He is one of modern Hollywood's great enigmas: a soft-spoken man whose whispered cadences rarely rise above a murmur yet whose films have boasted pounding soundtracks; a longtime husband and faithful friend who partnered for many years with one of the industry's great roustabouts; and a motion picture veteran whose most startling success of late has come in a medium -- television -- to which he was foreign.

He is, of course, Jerry Bruckheimer, and even if he comes across to many with whom he has worked as a mystery wrapped inside a riddle cloaked in an enigma, they nonetheless have no doubt about one thing: In this business, he's tops.

At the beginning of every Jerry Bruckheimer production appears the same logo, a lightning bolt striking the sky. If that bolt is not yet as familiar as MGM's roaring lion or Columbia's lady with a torch, then this is the year that might change: With titles including Buena Vista's "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl" and "Veronica Guerin," Sony's "Bad Boys II" and Warner Bros.' "Kangaroo Jack," Bruckheimer's feature films have earned more at the 2003 boxoffice -- $987.9 million and counting, worldwide -- than the entire slates of several studios.

But his success has not been limited to movies. Bruckheimer has put his stamp on television, where he currently stands unrivaled among his film producer peers as overseer of three dramas that rank among the top 15 primetime ratings winners: CBS' "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," "CSI: Miami" and "Without a Trace."

Such a crossover isn't merely unusual; it's unheard of in the history of filmed entertainment. Many producers have enjoyed more than one hit in theaters or on the small screen, but no other has struck multiple home runs in both media at the same time.

"In the last three years, Jerry Bruckheimer has gone from being a man who had no presence in television to being the No. 1 supplier of network programming," says CBS chairman and CEO Leslie Moonves. "And he's not just No. 1 in quantity: With 'CSI,' he has the No. 1 show; with 'CSI: Miami', he had the No. 1 new show from (the 2002-03) season; and right now, 'Without a Trace' is closing the gap on (NBC's) 'ER' -- not to mention that (Bruckheimer's CBS freshman drama) 'Cold Case' is off to a very promising start. It really is quite remarkable."

Bruckheimer has done all of that without creating a mega-corporation or siphoning credit to other high-profile producers. He has kept the brand value of Jerry Bruckheimer Films and Jerry Bruckheimer Television by putting his name only on product with which he is intensely involved, thereby making his lightning-bolt logo begin to mean something to the general public. It is a symbol synonymous with a certain |type of product: a fast-moving, high-energy story with top-notch production values that appeals as much in Peru as it does in Peoria.

"His films are always crisp, they are sharp, they all have an edge to grab a hold of -- there is something you can relate to in every movie, something you can grab," says Walt Disney Studios chairman Richard Cook. "They are gritty, without being dirty."

He adds of Bruckheimer: "He is a relentless perfectionist who never allows a single detail to go by without notice. He's a consummate filmmaker -- a studio's dream -- because you know that you are always going to get 120% from Jerry on anything that he does. I don't think it is any great mystery that he has been so successful: He works harder than anybody else."

Astonishing about Bruckheimer's standing is that it is not a "here today, gone tomorrow" type of success: It has endured for more than 20 years, or at least since his first major theatrical hit, 1983's "Flashdance." Since then, he has made movies including 1986's "Top Gun," 1990's "Days of Thunder," 1995's "Bad Boys," 1996's "The Rock," 1998's "Armageddon" and 2001's "Pearl Harbor," initially in partnership with the late Don Simpson and more recently on his own.

Bruckheimer's movies historically have not been critics' darlings. Exceptions have included 1995's "Dangerous Minds," 2000's "Remember the Titans" and 2001's "Black Hawk Down." More recently, the response to "Pirates" and "Guerin" indicate there might be a sea change. Critics aside, the films are audience pleasers that collectively have taken in more than $13.3 billion through the theatrical boxoffice, ancillary and recording pipelines.

