Apple Music: Producer Jerry Bruckheimer talks ‘F1® The Movie,’ working with Brad Pitt, Lewis Hamilton, Others

Award-winning producer Jerry Bruckheimer joins Apple Music’s Zane Lowe to talk Apple Original Films F1^® The Movie, in theaters June 27. During the interview, he shares what it was like working with Brad Pitt and Lewis Hamilton, collaborating with Formula One Group and top racing teams, and bringing the adrenaline of the sport to the big screen. The Hollywood producer also looks back on standout films like Days of Thunder and Top Gun: Maverick, reflecting on his longstanding collaboration with Tom Cruise.

Video, key quotes and photos below. Please credit The Zane Lowe Show on Apple Music 1.

Listen to the full episode anytime on demand with an Apple Music subscription HERE.

Listen to ‘F1^® The Album’ featuring new music from stars including Ed Sheeran, Tate McRae, Burna Boy, and Chris Stapleton on Apple Music.

VIDEO | Jerry Bruckheimer on The Zane Lowe Show

Watch: http://apple.co/JB-ZL

Jerry Bruckheimer tells Apple Music about success in the streaming era
Jerry Bruckheimer: I’m still really proud of what we do, and if I’m satisfied, I feel good about it, but I can’t understand what an audience doesn’t see in it or sees in it. We just don’t know. We use our best instincts to make movies, and I’ve gotten movies that, again, have gotten great reviews and people love, and they disappear. But I know they’re really good movies and the critics know it’s a good movie, just for whatever happened in between us finishing it and it going into a theatre. I don’t know what happens on the way, but something happens.

Zane Lowe: Yeah, it’s the great art of letting go. I think that that’s something as human beings that we figure out over the course of our life, and you certainly understand the principle on that when you create something and have to let it go every time.

Jerry Bruckheimer: But what’s interesting now in the world we live in is they’re streaming so these things live on forever, and sometimes they becomes really successful in streaming where people didn’t want to pay money to see it, but they’ll watch it over and over again on a streaming service like Apple.

Jerry Bruckheimer tells Apple Music about making F1® The Movie for the big screen

Jerry Bruckheimer: I love creating content. That’s my passion and what I love doing, and whether it’s for a big screen, which I prefer because you see the results immediately, or for a streaming service, it’s still a creative art. And you can use your art, whether it’s in your living room or on the big screen. The movie we just finished for Apple, F1® The Movie, is to be experienced on the big screen.

Visually, it’s stunning. The sound is amazing. It takes you inside a world that you’d never be a part of. It’s immersive, the seats shake, and you don’t have to be a racing fan to really enjoy this movie at all. It’s just the drama inside our characters that goes on in this world is what captivates people and it’s emotionally engaging, and that’s the best thing that we can do. We can take you on a ride and we transport you to this world that you’ll never be a part of on the inside, and you see how it actually works. And you live the drama of Sonny Hayes, who’s played by Brad Pitt, and his journey of redemption. We all want redemption. We all want-

Zane Lowe: That’s a human experience.

Jerry Bruckheimer: Yeah. We all make mistakes, we want to redo them. And also of teamwork, on how teamwork can enhance your life, and we all want that around us, have a great team that works together. And the movie is this unfunctional group of people who can’t quite get it together, and how this one man can come in and mould it into something that’s organic and works really well together.

Jerry Bruckheimer tells Apple Music about working with Lewis Hamilton as a producer on ‘F1® The Movie’

Jerry Bruckheimer: Well, there’s nothing in this film as far as racing that hasn’t happened in F1 through the history. We did enormous amount of research. Lewis Hamilton is a producer on the movie. He’s the first person we went to, even before Brad. We got Lewis involved before we even started writing the screenplay, just to make sure we had everything right. And one day, we had 12 hours in room with Lewis and Brad just going through every page of the script to make sure we had everything as good as you can make it.

Zane Lowe: So he was the continuity expert ultimately, saying, “Listen, this is just not how it happens on the track.”

Jerry Bruckheimer: And it even comes down to sound, where he’d see, we’re at Silverstone and he’s listening to a reel and he says, “Well, you’re going into turn three and it sounds like you’re in third gear. We’d be in second gear.” So we had to modulate, and he’d say things. “Well, in turn five, you can’t pass. If you try to pass, you’ll crash.” We used that. We had a crash on that turn, so anything we can do to make it as real as possible.

Jerry Bruckheimer tells Apple Music about his hands-on approach collaborating with actors like Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise

Zane Lowe: So there’s no broad strokes in this particular film. It must have been hard, or challenging I should say, to be as detailed as you can be, but also want for us to experience the big-picture excitement of a Bruckheimer film.

