt meant to take advantage of the too-trusting public's love of a good, accidentally-discovered-mummified-corpse story:
Crew members on a downtown L.A. location shoot for CSI: New York were relieved yesterday when a real corpse discovered in the building where they were filming turned out to be the "mummified" remains of a long-dead tenant, and not the body of a forgotten production assistant who never returned from a curiously prolonged Starbucks run. Reports People:
· We'd like to publicly thank Variety for coining the term "Bruckaneers," which conjures a pleasing, fitting image of the superproducer raping and pillaging his way through Hollywood. [Variety]
· Samuel L. Jackson will star in Doug Liman's sci-fi thriller Jumper, playing the role of "dogged agent pursuing protagonist" traditionally filled by Tommy Lee Jones. [THR]
· Pirates 2 takes in $46.6 million overseas in only 7
territories, a gross variously described as "boffo" and "socko." [Variety]
· The weird guy from Ally McBeal will join the cast of 24 next season, whom we imagine will make a suitably strange love interest for Chloe. [THR]
· A federal judge finds that CleanFlicks, Family Flix, CleanFilms and Play It Clean Video are not allowed to scrub out all the good parts of filthy/violent Hollywood fare and resell the sanitized product to crazy Puritans. [Variety]
No one can say that superproducer Jerry Bruckheimer doesn't know exactly what the people want from their summer entertainments, and in the case of Pirates of Caribbean 2 (opening today in 4,133 theaters near you!), The Bruck has gleaned that the public is clamoring for a severe, "old fashioned" set of blueballs induced by a [SPOILER ALERT, SORT OF] cliffhanger ending that necessitates a return trip to the multiplex next summer for the completion of their blockbuster handjob. Cackles Bruckheimer to the LAT:
Defamer is committed to bringing together qualified, discreet professionals from the private aviation industry and the frequent-flying superproducers who wouldn't mind having a little something-something to look at while sipping martinis on the flight to Cannes, OK? Via monster.com, an exciting opportunity for anyone looking to spend some quality, pressurized-cabin time with a Hollywood power player:
· Sofia Coppola's Marie-Antionette, Richard Linklater's Fast Food Nation, Richard "Donnie Darko" Kelly's Southland Tales, Pedro Almodovar's Volver, and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's Babel all land in competition at Cannes, while hack-helmed, big-budget blockbusters Da Vinci Code and X-Men: The Last Stand appear just for the free trip to France. [Variety]
· Mick Jagger digs deep to find a piece of his soul he hasn't already sold, then offers it to ABC in exchange for a role in a sitcom pilot. [THR]
· Suspicious that the folks at CAA must know about a secret warehouse full of fresh babies somewhere in Century City, ICM follows the juggernaut toddler-gobbling agency out of Beverly Hills and into new office space in the MGM building [Variety]
· KristieAnne Reed (not a typo, there's no space in her first name as far as we can tell) is promoted to executive VP of Bruckheimer TV. "KristieAnne is one of the brightest and most talented executives I've had the pleasure of working with," said Jerry Bruckheimer, who then brutally murdered her as a tie-in for a planned CSI episode taking place in Hollywood, defying his forensic detective stars to connect him to the slaying. [THR]
· Legendary Pictures is developing a live-action film adaptation of Paradise Lost, which will be reimagined as a romantic comedy between Adam and Eve in hopes of attracting Matthew McConaughey and Reese Witherspoon as stars.. [Variety]
Predictably, the clip of Without A Trace's $3.6 million teen sex orgy of teenage sex-type shenanigans was quickly yanked from YouTube due to "copyright infringement" (read: CBS lawyers) shortly after we posted about it. But as several readers reminded us, a clip of the scene is still available on the Parents Television Council website, who really go the extra, crazy mile by also offering this shockingly detailed blow-by-blow of the offending footage. Enjoy the hott, full-text, teen-on-teen-on-teen action, courtesy of one of your favorite watchdog groups!
UPDATE: If you haven't noticed yet, YouTube has pulled the video. If you're really dying for a clip of a "teen sex orgy," we're sure Google can provide you with tens of thousands of more explicit options not owned by CBS.
Superproducer Jerry Bruckheimer knows a movie star when he sees one: he's at ease in front of the camera, has an elusive magnetism, and, most importantly of all, has a set of teeth so huge, ivory, and gleaming that they'd make Mr. Ed faint dead away from jealousy. As for the first two qualities, well, you're either born with them or you're selling used Toyotas in Cerritos. But the third? Yeah, Uncle Jerry can help you out with that:
· Blogger Kim Morgan's car was towed from a Cold Case location shoot, and now she's going after The Bruck himself for her $177 towing fees. Let's all hold him upside down and shake until the money falls out of his pockets.
· We can't decide what's more absurd: that a celebrity could possibly expect any privacy at Sundance, or that a magazine would pay for a photo of Cameron Diaz and Justin Timberlake completely disguised in ski clothes. (And does anyone else think they look like Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow hitting the slopes?)
· Why don't we just assume that every successful memoirist is full of shit and call it a day?
· Our pal from Sickcandy is commemorating UPN's demise by auctioning off one of the ugliest promo jackets you've ever seen.
· "Nikki: Shelby once blew Tommy Lee in a public restroom!
Shelby: Bitch! I did not! It was in a tour-bus restroom." The WOW Report watched the Crue gets its star on the Walk of Fame.
A reader points out that Hollywood berproducer Jerry Bruckheimer has funneled his billion dollar, mass appeal instincts into Apple's "starfucking meets the art of the mixed tape"-hybrid, the iTunes celebrity playlist. You'll need to have the iTunes software installed to access the list, but here we offer a sampling of Bruckheimer's selections accompanied by some thoughts on why he chose them:
CNN uses the impending release of Jerry Bruckheimer's Glory Road (coming to a theater near you this Friday!), the story of the first all-African-American college basketball team who won the national title in 1966, to examine the "brand" that the superproducer's billions-grossing body of work has created. While Bruck evasively touts the simple power of his own taste in his selection of material ("I don't know what you like, I don't know what an audience likes; I know what I like. It's what I try to do."), he does explain what drew him to the current project:
