Allan Freeman, a groundbreaking movie marketing executive who worked on campaigns for Star Wars, The Shining, The Omen and Best Picture Oscar winners Rain Man, Dances with Wolves and The Silence of the Lambs among many other films, has died. He was 88.
His family said Freeman died June 7 of an undisclosed illness.
Born on May 8, 1937, Freeman began this three-decade career as a “Mad man,” doing consumer research from Madison Avenue on how to improve the efficacy of advertising campaigns for corporate giants General Foods and Bristol-Myers. In the early 1970s, he began creating campaigns for Palomar Pictures, which had been acquired by Bristol-Myers.
Freeman launched his own boutique consultancy that helped craft campaigns for such movies as Sleuth (1972), The Heartbreak Kid (1972), The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) and The Stepford Wives (1975). His work caught the attention of execs at the then-ailing 20th Century-Fox.
In 1975, Fox chairman Dennis Stanfill and president Alan Ladd Jr. brought Freeman on as a consultant and subsequently as the in-house VP Market Research. It would prove to be a big move for all involved.
At Fox, Freeman helped spearhead campaigns for such hit films as The Omen (1976), Silent Movie (1976), Julia (1977) and a little pic called Star Wars (1977) — all of which helped revive the studio’s fortunes. With The Omen (1976), Freeman helped reposition a low-budget horror film into a runaway hit. It was he who retitled the film, which originally had been called The Birthmark. He also devised the film’s unusual text-only, black-and-white teaser poster that conveyed a sense of psychological dread and cinematic quality rarely seen in horror movies at that time.
Freeman’s longtime friend and colleague Martin Lewis told Deadline that The Omen director Richard Donner credited Freeman’s work and friendship with “saving me from a life of episodic television.”
Warner Bros vice chairman Frank Wells later enlisted Freeman to work at his studio, where he was partnered with marketing guru Andrew Fogelson, who served as president of marketing for several studios including Warner Bros, Columbia and United Artists and was a president of both Rastar Films and
PolyGram Filmed Entertainment. The two forged an enduring professional partnership and friendship.
“Allan arrived in the motion picture marketing business at a time when ‘conventional’ marketing hadn’t yet met movies,” Fogelson said. “I met him and found him to be astonishingly bright, business-like … and convinced we could learn a lot from the rest of the business world. While my superiors (let’s call them ‘bosses’) were highly dubious, they stepped aside and let us experiment. In short order his efforts on Superman, Oh God and The Goodbye Girl were demonstrably and hugely helpful. ‘Dubious’ left the scene, to be replaced by studios calling to see if they could buy into the new system that was being created. When I insisted they be denied, others began entering the space. Today it’s a multimillion-dollar business, in which — in one way or another — everyone participates. And we owe it all to the wit and wisdom of Mr. Freeman.”
At Warners, Freeman reteamed with Donner to promote Superman, the 1978 Christopher Reeve starrer that became a sensation. While there, he also worked on campaigns for such hit pics as Clint Eastwood starrer Every Which Way But Loose (1978), Hal Needham’s Burt Reynolds-led Hooper (1978), Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979), Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980) and Capricorn One (1977) which began a long collaboration with director Peter Hyams.
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As the 1980s dawned, Freeman reactivated his boutique agency, working for the next seven years on a diverse range of films for a select group of filmmakers, distributors and studios. Films marketed included Inside Moves (1980) for his pal Donner, the Rambo franchise-starter First Blood (1982), Rob Reiner’s This Is Spinal Tap (1984) and several releases for Disney including Tron (1982), Never Cry Wolf (1983) and Splash (1984).
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Lewis said The Emerald Forest (1985) provided a textbook example of how Freeman used market research to help revolutionize movie promotional strategies techniques. In Money Into Light, John Boorman’s diary-memoir about the film’s production, the director described Freeman as “sharp, clever and very experienced” and credited his use of extensive telephone interviews with a large focus group with helping refine the film’s narrative and flow — ultimately leading to its success.
In 1987, his old pal Fogelson brought Freeman into United Artists as a senior marketing executive, where he contributed to major releases including 007 pic The Living Daylights (1987), Baby Boom (1987), Overboard (1987), Child’s Play (1988), I’m Gonna Git You Sucka (1988), Rain Man (1988) and Road House (1989).
For the eventual Best Picture-winning Rain Man, starring Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise, Freeman purposefully teased the film without giving away any major plot points. “We’re not trying to confuse anybody and not trying to mislead anybody,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 1988. “But to tell you the whole story in the ads takes away the actual charm of making it unfold before you in the theaters.”
“He was incredibly insightful as to what worked and what didn’t work,” said Lewis, a longtime movie and music marketing strategist. “There were a few copycats in the industry offering a similar technique. But having devised the paradigm of research-driven creativity nobody did it better than Allan. He inspired his staff and outside consultants to aim higher and be more daring. If you created something good — he praised you. If you went off the rails, as I occasionally did, he reined you in sharply but with dry humor. I learned a lot from Allan. He thought outside the box. He was an original. He stuck out like a healthy thumb.”
Following his UA tenure, Freeman returned to his own independent firm. There he distilled all his experience into marketing two Best Picture films for Orion in successive years: Dances with Wolves (1990) and The Silence of the Lambs (1991), a tour de force that contributed to the grand finale of his career.
He is survived by his wife, Barbara; and children Joanne, Richard and Marc.