Jerry Bruckheimer: It’s a combination of a lot of great artists. That’s what it is. And what I try to do is gather the most talented people I can and protect them and let them go do their thing, and that’s what happened with F1. We had Brad, who’s an enormous, not only brilliant actor and Academy Award winner, but he’s also, he’s into the details. He sits and works on the script with us. He worked on the edit with us. He worked on every possible way that we can make the film better and mould into something that he would be really proud of, and that’s so important.

I’ve worked with actors who they come in and they do their lines, they go home, and they show up at the premiere and that’s it. But he’s in the weeds, kind of like Tom Cruise, the same thing. They’re both in the weeds on everything and they make everything better, they really do. Some people could say, “Well, they’re meddling,” and it’s not true at all, because both of them are really smart and really good filmmakers, and they do things that are unexpected and things I would never think of or the director. So they bring this secret sauce to everything they do.

Jerry Bruckheimer tells Apple Music about how to manage budget spending effectively on a film

Zane Lowe: As someone who has made billions, tens of billions of dollars at the box office, but also spent a lot of money making these kind of films, what is one of the great lessons you’ve learned about big money decision making?

Jerry Bruckheimer: I think it’s all about if you have a scene that’s on the screen for four minutes, let’s say, you want to spend some money, four or five minutes. If it’s on the screen for 30 seconds, try to save it.

Zane Lowe: The hierarchy of time.

Jerry Bruckheimer: Yeah, that’s it. Put the money where the audience is really going to see it. Don’t spend it on a 10 or 20 second little bit, where you want everything perfect, but the second little bit where you want everything perfect… but let’s not spend two days doing 20 seconds.

Jerry Bruckheimer tells Apple Music about working with Formula One Group and the teams to get the movie made

It took four years basically to make this movie. And the first thing we did is Brad, myself and Joe, the director, flew to London and met with Stefano, who was the head of F1. And we explained to him what we wanted to do. And Joe developed a reel and he showed Stefano, this is how we made Top Gun because we didn’t have Russian jets, so we skinned these planes. And then he showed him another reel. He took a sequence, a race sequence, and he said, now here’s how we’re going to integrate our car into your race. And so we saw our Apex car around Red Bull and Mercedes and McLaren, and he saw, wow, this is seamless. You can’t tell. It doesn’t look like visual effects. And then we told them we want to do it the most accurate movie, and we have Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes who’s going to build the car for us.

We want to make it as real as you possibly can about your sport to celebrate your sport. And then we explained that we wanted to have Brad drive and Damson was the other character, Damson Edwards, who’s an amazing young actor. So we put them in road cars, then we put them in F4 cars and we put them in F3 cars and finally into our car. So it was a four-month process of training them. Because you look at these races and they look kind of easy, these guys get in the car and they drive at high speeds, it’s not.

Jerry Bruckheimer tells Apple Music about casting Brad Pitt for ‘F1® The Movie’

Jerry Bruckheimer: Well, we took him to a track with Lewis Hamilton. And they drove and Lewis came to us and said, he’s a gifted athlete.

And then Lewis took him right on a ride on a hot lap and I’m sure scared the hell out of him. So it was a great experience to watch Brad get into this, and he loved it. I mean, his saddest day is when we were in Abu Dhabi at the end of the movie and he did his last lap and had to climb out of the car and it was my happiest day.

Zane Lowe: Yeah, he’s okay.

Jerry Bruckheimer: He’s okay and we got through the movie, nobody got hurt. What they were doing is, first of all, a race is an hour and a half, maybe two hours. We had eight, 10 hours every day on the track driving. It’s brutal. When they weren’t on the track, they were training because your neck, you’re taking five G’s going in those corners. It’s really physically debilitating and mentally debilitating. You got to learn the track, we had them on simulators so they understood all the turns and-

Zane Lowe: They were going fast.

Jerry Bruckheimer: They were hitting 180.

Zane Lowe: That’s fast.

Jerry Bruckheimer: So they were really rocking. But Damson [Idris] is a good athlete too. We tested him too before he got the part.

Jerry Bruckheimer tells Apple Music about making the 1990 film ‘Days of Thunder’ 
Jerry Bruckheimer: We didn’t realize it at the time, we used the best technology available to us. And Tony Scott is a visual artist and a brilliant filmmaker and he figured out ways to get cameras in the most unusual places…

We crashed a lot of cars. I think we built 30 cars and I don’t think one was left.

Zane Lowe: That sport is dodgy though, isn’t it? I mean the whole point is I’m going to clip you.

Jerry Bruckheimer: Yeah, Tony Scott [director], he drives motorcycles. He climbs, he climbs mountains. I mean, he’s a real thrill seeker. And Tom [Cruise], I don’t think he has a fear gene, I mean he’ll do anything. You saw in Mission Impossible he’s hanging out of a plane for 20 minutes or half an hour. It’s unbelievable what he does. So he get these two guys together, you say, oh my God, what’s going to happen? So they were rubbing and racing. It isn’t racing unless you’re rubbing.

