Jerry Bruckheimer quotes: TV producer’s popular advice.
“I think you’ve got to be honest with yourself at what you’re good at. That’s the hardest thing to do.”
“You can’t be afraid of hard work or long hours. Sacrifice is important.”
“Because you can’t do anything halfway, you’ve got to go all the way in anything you do.”
“You have to start at the very bottom and you’ve got to do every job. I did that so I could understand what everybody does. I didn’t become this huge producer overnight. It took many, many years.”
“My task as a producer is to get things to go my way, and to do that you need tenacity. You need to create an irrefutable argument for it. There are so many forces fighting you every day, trying to stop you. You’re always selling, always trying to convince someone that your project is the right thing for them to do.”
“Anybody who’s really successful has doubts.”
“You’ve got to learn from your mistakes. And not do them again.”
“Every day you make mistakes. And the key to making mistakes is first you have to make them, which means you’re in the game. So don’t be afraid of getting in the game.”
“I think you look back and you try to learn from your mistakes.”
“You put faith in people sometimes that can’t deliver for you. And those are mistakes and you have to… don’t work with them again. It’s pretty easy.”
“Definitely, it’s a fear of failure that drives me.”
“If you live in a world of faith, this reaffirms your faith.”
“Any time you can create something that gets to a large audience is fantastic.”
“In TV we’ve used something that I love… it’s called process. I love process.”
“If you have a crisis, whether on a ship or wherever, there are heroes who rise above it.”
“It’s important to stand up for your work – otherwise somebody else will step in and say they did it.”
“I mean, if you put all of your eggs in one basket, boy, and that thing blows up… you’ve got a real problem.”
“Well, I don’t look back and celebrate. I just always worry about the next one.”
“I should have had more faith in my talent. I think I would have gotten to achieve more, earlier, had I believed in myself.”
“College is the best days of your life. You know, I hate to say that cuz you’re so young and you got plenty ahead of you. But college is just wonderful. You know, you certainly have some responsibility. You’ve got to show up for class and you have to make your grades, but it’s a great time and I hope you enjoy those days, cuz they’re the best.”
“I just hoped that I could afford a life that was a little better than what my parents were able to afford as immigrants from Germany.”
“As a kid, I was good at organizing things, putting them together. I was never a good athlete, but created a baseball team, got a sponsor, and got us into a league. I did something with hockey. I was 10 years old. So I had that kind of skill very early on. Still, you’re always doubting your talent. The best people I work with, the most talented ones, are usually insecure. They’re always looking for a better way. And I’m no different. I look at it as trying to do the best you can at what you’re doing.”
“I was always looking to be entertained. We lead such full lives and a lot of us don’t lead very pleasant lives and don’t like what we do. My dad worked his whole life as a salesman and that wasn’t what he really wanted to do. He looked forward to two weeks of vacation every year and he used to say to me, ‘Whatever you do, make sure you do something you really like so you don’t just have your vacation to look forward to.’ And I love movies.”
“I didn’t know how I was going to do it, but I knew I had to get into the movie business. I loved it. I wasn’t going to be an actor or director. That didn’t matter. Somehow, I had to be a part of the thing I loved.”
“[Advice to first-time or aspiring producers] Get on the floor, start working. Get any job you can, just to get in the door. Once you get in the door, if you’re good, you’ll move up so fast, you won’t know what hit you.”
“I don’t consider what I do work – when comparing it to the way my father made his living. He was on his feet all day long.”
“I love taking you inside a world that you’re not a part of and showing you how it actually works.”
“I can stand at the back of the theater and watch an audience laugh, cry, and be moved by what I do. I can entertain people around the world. It’s nice when you can give someone that gift.”
“We are in the transportation business. We transport audiences from one place to another.”
“There are two kinds of success, I think. There’s critical success, which I’ve had in a minor way a few times in my career. And then there’s financial success, which I have achieved. In the end, it’s the financial success that matters. You want people to know your name. Had I made a lot of movies that weren’t financially successful, I wouldn’t be sitting in this office. I’d be in a one-bedroom apartment wallpapered with great reviews.”
“Building a brand is what I’m proud of. My name on a picture means something now, and people have a good idea of what they will get from me.”
“Every time I make a movie I think that it’s going to be my last one, I think that no one is going to show up. I always have this sense that they’re all going to fail. I am scared to death.”
“I think my success stems from one fear: fear of failure.”
“There are a lot of movies that inspire me to do what I do.”
“Hopefully I’ll leave things behind after I’m gone that will entertain generations for hundreds of years, and teach them something.”
“I’ve just got to just keep looking ahead and worrying about what’s coming up next.”
“I have a few indulgences, like cars. When I was 17, I saved every nickel I had to buy a car, for something like $800. It was a ’57 Plymouth convertible. I remember having a Corvette from the ’60’s early on. That’s still one of my favorites. I have a ’49 Chevy truck. I have the ’67 Shelby Mustang from Gone in 60 Seconds, some old tractors from the ’40s. Now I usually drive a BMW.”
“Recently I had one of the greatest thrills of my life, and it had nothing to do with a movie. I was playing in a celebrity hockey game, and I scored a goal off a pass from Wayne Gretzky. Now I can rest in peace.”
“Look, I’ve made enough money that I never have to do another show, but I love what I do, and I’ll keep doing it as long as I enjoy it.”
“Some day, I will lose the gut, the golden touch, but I’ll never retire.”
Also good: Michael Bay quotes.
