CAROLYN PFEIFFER : SMART FILMS, LOW BUDGETS

If Don Johnson and Grandma Moses shared a house, their living room might have looked like Carolyn Pfeiffer’s Melrose Avenue office. Her desk is a massive 19th-Century French country table and the place is filled with lightly stained wooden tables. The carpeting is industrial gray. The sofa and two antique lamps on her desk are covered in warm red fabrics. The windows are dressed in black Levelor shades.

The overall look is a stylish and comfortable blend of country chic and streamlined ‘80s minimalism. It all looks and feels terribly expensive and therein lies the movie magic.

The desk, you see, was bought at a swap meet, the chairs were picked up for $100 for the pair from “outer Mongolia somewhere beyond Fairfax,” the mask was a gift from a friend. As Pfeiffer explains, “This office is kind of like low-budget film making.”

As it should be. Pfeiffer, 48, is president of Alive Films, one of Hollywood’s most respected “boutique,” or small-scale independent movie operations. Partnered with Island Pictures over the past 3 1/2 years, Pfeiffer’s company distributed or produced a number of respected smaller budget films including “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” “Choose Me” and The Talking Heads movie “Stop Making Sense.”

Pfeiffer’s taste, like the films she has worked on, is eclectic. At 20, she left her home in North Carolina, headed for Europe with a one-way ticket and stumbled into the movie business. Starting out as a production assistant, she worked with some of the biggest names in the cinema--Truffaut, Fellini, Visconti and Zeffirelli. Later she had her own public relations firm where for a time her clients included Barbra Streisand, Robert Redford and the Beatles’ Apple Corp. Her taste, she says, was influenced by all of them.

Pfeiffer has a growing collection of primitive and native art. On a recent trip to Australia, she drove several hours to visit the Yugoslavian painter Ivan Rabuzin. Pfeiffer purchased one small oil painting and commissioned another for her Benedict Canyon home.

As an epicurean she is something of a self-described “ratatouille.” Pfeiffer and her 3-year-old daughter Shannon recently dined at the Ivy at the Shore but are also loyal fans of the Hard Rock Cafe. (Her husband, screenwriter and journalist Jon Bradshaw, passed away on Nov. 25 of a sudden heart attack while playing tennis. Pfeiffer is vacationing with daughter Shannon in Hawaii through the holidays.)

She takes expensive lunch meetings at Le Chardonnay, but likes less formal meals at Chaya Brasserie because, “the food is decent and you can actually have a conversation there.”

The preset radio stations in her black Saab 900 Turbo are set at KROQ and KIIS along with country, classical and jazz stations. She also listens to a lot of tapes and finds herself going back for inspiration to the familiar--a lot of Bob Marley and Bruce Springsteen. And she uses the car radio for auditions--a composer’s music sample, a possible movie score or even an audio pitch for a storyline. “I’ve found every electronic gadget has become part of the work process as well,” Pfeiffer says. (One gadget she has intentionally avoided: the ubiquitous car phone. Pfeiffer thinks they’re dangerous and likes the private time in her car to think.)

Most of her travel schedule revolves around Alive’s production schedule. This year she was in Yugoslavia for “Destiny” and Maine for “The Whales of August,” starring Lillian Gish, Bette Davis, Ann Sothern and Vincent Price. (Ironically, Pfeiffer is woefully out of touch on current American movies. When you ask her what she has seen and liked lately, she draws a blank.) Whenever she has a free week she takes off for Jamaica where for the past three years she has been restoring an old farmhouse. Time away is obviously precious to her. “Most of my excess money goes into the house,” she says.

This Christmas Pfeiffer will vacation in Hawaii at partner Shep Gordon’s house on Maui. Pfeiffer, who reads six or seven scripts a week and only five or six books a year for pleasure, was working on her reading list. So far the only book she definitely will take is Steve Erickson’s “Rubicon Beach.” “It got a big write-up in the L.A. Weekly and it looked good,” says Pfeiffer.

Pfeiffer’s main consumer weakness is clothing. She favors Japanese designers for the fabric and comfort. This particular day Pfeiffer was wearing a green Yauji Yamamoto blazer with a black Norma Kamali blouse, black slacks and flat-soled “Makeup” loafers. (The shoes, like most of her other shoes, had rubber soles, which make no noise on the set.) Pfeiffer says she purchases almost all of her clothes at the pricey Maxfield on Melrose and disdains the boutiques of Beverly Hills. “I’m glad some people can find things there but I never do,” she says.

One of her favorite possessions came from her Italian godmother, screenwriter Suso Cecchi d’Amico. “When she heard I was leaving for the States she gave me this very rare gold St. Christopher’s medal. She said, ‘This will protect you in Hollywood.’ I never take it off.”