Not surprisingly, Bruckheimer's share of his productions is enormous: His producing fee on each film is said to be several million dollars, highest in the business. That has allowed him to live well as owner of a home in Brentwood, Calif. and a farm in Kentucky, complete with an indoor ice skating rink where he can indulge his passion for hockey. But Bruckheimer never parades his wealth or flashes his accoutrements. If his Santa Monica office compound seems high-tech to visitors who penetrate its walls, the two converted brick warehouses are relatively modest from the outside and would confound a passer-by unaware of the media mogul who resides within.

When Bruckheimer is in town, he shows up at the office unerringly every day. "This is not a guy who phones in to check-up from beside his pool," says one longtime staffer. His desk, a repurposed conference table, is kept obsessively free of clutter, offering no hint that its owner is one of the busiest men in Hollywood, one whose touch is distinctive.

As much as any other director, Bruckheimer has proved an auteur of his films: Observers can see his stamp as clearly as that of the helmers with whom he has worked, including such top-notch names as Ridley and Tony Scott, Michael Bay, Gore Verbinski and Joel Schumacher. Not surprisingly, Bruckheimer enjoys final-cut privileges on his films -- though occasionally he has shared those privileges with others.

Bruckheimer has earned that privilege because of his proven ability, demonstrated even under the most stressful of circumstances. Jerry Bruckheimer Films president of production Chad Oman recalls how the company was only six weeks away from the start of filming on "Pirates" when Disney nearly pulled the plug because the budget was too high.

A crew already was at work; a cast was in place. Many producers would have panicked -- but not Bruckheimer. Instead, "at the eleventh hour, Jerry calmly gets the head of each (filmmaking) department in his office, along with the studio -- and two hours later, we come out with $X million off the budget and the studio giving us an additional $X million," Oman says. "He is great when everyone is in complete panic and chaos; he is great at coming in and pulling everyone together and getting everyone back on track."

Although Bruckheimer is relatively hands-off during filming, directors with whom he has worked say the producer always knows what he wants -- and how to get it.

"I call him the Masterful Kung Fu Water Torturer," Bay laughs. "He is the expert of all experts at water torture: He's got that subtle thing where he drips out water on your forehead, and you sit there and say, 'Jerry, I am not going to do it that way'; then there's another little drip, and another. Then he'll make a little joke about the drop he gave you last night; then you go, 'OK, Jerry -- OK, you win!'"

Bay recounts that when making "Armageddon," with only a few weeks before opening day, Bruckheimer got a flash of inspiration. "He kept saying, 'Wouldn't it be cool to have a dirt explosion? A mushroom cloud, but with dirt?,' and I was like, 'Jerry, I'm kinda busy here finishing the film!'" Bruckheimer ultimately got his mushroom cloud, one of many indelible images in the movie.

It is no coincidence that Bay has made five films with Bruckheimer, evidencing a degree of trust that is rare in modern Hollywood.

"The great thing about working with Jerry is that Bruckheimer Films is its own studio," says Schumacher, helmer of "Guerin." "He has incredible executives who work on story," he notes, referring to Oman and Jerry Bruckheimer Films president Mike Stenson. "He has one of the greatest postproduction people around (in Pat Sandston), and he pays attention to everything. When you work with Jerry, you are working on one of his babies."

Bruckheimer has become an essential player at the Walt Disney Co., where he has had a first-look production deal since 1991.His Buena Vista releases this year have helped boost the studio to No. 1 at the domestic boxoffice, drawing a sigh of relief from embattled corporate chairman Michael Eisner. But Bruckheimer has become equally pivotal to the success of CBS.

It was CBS that brought in Alliance Atlantis as a coproducer on "CSI" after Disney's Touchstone Television, which produced the pilot, backed out of producing the series.

Peter Sussman, CEO of the Entertainment Group at Alliance Atlantis, recalls that the first time he "rolled up his sleeves" with Bruckheimer was when he asked the producer to attend MIPCOM, the global television market in Cannes.

"He said, 'What do you want me for?,' which I thought was really humble coming from a guy like him. He spent a whole day at our booth, talking to every buyer that came by, people from Germay, Italy, Taiwan and Korea. And I really admired that commitment, which is the same to his TV show as it is to his $100 million movies. He works very hard."

