THE WEEKEND READ

TH DON by David Kirkpatrick

(Tom Cruise and Don Simpson.)

When I went to see Top Gun: Maverick while I was still over in London, I was actually shocked to to see Don Simpson’s name prominently displayed in the opening credits above Jerry Bruckheimer’s as the producers. It wasn’t because he had top billing - their company had been called Simpson/Bruckheimer - but because he died in 1996. The original Top Gun had been one of their movies so once I got over the shock of seeing Don’s name, I realized it was a kind gesture on Jerry’s part. But Jerry has always been gentlemanly and kind whereas Don was an animal - a party one, a beast from Alaska - who was barely house-trained. Don’s shocking me in death shouldn’t have been a surprise because as those credits for the new Top Gun movie continued to roll I remembered the guy was always a shocking presence back when I worked as a highfalutin factotum on the executive floor of the Gulf+Western Building for movie marketing legend Buffy Shutt during her years at Paramount and he would come blowing in full of blow from the West Coast where he was the President of Production and later Jerry’s top-billed partner with a production deal at Paramount which he still considered his fiefdom. In his book, High Concept: Don Simpson and the Hollywood Culture of Excess, Charles Fleming wrote that Simpson was “a supercharged simple-minded creature, an Aesop's fable on crystal meth.”

Other Simpson/Bruckheimer films included both Beverly Hills Cop movies, Flashdance, and Days of Thunder. David Kirkpatrick who was a production executive at Paramount and ultimately President of the Motion Picture Division worked on many of their films after having worked for Don when Simpson was President of Production. Since David’s memories about having worked on Top Gun, which he wrote to be gentlemanly and kind to Kelly McGillis, proved popular this week when I dedicated a RUBICS column to her. David also has some memories about Don. Enjoy.

THE DON

by David Kirkpatrick

It was 1983. A blizzard had seized Anchorage, Alaska. Through the glass of the theater, I watched a limousine pull up into the night. In hurtling snow, the driver opened the door. Stepping out of the limo, in a knee-length camel hair coat, in mirrored shades, was the president of production of Paramount Pictures and, one day, the producer of Top Gun, the biggest movie of 1986.  

This was Don Simpson. He looked like a Hollywood star arriving at the red carpet.  But this was not a premier. This was a preview of a work in  progress. Don looked to his right, then his left, searching for the fans. He was confused and high.  Anchorage had closed down and there wasn’t a car in  sight, let alone a human being. 

This cold, god-forsaken city where the sun comes up only six months a year was Don’s hometown. Paramount had spent $137,000 to lug double system projectors so the unfinished film could be viewed for a recruited audience. The prodigal son returned in triumph as Paramount’s President of Production. But there were only eight people in the audience to witness his triumph.

Fathers, be good to your sons. When they misbehave, don’t throw them against walls. Don’t beat them with your fists. You might think you are demonstrating  discipline. Instead, you are showing your cards. When you use bare-knuckles, your sons can smell the viciousness and disappointment on your breath.  When your sons are scared, take their hands, lead them towards an image of the shining hero, the aspiration that may have eluded you, but which is still possible for them.

Over the years as a studio man, Don was obsessed with the foul-mouthed disciplinarian. This was his father. In real or false memory, Don’s father was a tower of abuse. The movies Don made, The Lords of Discipline, An Officer and a Gentleman, and even, to a degree, Top Gun reflected that theme. Don Simpson’s assaults by his father carried a shadow over his life, whether real or imagined. The worst part of it was that Don’s dad, according to Don, was a fundamentalist who beat him when he faltered on a Bible verse. 

Don had an intelligent, mellifluous voice. He held the room when he spoke. What he had to say was insightful. When I first met Don in 1978, he was bright and eager, sitting in front of a collage-print of Andy Warhol’s Mao Tse Tung.  I was in his office to interview for the job of Paramount’s Story Editor. I was a dork, dressed in my chinos and JC Penney’s clip-on tie. I was not handsome or pretty like the others in the waiting room. 

“Why should I hire you?” 

“I am a big fan of Jungian psychology,” I answered. I was such a dork.  “I believe in Carl Jung’s theory of the Collective Unconsciousness—all of humanity dreams the same dream: of kings, and queens, and knights, and fools, and beasts. If you hire me, I will help you make hits because the scripts will reflect those dreams. And when people see those movies, they will feel the deep connection. You see, Don, good movies, I mean really good movies, are not escapism, they are about returning home . . . to ourselves.”

I could talk the shit like Don could talk the shit. He hired me in the room. I was to get with HR about the compensation and terms. As I left his office, he said to me, “One more thing.” I turned to face him.  

“What?”

“Learn to be indispensable.” 

(Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson.)

What he was really saying is he wanted me to be indispensable to him. In his charming, chubby bearded face, I saw the need. Sure, we could talk the shit together. But that one look, I saw him and what he needed most. He was the broken king.  I would be the armor that held him up so he would look intact to the world, unwounded by war. 

