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Simpson and Bruckheimer didn't always have expensive tastes; both are from working-class backgrounds. "My family barely worked," jokes Simpson, who grew up in Juneau, Alaska. Bruckheimer arrived in Hollywood via Detroit, where he was born, and New York, where he worked in advertising. But while Bruckheimer seems to have been focused early on ("I was always driven," he says), sliding effortlessly into producing 1975's Farewell, My Lovely, the perpetually tan and single Simpson wandered a bit more. A sometime screenwriter, he hustled up tennis games on the neighborhood courts when he needed a quick buck, then landed a job as assistant VP of worldwide production at Paramount in 1975, eventually working under Michael Eisner. Within six years, Simpson was president of production.

While Simpson and Bruckheimer had been longtime friends (they even lived together while Bruckheimer was getting divorced from his first wife; he later married Linda Balahoutis in 1993), they didn't work together until 1979, when Paramount's American Gigolo lost its star, John Travolta, a month before filming was to begin. Simpson called Bruckheimer and asked for help: "When Jerry sees a problem, he sees a solution," Simpson explains. "I see a problem and I want it to die."

"We wanted Richard Gere," Bruckheimer remembers. That Simpson's superiors hadn't come to the same conclusion didn't stop Bruckheimer from talking Gere into the role. When Simpson informed Eisner what they'd done, Eisner agreed that Bruckheimer could produce the film with Gere if he made it for $5 million, "figuring that we never could," Simpson says. Adds his partner, "We did it for four-point-seven."

Simpson left Paramount to work with Bruckheimer full-time on Flashdance in 1982. "I never wanted to be in management," he says. All told, they've made eight movies, which have grossed a total of about $820 million in the U.S. alone.

"It's not that hard to imagine Don as a studio head being completely insane; I think having to sit behind a desk drove him nuts. I know he didn't have a heart attack, but I think there are probably people who worked for him who did."
—Denis Leary, who worked with the two on 1994's The Ref

In the Disney office that Simpson shares with Bruckheimer, the two men sit side-by-side at a long desk. "We have something like a good marriage, except there's no sex, so there's no fighting," Simpson says. But for those on the receiving end of their good cop (Bruckheimer)/bad cop (Simpson) routine, the seating plan can be awkward. "I've suffered at that desk," says Tony Scott, who directed Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop II, Days of Thunder, and Crimson Tide. "It's difficult trying to keep an eye on both of them at the same time. It's like watching a tennis game. Unless you're a snake, unless you have peripheral vision, you can't keep them both in focus." Does he think it's intentional? "Sure."

Scott was with the pair during their now infamous undoing. In the winter of '90, Simpson and Bruckheimer signed a much-heralded five-year/five-movie deal with Paramount worth a reported $300 million, touted in full-page trade ads as a "visionary alliance." But on the set of Days of Thunder in 1990, the newborn alliance began to look like a bad idea.

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