"Jerry is a tireless worker," Moonves agrees "He has a very strong organization that knows what they are doing. He is clearly someone who is able to manage his time very well: He reads every script and looks at dailies on our show. I don't know how he does it."

Bruckheimer, a former psychology major at the University of Arizona, has demonstrated an unerring gift for tapping into the zeitgeist -- perhaps second only to that grandest of diviners, Steven Spielberg. Bruckheimer seems fascinated by it -- to such an extent, Verbinski notes, that he will sit through countless screenings of his films in order to understand how the public ticks.

"I've never seen anybody sit through so many screenings," Verbinski says. "He'll sit through 30 or 40 screenings, and I'm not talking about test screenings; I'm talking about after the picture is made, like a litmus test to see where the public is at now."

If that would seem to require an enormous amount of energy, it does. Nor is Bruckheimer slowing down; if anything, he is extending his reach: He had three new TV dramas on the fall schedule -- "Cold Case," the WB Network's "Fearless" and Fox's "Skin" (which was cancelled after only three airings).

His upcoming feature slate includes "King Arthur," an epic retelling of the Camelot myth filmed in Ireland by director Antoine Fuqua from a script by David Franzoni ("Gladiator"); and the Jon Turteltaub-helmed action-comedy "National Treasure," which reunites Bruckheimer with Nicolas Cage, star of "Rock" and 1997's "Con Air."

Bruckheimer's several collaborations with Cage are indicative of one of the producer's most telling faculties: his ability to spot talent. Bruckheimer approached Cage after the actor had completed his Oscar-winning role in 1995's "Leaving Las Vegas."

"For some reason, he gravitated toward me and wanted to give me a go at it because he is not afraid to take those kinds of chances," Cage says.

The actor recalls meeting Bruckheimer years earlier, when he auditioned for one of the producer's films.

"I knew Jerry very peripherally in the early 1980s: I came in to read for a movie he was producing called 'Thief of Hearts' and got pretty far along," Cage says. "During the audition, I smashed my fist through a wall in his office, and years later, I said, 'Do you remember that?' He said, 'That was great! I still have the hole in my wall!' He was really excited by the audition, and he never forgot that."

Adds Stenson: "One of the things that Jerry is very well-known for is taking really interesting dramatic actors who have not necessarily had a career in action or genre pictures and putting them in a movie you wouldn't expect, like Nic Cage in 'The Rock.' The best example is probably Johnny Depp in 'Pirates': Two years ago, Jerry decided he had a real interest in finding the right piece of material for him, and then he thought of this."

That Bruckheimer would become as influential as any Hollywood star must have been nearly unimaginable to the boy growing up in Michigan, who dabbled in photography in high school before entering the advertising business in his native Detroit. Bruckheimer began to make his mark as a commercials producer while still in his early 20s, turning out a piece for automaker Pontiac that satirized the most talked-about movie of that era -- 1967's "Bonnie and Clyde" -- and even elicited comment in Time magazine.

Bruckheimer's success brought the 23-year-old wunderkind to the attention of BBD&O, one of the world's leading advertising agencies, which hired him to join the company in New York and for whom he would work on campaigns for the likes of the Coca-Cola Co.

"I'd never been to New York, and here I am -- the first time I had been on a plane, and I was 23," Bruckheimer says. "I thought it was extraordinary; I didn't know anybody else who had done it. It was exciting and frightening. I stayed in New York for about 3-and-a-half years."

Astonishingly, less than four years later and before he turned 30, Bruckheimer would leave his career in advertising for one in feature films -- when he was given an opportunity to work on 1972's "The Culpepper Cattle Co."

"Of course, I was scared," Bruckheimer says. "I was getting no money -- maybe 10 grand to do the movie -- and I'd been making close to $100,000 in New York, which was good money in those days. My mother worried about it, as mothers do. (Other) people said, 'You're crazy!' But you have got to take a shot when you are young, and I always believed in myself (and) my ability."

Bruckheimer moved to Hollywood during the early 1970s and initially produced such movies as 1975's "Farewell My Lovely," 1980's "American Gigolo" and 1982's "Cat People." He also befriended the larger-than-life Simpson.