Over the years, I became indispensable to Don. A functioning addict, Don’s dependence on drugs expanded in the 12 years I knew him.  Every day around four pm, after his “power-nap,” I was called to his office to get the lowdown. In full blown Henry the VIII fashion, he sat at his desk eating “breakfast”—KFC chicken out of a bucket. If he didn’t like something I said, he would chuck a chicken bone at my chinos. “You owe me $78. 53,” I said handing him a stapled batch of bills. It was the dry-cleaning receipts for the splattered chicken grease.  I would make him pay it from his personal checking account as I loomed over him. This was a monthly ritual for several years.

One late Friday night, I pulled up to his house on Cherokee to deliver notes on An Officer and a Gentleman. I saw the red dot of a laser on my tie. I looked for the source of it and saw Don, in boxer shorts on the rooftop with an UZI machine gun aimed at my heart. It took me a half hour to talk him down and convince him that I was his friend. I had not come to kill him but to deliver my story notes. Don must have been somewhat lucid because I got a call later that night from some drug- pusher apologizing for his behavior “on the roof.”

The hardest part of my job as Story Editor were Don’s endless notes. Don’t get me wrong.  He had a genius-mind. Is it any wonder that the opening credits of Top Gun: Maverick fawn over his name and credit as  if he were a god from Valhalla? If it had not been for Don finding the article “Top Guns” in California magazine, there would have been no Top Gun franchise. Indeed, Maverick’s trigger-hot temper, his “need for speed”, and his dark, unresolved relationship with his father, was the character of Don. 

BUT when Don allowed the meds, coke, and booze to drown his mind, his story ideas were often damaging. In the winter months, he would go to Palm Springs for the weekend,  load up on the latest blend of god-knows-what and talk the shit all day and night into a tape recorder while he lounged by the pool.  On Monday, four Paramount transcribers would take the tapes and turn them into written tomes. By the afternoon, I would have to weed through them. Often the notes were longer than the 120 page script they referenced.

Don and I argued over An Officer and a Gentleman. He saw the drill instructor (Lou Gossett) – cadet  (Richard Gere) plot  as the A story and the romance between the  Richard Gere and  a townie (Debra Winger) as the B story. “That’s not commercial,” I said. By then, Don was so out of it, he seldom knew what was going on. In plain sight, I disobeyed him and changed his notes to support the romance as the A story. I manipulated dailies so he only got to see tough-guy stuff and nothing romantic except for the raw footage of the Gere and Winger having sex which he enjoyed immensely.

Don Simpson saw the first cut of the  Officer and a Gentleman movie with his boss, Michael Eisner who was then President of Paramount, in the Paramount Executive Screening Room. The cut included the crowd-pleasing Gere sweeping Winger out of the factory and into the sunshine. When the screening was over, Don was fuming.  He looked at me in ten shades of vengeance and cut his throat with his finger signaling “you’re a dead man.” But Eisner loved the cut and within minutes, Don was praising himself for “finding” the love story of the year and how he pushed for such a unique romance. I was furious but sucked it up.  

Paramount management knew the issues with Don but looked the other way.  Like I said, Don was a functioning addict. He could bring his A game  out of his deepest fog.  Michael Eisner famously said, “What Don does in his own time is Don’s business, not Paramount’s.” I certainly was not going to  ever, ever out him until now, at his prompting.  That’s not what guys from Ohio do to guys from Alaska, especially when they make a promise to be indispensable.  I lived with every possible humiliation imaginable, most too vivid for this post.

Oppressed humans will often develop positive feelings toward their abusers. Stockholm Syndrome is a coping mechanism to deal with abuse. We figure out a way to keep going in dangerous circumstances because we want to survive. In my case, I wanted to learn.  Why did it take so long for the Me-too movement to emerge? Stockholm Syndrome.

An Officer and a Gentleman produced for a modest $7.5 million became an international hit. When bonuses came around, I got nothing while other executives bought new houses. “Man, that hurts,” I told Don. I had been at the office for 3 days straight working in my office, sleeping on the floor. I stunk and he had more back-to-business tasks for me from this broken king. “Smell me, you motherfucker!” I cried, and I pushed my smelly armpit into his face.  “What the fuck do you think you are doing to me. I sleep on a fucking floor! I am outta here! I quit.”

That night, I got a call from Don. It was that mellifluous voice again. “Please come back. I am sorry. I need you. I will make it all right with you. A proper contract, a new office. Take the weekend and come back, will you?” 

I did come back, only to find my office had been moved to the Dressing Room Building. I opened the office to find a convertible sofa made up as a bed with new white sheets from Bullock Department Store. The office had a shower. I knew the office.  It had been Jerry Lewis’ dressing room. In the 1940s and 50s, Lewis had been Paramount’s biggest star. When I learned there was no raise and no contract, I confronted Don one last time. 

