Jamieson, Brian

(1942– )

   Vice president of international marketing at WARNER BROS. , New Zealander Brian Jamieson was also involved with special projects and talent liaisons and worked closely with STANLEY KUBRICK in marketing his films. His latest project was marketing STANLEY KUBRICK:A LIFE IN PICTURES (2001). Jamieson was involved, in his own words, “from the beginning, about a week after Stanley passed away. ” He met with JAN HARLAN, “the creator and driving force behind that documentary,” in Los Angeles at the Four Seasons for breakfast to discuss making a definitive documentary on Stanley, “something we could never have done while Stanley was alive. He was never into self-promotion while he was alive and would have never allowed it, but we felt that maybe the time was right to deal with some of the myths and the misconceptions and all of the press speculations that had been going on. Initially I was involved in working with Jan on the production budget and working with our legal people on the clearances. ”

   Born on July 12, 1942, in Auckland, New Zealand, Brian Jamieson grew up with a love for American cinema. He recalls, “When I was about nine or ten, we moved to a small country town with a single theater. The manager of the theater took a chance on me when I was ten years old and put me in charge of changing the posters around town. I was earning $1. 90 a day. ” Later, Jamieson was educated at Tauranga College, on the east coast of the North Island of New Zealand.

   “Once I left school. I went into an advertising agency for a while,” Jamieson told the authors in a Kansas City interview (July 2001). “Then I went into managing movie theaters, which I did for eight and a half years. From there I got involved in advance publicity for live shows they used to bring in from England. I was in Wellington managing the flagship theater, one of those beautiful old picture palaces, seated about 2,800 people, when I was first offered the job of advertisement publicity director. ” Jamieson joined Columbia-Warners in New Zealand at the end of 1975. His first encounter with Kubrick came the following year: “I first became acquainted with Stanley in 1976 when I was in the theatrical office for Warner Bros. in New Zealand,” Jamieson explained in June of 2001. “I got a phone call from Stanley one day when we were working on the theatrical reissue of A Clockwork Orange in New Zealand and that really indicated to me how handson he was, how interested he was in the minutiae. Stanley did take a long time in shooting his films but the budgets were very lean and mean, [and] his crews were lean and mean.

   “He never went over budget on his pictures,” Jamieson claimed. “He was so involved in the marketing of his films. We learned something from this man in terms of marketing during the 1970s and into the 1980s. He wasn’t afraid to take risks and explore different ways. All of the films pretty much turned a profit. Barry Lyndon was probably a failure in the United States, but it was very much a success in Europe, it was embraced in France, and it was embraced in Europe as a whole. ” After New Zealand, Jamieson was transferred to the United Kingdom, where he headed up theatrical marketing for Britain and Ireland and continued his association with Stanley Kubrick there, with films like THE SHINING. Then, in early 1984, he was transferred to Burbank, California. As director of international marketing, he soon became fully immersed with the theatrical release of FULL METAL JACKET. His affection and respect for Kubrick was obvious. “Stanley was a terrific man for the telephone,” Jamieson concluded. The English director “John Boorman had what he called a ‘telephone relationship’ with Stanley. He never met Stanley in person, but often Stanley would call him. One day Boorman, who was living in Dublin, called to say he was coming to London and could meet him for dinner. And Stanley said,‘Why? I like it just the way it is. ’And that was it. I think they were all in awe of Stanley. ”

   References

   ■ Jamieson, Brian, interview by authors, Kansas City, Missouri, July 2001.

   J. C. T. and J. M. W.