He returned to the Chicago area to attend Northwestern University, graduating in 1975 with a BS in Speech, with a major in Radio, TV, Film.

While there, he worked on the marketing of a number of high-profile art films such as "Scenes from a Marriage", "Monty Python and the Holy Grail", "Swept Away", "Harlan County USA" and "Pumping Iron".

Deutchman was one of the original founding team of United Artists Classics,[17][18] where he worked as Director of Advertising and Publicity on such films as "Lili Marleen" (Rainer Werner Fassbinder), "Diva" (Jean-Jacques Beineix), "The Last Metro" (François Truffaut), "Lola" (Rainer Werner Fassbinder), and "Cutter's Way" (Ivan Passer), as well as the re-release of "New York, New York" (Martin Scorsese) and "The Last Waltz" (Martin Scorsese).

The company worked on "Sex, Lies, and Videotape" (winner of the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival), "Metropolitan" and "To Sleep with Anger" among others.

Fine Line had an extraordinary five-year run from 1990-1995 under founder and president Ira Deutchman,[24][25] distributing such critically acclaimed films as "Hoop Dreams",[26] "The Player",[27] "Short Cuts", "Night on Earth",[28] "My Own Private Idaho", and "Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle".

[29] Deutchman left Fine Line in 1995, to co-found independent film production company, Redeemable Features,[30] with partners Peter Newman and Greg Johnson.

Films included Tony Vitale's "Kiss Me, Guido", Sarah Kernochan's "All I Wanna Do", Adam Davidson's "Way Past Cool", and Tanya Wexler's "Ball in the House".

Deutchman is a frequent speaker on the subject of digital film exhibition and marketing at U.S. and international conferences, including those hosted by Power to the Pixel,[33] the Producers Guild of America,[34] and the Motion Picture Association.

Deutchman's collection includes over 40 years of documentation and artifacts of the independent film business from his time at Cinema 5 until the present.

The film was received positively by critics, including Godfrey Chesire of RogerEbert.com, who called it "A beautifully structured tale of movie love.