On the surface, the two men could not have been more different: Simpson was noted for his flamboyance and a certain brashness. Bruckheimer, co-workers note, is the type of guy who apologizes after uttering a profanity. Simpson was perceived as the guy with the laser-guided ability to zero in on a screenplay's commercial aspects, while Bruckheimer was considered the nuts-and-bolts contributor. Those who mistakenly believed Bruckheimer was only that would come to regret their poor judgment when, a decade-and-a-half later, he split with Simpson to go out on his own.

"I always looked at it that, together, they made one great producer," Bay says. "Don was always the man out in front -- the flamboyant guy, the angry guy, the gruff guy, the totally vocal, passionate guy -- and Jerry was the silent guy, the methodical guy, the 'water-torture' guy.'"

Simpson and Bruckheimer joined forces in 1983 to form Simpson-Bruckheimer Prods., then based at Paramount. The early '80s were an extraordinary time among that studio's executive ranks, which included such future moguls as Eisner, Dawn Steel, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Barry Diller; perhaps because of that abundance, Simpson's and Bruckheimer's contributions to "Flashdance" were overlooked somewhat.

Certainly, "Flashdance" -- begun when Simpson was in charge of production at Paramount -- was not seen as the harbinger of a new duo of razzle-dazzle filmmakers that soon would dominate Hollywood.

"It was something that Don approached me about," Bruckheimer says. "He said, 'I want to send you this script,' and I said it was an interesting idea but (that) it needed a lot of work, more character and story. We brought in (screenwriter) Joe Eszterhas and (director) Adrian Lyne, and the four of us worked on it for a couple of months. I thought it was really interesting and that it had a real shot, (but) the hardest thing was getting the script right. Then when it opened, it really didn't open: It opened to $4 million, and then it did $5 million (the following weekend), and then it kept going and never really quit."

"Flashdance" paved the way for a soundtrack-driven, stylish type of movie that filmmakers everywhere soon would seek to emulate. Insiders might have considered that success a flash in the pan, but Simpson and Bruckheimer followed with a string of hits -- including 1984's "Beverly Hills Cop," "Top Gun" and "Days" -- that consolidated their reputation and eventually would make them the most successful producers of the 1990s.

In each case, the duo's films could have turned out quite differently, if not for Bruckheimer's efforts. "Cop," for example, nearly became a vehicle for Sylvester Stallone.

"We developed the material for Paramount, and when we finally got a script we liked, we sent it to Eisner and Katzenberg, and they said, 'We want to make it, but we want to use Sylvester Stallone,'" Bruckheimer says. "They had a pay-or-play commitment with him, and the movie they were meant to do had fallen apart. We met with Sly, he wanted to rewrite it, and he turned the script in (as an action-drama) and the budget went way up. Then (the studio) decided to make it for a lot less, and we'd always said, 'This is for Eddie Murphy'; so we flew to New Jersey -- Don, myself and (director Martin) Brest -- and met with him, and he said yes. Sly's script became (1986's) 'Cobra.'"

"Top Gun" originated with an article Bruckheimer had read in California magazine.

"It was real exciting -- the characters' names and what they did -- and it looked like 'Star Wars' on Earth to me," he says. "We kept sending drafts to Tom Cruise because he was the only actor we wanted, and he wouldn't commit. Finally, I arranged for him to fly with the (U.S. Navy's) Blue Angels in El Centro (Calif.), and he goes down with his ponytail and a motorcycle and gets up in one of these A4s, and they just gave him the ride of his life -- I am sure he threw up. He walked to a pay phone and called and said, 'I'm making the movie!'"

In 1990, at the height of their career together, Simpson and Bruckheimer left Paramount for Disney. If anyone thought the duo's luck then would run out, though, they would be disproved rapidly by such boxoffice champions as 1995's "Crimson Tide," "Bad Boys" and "The Rock."