That’s what NASCAR is. Much different than Formula One.

Jerry Bruckheimer tells Apple Music about working with Tom Cruise
He’s [Tom Cruise] charismatic. I mean he really is. He’s got this smile that lights up a room. He’s so focused on what he’s doing. He wants to win in the worst way. He wants everybody to win, not just him. He wants in a movie- he loves entertaining audiences, that’s what he wants to do. He wants to pack those theaters, give them the best experience for their money ever. And you got to commend it. Actors talk about their art and this and that. Tom, his art is to entertain an audience. How do I make a better movie that moves people and gathers people together to experience something that’s unique, fresh, and different?

Jerry Bruckheimer tells Apple Music about Hollywood success
Everybody wants accolades for their work and it’s nice to get them, but my focus is on the audience. I mean, there are producers who just make movies to get awards. I make movies to entertain audiences, and if the awards come, that’s a great bonus.

Jerry Bruckheimer tells Apple Music about working with Formula One Group during the making of ‘F1® The Movie’
Jerry Bruckheimer: Oh, listen, we had to fight for track time. We built these cars and then we built a garage. We had our own garage and we were between Red Bull and Ferrari and some of the races, so we’re right in there with all these teams, and that was the gracious thing that F1 and the various 10 teams awarded us. Because we were straightforward, we told them everything we were going to do. We showed the movie to the drivers a couple weeks ago in Monaco.

Zane Lowe: What’d they think? How was it?

Jerry Bruckheimer: They kind of see it as, it should be a documentary. I explain to them, “It’s not a documentary. It’s a movie about your sport, about these characters in our world.” And I think they really got a kick out of it. They said it was terrific. I mean, a couple of drivers said, “This is the first time I’ve watched a film that shows exactly what we kind of see when we’re sitting in these cars.”

Jerry Bruckheimer tells Apple Music about his favorite moment during the filming of F1® The Movie’
Jerry Bruckheimer: I think the first day when we were at Silverstone and he [Brad Pitt] climbed in the car for the first time and he had to drive in front of 140,000 people there and 100,000,000 on television and just to see his composure that I’d be scared to death.

Zane Lowe: Do you think he was nervous?

Jerry Bruckheimer: I don’t know. I mean, he’s so… he’s so calm and cool, this guy. He really is. And because you don’t want him to spin out, and first of all, they didn’t know it was with Brad in the car, but still if he spun out somebody would’ve picked it up and he just did it and did it beautifully and hit all the right turns and corners and got to speed and that was a great day. I said, “Okay, he can do it if he can do this in front of all these people we got another 12 weeks of him.”

Jerry Bruckheimer tells Apple Music about working with longtime friend Hans Zimmer to compose the soundtrack for  ‘F1® The Movie’
He’s a genius. I don’t know where it comes from. I really don’t. He’ll sit down and he’ll play something for us and you get the goosebumps. It’s just there, and then he’ll build it out. He’ll build it out for all the scenes and write multiple melodies for characters. But it’s not easy. It’s hard because he has to be in a place where it’s the last second that’s his art, and there’s enormous pressure and the director’s getting nuts. “Where’s our music?” I said, “Just be patient. He will get there. He will get there.” It happened on F1. Joe was getting nervous. “When are we going to hear something? When are we going to hear something?” And then finally he was on tour so he couldn’t do anything, and he comes back, he’s back for a week and then he plays something and Joe said, “That’s it. We got it. We got it.” And we took the melody for that and put it in a song with Doja Cat. I mean, so that is something that is magical that he brings that is just, I don’t know where that gift comes from, how many notes are there, not that many notes, and yet he can rearrange them to make something that’s unique and different for every movie you make.

Jerry Bruckheimer tells Apple Music about what he wants to be remembered for
I want people to remember me for the movies, not for me. I want them to … It’s so great when people come up to you and say, “God, you were part of my childhood. All your movies I just grew up on.” That gives me the thrill. That’s what I want. And I want the next generation to be inspired by F1, become filmmakers or composers or writers, and that is what I love. That’s what Michael Bay was telling me a story that when he saw the first Top Gun, he was like, he got so inspired by it he wanted to become a director.

And that’s what we try to do. That’s the gift that I want to give to the next generation is be inspired by what we do. Have it move you, have it move you into a career. But what I always tell talent is do what you love doing that gives you a glow. You know when you finish something, whatever you’re doing, and you say, “Boy, that was good. I felt good about that.” And that is what we try to give to the youth. But sometimes people don’t get the glow that they want to get for the things they think they want to be, and they’re not good at it. I would love to be an actor. I’d love to be in front of the camera. I’m no good at it. So I found something that I love doing that I get the glow every time I watch one of our films and I’ll get it tonight again, and when I sit there with 4,200 people watching this movie in an IMAX and phenomenal sound and that’s when I feel great.