Producers are the guys who make sure films come together. It may be the director's vision, but somebody has to handle the money. Yet only a few get billing above the title like the big name actors. Jerry Bruckheimer is one of them. Perhaps part of his talent is sticking to a core group of reliable filmmakers, like Tony Scott. Déjà Vu is his sixth film with the Top Gun director.

"You know, he’s a real artist," said Bruckheimer. "He’s a painter, he’s a fabulous filmmaker. All his movies look brilliant because it’s him. No matter who the cinematographer is, it’s really Tony who’s setting lights, he’s setting the angles. He sets everything. He’s at the lab at 6:30 this morning, he’s been at the lab at 6:30 every morning getting the color timings right, doing the dubbing. He’s the hardest working man I know. He just doesn’t stop. He’s got enormous energy. You get up at 5 in the morning, be at the lab by 6:30, work ‘til four or five today and then go off to the dubbing stage and finish some of the dubbing in the movie and visual effects. He just doesn’t stop."

The time travel thriller has many exciting elements. There's watching the past unfold in real time. There's chasing the past, manipulating the past and ultimately entering the past. Bruckheimer was hooked from the beginning.

"It was the script. The script was a page burner. Once you got about 50 pages into it, you just go, ‘Oh my God, what’s going to happen?’ I didn’t know it was a time travel story so the minute you see him put his gloves on and then they say, ‘Your fingerprints are all over the place,’ You say, ‘Whoa, what’s going on here?’ And the audience has the same reaction. I don't know what happened in your screening but they go, ‘Ooh.’ You hear an audible sound when that happens so it’s interesting. And there are so many things that you really have to see it again to pick up on. The writers, Terry Rossio wrote Pirates and the same kind of thing happened. There were so many little signs. I don't know if you noticed, but when he goes back to her apartment the second time and sees U Can Save Her again and decides to go back, the camera pans and it says Revival. That’s where he gets the idea to revive himself, to go to the hospital. You don’t get that the first time you see it but it’s all there laid out for you. Nobody gets it. I didn’t get it either."

Tony Scott wanted to bring the production to New Orleans because he had a vision for using the city as a character. This became more complicated after Hurricane Katrina, but Bruckheimer supported his director's vision. "It was frightening that the town could accommodate us, although we had a lot of assurances from our production people that felt they could. And Denzel in particular wanted to go back down. He took the biggest hit because we delayed the longest. We had him in August, October ‘til February so he had to push his other movies back which means he lost a lot of money. But he was pretty adamant that we go back there. So was Tony. Tony wanted to go back for other reasons. He wanted to help the city too but he loved it visually. We just shot it the way we saw it. What’s interesting is the media’s kind of mischaracterized New Orleans. You’d think by all the news reports that it’s total devastation. Which areas are but the city center and the Quarter are fine. You see construction, but you see that in every big city. I see cranes, boarded up places. When you go outside into the 9th Ward, it’s uninhabitable."

Bruckheimer is also a television maven with three CSI's on the air and Without a Trace. Unfortunately, his latest creation, Justice, didn't make it. "It’s very frustrating. It really is. You have no control whatsoever. If it were up to me, I would have never moved Without a Trace but that’s not my decision, it’s theirs. It’s the network’s decision. I understand why they did it. It’s a smart move on their part. Establish a new show off the heels of one of our shows, so I get it."

With so many new projects in development, Bruckheimer has no worries about repeating himself. "It all comes down to the ideas that you’re presented. What comes across your plate and what’s on the menu. And the menu is whatever is submitted to you, what you run into yourself, you don’t know at the time if it intrigues you and you want to go see it, you do it."

He's also revisiting some big hits, including a National Treasure 2. "We’re just working on it right now. We have about half a screenplay done. Nic’s been involved in helping us with it."

Of course, Pirates of the Caribbean 3 takes up most of his time. "Pirates is still filming. It goes on. Two years now."

Déjà vu is now playing.