Steven Flynn, a longtime for Focus Features, Gramercy Pictures, Orion Pictures and other companies, has died. He was 70. His longtime partner Timothy Kraus confirmed to Deadline that Flynn died May 23 at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica after a four-year battle with renal cancer.
Flynn was born on November 19, 1954, and grew up in Fenton, MI, and was the manager at a local Ann Arbor movie theater while attending the University of Michigan. He was doing promo work for United Artists Theatres in 1977 when he coordinated a college football halftime show that featured a current film called Star Wars. Salah M. Hassanein, then-president of UA Theaters’ Eastern Division, summoned Flynn to New York City and hired him. Under his Hassanein’s tutelage, rose to SVP of Advertising for the division.
He remained at UA until 1990, when he became VP Field Publicity and Promotions/Exhibitor Relations at Orion Pictures in New York. There, he worked on many of its releases including back-to-back Best Picture Oscar winners Dances with Wolves (1990) and The Silence of the Lambs (1991).
Flynn moved to Los Angeles in 1992 and formed Edge Marketing, an indie marketing and promotions company. The following year he was hired by Gramercy Pictures President Russell Schwartz as SVP Marketing and would remain with the company through its 1999 merger with October Films to become USA Films. He had a big hands in Gramercy’s remarkable 1990s run that also included Fargo, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, The Big Lebowski, Dead Man Walking and The Usual Suspects.
“Steven was my first hire at Gramercy Pictures and quickly showed himself to be the most optimistic and problem-solving marketing executive I ever met,” Schwartz said. “Under his supervision, he handled everything marketing-related, and even organized the entire front and back office during Gramercy’s early days. Gramercy was the closest company to Camelot that many of us had ever worked at and Steven’s presence was a big part of it. It’s no wonder his email address is mrmovies@msn.com.”
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USA Films merged with Good Machine in 2001 to create Focus Features, where Flynn was EVP Marketing until 2007. He went on to work at in various roles as a marketing consultant at Vivendi Entertainment, National Geographic, 42 West, 20th Century Fox, his former Focus Features and Sony Pictures Entertainment.
He was a members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Marketing and Public Relations Branch for nearly 30 years until his death.
Along with his 43-year Kraus, Flynn is survived by sisters Linda Flynn-Coyle and Patricia Flynn-Alexander (Craig), niece Shelby Myers (Mike), nephews Jeff Alexander (Shannon) and Sean Coyle and multiple great-nieces and -nephews.