“You fucked me over on Officer,” he shouted.

“I made it a hit, you motherfucker,” I shouted back.

“You?” he said, laughing. “You did nothing.”

“Nothing? I fucked you over, you drug-snorting sod!”

I marched in o Michael Eisner’s office and said, “I quit. When you toss Don, give me a call, and I’ll come back. Meanwhile, I will be at the beach.”

Six months later,  while I doing odd jobs to survive, Michael Eisner found out that Paramount released Grease II, but that Don,  his President of Production, had never seen  the final cut. Michael fired Don. Like all fired movie executives, Don would run out his contract as a Paramount producer. 

I came back as a Vice President with a contract  and a bonus that allowed me to put a down payment on my first house. In an irony that could only be written in the stars, I was to oversee the new producing deal with Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer. 

When Don presented me with the California Magazine article, “Top Guns,” I did everything I could do to develop the project without him. The drug issues had expanded. 

Later on when making Beverly Hills Cop II, I found drug-runners had been hired as highly paid “production assistants” and there were a lot of them. Paramount management would not support my move to fire the runners. So I left the company and took a top job as the head of a rival studio.

Tony Scott, Tom Cruise, and Don Simpson made Days of Thunder without my supervision. They had Robert Towne (Chinatown) writing the script. Don was also going to costar in the movie. In plain sight, he underwent surgery to prepare for the part. He had ribs removed for a new-hour glass figure. They started shooting without a script.  Rule #1: Have a script before you start shooting. Robert Towne joined the merry band of lunatics as they shot lots of footage, looking for a story. One night, $140, 000 was spent procuring the proper underwear for Tom for a scene to be shot the next day. Top Gun cost $13.5 million. Days of Plunder cost $170 million and was a colossal bomb.

When I returned to Paramount as President of the Motion Picture Group, the new general counsel presented me with a sheriff’s hat with a nice bright star. “To clean up Dodge?” I asked. He did not need to reply.  One of the first calls I got was from Tom Cruise. “It wasn’t my fault. I kept saying, ‘When are we gonna have a script?’”

“What do you want to do with these two?” I asked the chairman of the studio, Frank Mancuso.

“You tell me,” Frank replied. “Don just wears you down.”

I never saw Days of Thunder, but on my first week on the job, I asked to read the final shooting script for it. One of the greatest screenwriters on the 20th century, Robert Towne, had written godawful drivel. How was that possible? He was working with a coke-head.

This was before the Me-too movement. I looked over the settled abuse cases from Don’s office.  Paramount had settled a half a dozen cases of secretarial complaints in Don’s office. On Saturday night Don had “Fellini Nights.” He would play the important Italian director and video-cam various hookers playing characters in his stories. The problem was that he would ask his secretaries on Monday to watch the tapes and then file them based on theme and title. The settlement costs were enormous.

Neither Don and Jerry called me and I did not call them. Night after night, I would walk by their offices and glimpsed Don every night looking at catalogues at his big desk made especially for the both of them.

One night, I turned around and walked into Don’s production office. “What are you doing?” I asked, having not talked to him for 4 years.

 “Looking for Christmas presents,” he replied.

“When I could barely afford anything for Christmas, your thank you notes were so well written, they made me cry,” I said. “Don, we have been through it all. Let’s quietly send you away. Get off the drugs. No one needs to know.” He said he was not going to get help and he did not have a problem. Many years later, he would escape from the clean-out retreats. “Then I have no other choice and have to ask you to leave the lot. We will draw up a settlement with a million dollar exit bonus and we will give you the rights to all your projects except for sequel and remake rights to Flashdance, Beverly Hills, Cop, and Top Gun.”

“You’re firing us?”

“If you won’t promise me to get off the drugs.”

“At least you kept your promise to me,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “Look at you, you prick.” He laughed. “You have become indispensable.”

“Be out of here by Friday. I never want to see you again. I won’t be at your funeral."

“Fine, “ he replies. “But I promise to haunt you every day you remain alive”

We both kept our promises.  I never went to his funeral. In my dreams,  Don haunts me, forever the broken king. But I am happy to report, things turned out okay on the other side. His force in death is as strong as  his force was in life, but now he wants his life to be known as a teachable lesson. "It was never about the drugs," he says in the dream-scape.  "It was about the pain." 

I can’t say that Don’s own accounts of his childhood abuse are factual. But, to him,  they were real.

Thirty-five years after the original Top Gun, Jerry Bruckheimer returned alone to  the Paramount lot to produce Top Gun: Maverick under their settlement agreement which gave the guys the right to work on the remakes or sequels.

When Simpson died in January of 1996, at the age of 52, the Los Angeles coroner revealed that his corpse was the most toxic in the history of California autopsy with over 22 different pharmaceuticals in his body at the time of death.

Don Simpson’s voice remains mellifluous.  “Fathers,” he says, “don’t throw your sons against the walls. Be good to them.”