HOT PLANES, CRASHING CARS AND BURLY GUYS

By RICHARD CORLISS

The cons in Con Air could almost have landed their plane on it. We speak of The Desk, the 20-ft.-long, T-shaped mahogany table once shared by Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer. From this monolith the two producers launched enough script-to-screen missiles to become Hollywood's premier action faction. Their two-hour commercials for American machismo (Beverly Hills Cop, Top Gun, Bad Boys, Crimson Tide) made stars of their young actors and quillions for S. and B. Then in January of last year, Simpson died at 52 of a drug overdose. The industry asked, Whither--or wither--Jerry?

The Desk is in mothballs now, and so are any questions about Bruckheimer's ability to do it himself. Last year's The Rock, which he produced without Simpson's help, earned a burly $134 million at home and $196 million more abroad. Con Air, which could equal that take, wears the Jerry Bruckheimer Films label, but it has all the S. and B. accoutrements: a director bred on Madison Avenue, a Lego-assembly plot about escaping from a confined space, a lot of chatty male attitude, a dogged belief that car crashes and gay men are hilarious, and the near invisibility of women. After a sneak preview, Disney boss Michael Eisner told Bruckheimer, "Don would have loved this movie."

The son of an immigrant clothing salesman, Jerry worked on Mad Ave. before meeting Simpson, who had been the "house hippie" at Warner Bros. "Don was a brother as well as a partner," says Bruckheimer. "He was a small-town boy who grew up in the studio system; I was the city boy who was always the outsider." Their first film together, the Jazzercise tape called Flashdance, earned $95 million at the U.S. box office in 1983, back when that was real money.

Basically, Don thought stuff up, Jerry worked things out. "Don attended script meetings," says Tom Cruise, "but he wasn't on the set a lot. Jerry was always there when you wanted to get it done." B. stood by S. during the drug problems, but relations tensed. In 1995, after a doctor-screenwriter, ostensibly treating Simpson for substance abuse, died of an overdose in the producer's pool house, the partners agreed to divide the projects they had in the works.

Bruckheimer's next megalomovies are Armageddon, a sci-fantasy with Bruce Willis, and Enemy of the State, with Will Smith enmeshed in a top-level conspiracy. "Jerry's not the least bit fulfilled yet," says DreamWorks' Jeffrey Katzenberg, who helped bring S. and B. to Disney. "He feels energized and excited." So it's Mr. B. for Big now. Like Cruise in Top Gun, Bruckheimer is flying solo and flying high.

--By Richard Corliss. Reported by Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles

With reporting by Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles