AFS Cinema Celebrates Producer and PR Expert Carolyn Pfeiffer’s Extraordinary History

Some careers cannot be summed up in an IMDb listing. Sometimes, it’s because a person’s role is below-the-credits, such as when a young Carolyn Pfeiffer, fresh off the plane from America, got a job as assistant to Claudia Cardinale and wound up on the set of The Leopard, one of the most important Italian films ever made. Sometimes it’s because their role is at a higher level and more ethereal, like how, as a studio executive, Pfeiffer worked with Sam Shepard, Wes Craven, Ridley Scott, and dozens more. And that’s not even touching on how she worked PR for the Beatles or was behind three of the biggest Jamaican films ever made, or her role in Austin’s film scene as CEO of UT-Austin’s Burnt Orange Productions and, more recently, executive producing Austin filmmaker Keith Maitland’s South by Southwest 2021-selected documentary, Dear Mr. Brody.

Not that Pfeiffer is concerned about credit for every twist of her six decades and counting. “We’re a collaborative business,” she said. “That’s part of the fun of it, that we are a little troupe of girl scouts and boy scouts going off on a project, and the goal is to make that project.”

With the recent publication of her autobiography, Chasing the Panther: Adventures and Misadventures of a Cinematic Life, Austin Film Society has undertaken the seemingly overwhelming task of selecting three of Pfeiffer’s films to provide something like an overview of her career: The Leopard, Dancehall Queen (one of the three films she produced in the Bahamas), and the Austin-shot rock & roll chaos of Roadie, starring Meat Loaf and just about every working musician of the era from Hank Williams Jr. to Debbie Harry to Alice Cooper. It’s a remarkable selection that cannot even come close to really reflecting the enormity of her career. “Koyaanisqatsi was the first movie we distributed, and I loved all the Alan Rudolph movies we worked on,” she said, “but if you were to ask me right now, what other film would I add to that program, I would say for no reason specifically I would add La Piscine.”

The 1969 sexual drama is another of those projects for which her involvement defies simple credit, instead revolving around her connection to stars Alain Delon and Romy Schneider. “They were both clients of my PR company in London,” she said, “and they had been engaged for many years when they were very young, and then Alain broke off the engagement when he met Natalie [Barthélémy]. He sent Romy yellow roses, and she was devastated.” Six years later, Delon approached Schneider (by then married and a huge star in Europe) to star opposite him in La Piscine. “She agreed to do it, but she was nervous about doing it, so she called me and asked me to join her in Saint-Tropez, where the film was being shot. Because she didn’t really trust Alain and thought he would exploit her with the press. So of course I went.”

Carolyn Pfeiffer: Chasing the Panther

This article appears in July 21 • 2023.