But the move perhaps marked the beginning of a decline in their personal relationship. Bruckheimer has been guarded in talking about Simpson, but the latter's gradual downward spiral has become Hollywood legend: Insiders have described an increasing reliance on prescription drugs and a dangerously out-of-control lifestyle that culminated when Simpson collapsed from a drug overdose in January 1996. The Simpson-Bruckheimer partnership had been dissolved formally a short while before then -- and, unknown to much of the industry, Bruckheimer had been running the company on his own for some time before that.

"We split up in September (1995), and he died in January," Bruckheimer says. "Of course, it was difficult: He is your best friend, and you see him on a downward spiral, try to help -- but he wasn't interested. You've got to do something to really shake him up, and I did. He wasn't happy with it, but he understood it. I was hoping he would get his life together and take care of himself and take time off and become healthy."

The impact of Simpson's death was cataclysmic. Naysayers announced that the glory days of the 1980s and early '90s were over and predicted that Bruckheimer would be lost without Simpson, that the flair of originality and vitality Simpson had brought to their movies would be gone.

Nothing could have been further from the truth. Since Jerry Bruckheimer Films was formed eight years ago, the producer has come into his own: Not only has he delivered such megahits as "Con Air," "Armageddon," 2000's "Gone in 60 Seconds" and "Remember the Titans," "Hawk" and "Pearl" (the latter was an enormous risk for Bruckheimer, who agreed to make the $150 million adventure for no upfront salary), but he also has ventured dazzlingly into unexplored territory as a TV mogul.

"CSI" executive producer Anthony Zuiker remembers meeting Bruckheimer after making an initial pitch to Jerry Bruckheimer Television president Jonathan Littman.

"The first thing he and Jonathan did was gave me a movie called 'Run Lola Run' (a 1999 U.S. release), in terms of how to use fractured time, a sense of colors, snapping into a body in snap-zoom (to help create) a visually exciting, Bruckheimer-esque style," Zuiker says. "Then Bruckheimer really kicked in when it was all about directors and directors of photography and color palettes; Jerry said, 'People watch television with the remote.' When you are channeling through television, and you stop and see the lighting and color palette and the intense look -- that's what Bruckheimer is."

Littman says Bruckheimer reads every script and views all dailies and rough cuts for all his projects (often on his portable DVD player, which he is never without in his travels around the world).

"Volume is the great undoing of a lot of companies," Littman says. "It is not about volume; it is about being able to focus and concentrate on the work you are doing."

Paradoxically, Littman notes that despite all of the material his company produces, it develops very little, and in fact the firm has only expanded from 13 staffers in 1997, when output was about one feature a year, to a relatively modest 26 permanent employees today.

"Our biggest development year was two years ago, when we had four pilot scripts (three of which were made into series)," he says.

That attention to quality makes TV executives unusually comfortable with a film mogul like Bruckheimer.

"A lot of film producers don't look at TV the same way as they look at film," Moonves says. "There is nothing so offensive to a television executive as when you get a film producer who looks like he is doing his 'B' projects on TV. But not Jerry; he has an innate ability to put on the screen what people want."

In doing all of that, Bruckheimer has demonstrated that a producer need have no bounds, beyond the limits of their imagination; that an executive can manipulate their schedule with astonishing efficiency, without losing the personal touch they bring to each picture; and that a true producer can put their stamp on many media, not restricting it to the film business.

But Bruckheimer is modest when asked what makes a good producer.

"I know what I am good at: I know I am good at picking talent, whether it is an actor or writer or director," he says. "The easiest way to understand it is, if you follow any sport, there is a coach and a manager. We (producers) are the managers: We don't own the team; the studio does. We have to hire the players -- the actors -- and hire the coach and manage it."

Which creative avenues Bruckheimer will explore next remains to be seen. He has not yet won an Oscar, and persons close to him detect a broadening of interests: He has moved from the fast-paced contemporary slickness of his early films toward a more substantive kind of motion picture, exemplified by projects like "Black Hawk" and "Guerin."

Wherever Bruckheimer goes, no one doubts his future success.

"His television empire is exploding, and his film empire exploded a long time ago," Moonves says. "It is hard to imagine what's next, but there are a lot more chapters left."