Brandy and Ryan Fons were both freelance publicists who represented film studios & independent filmmakers when they moved to Austin in January 2006. They officially joined forces to form Fons PR, Inc July 2010 and now have TK employees they affectionately refer to as Fonsies. The Fonsies, which include Brad Johnson who has been with them 13 of those years and Christine Lemchi, who started as an intern and has now been with them a decade, have helped them work on about 80 films a year! This includes the majority of the biggest premieres at SXSW for the last 16 years and as of the last two years, managing the red carpet for all official SXSW film screenings, which led to 35 red carpets in seven days this year!
Reflecting on 15+ years of Fons PR, Brandy says the most memorable moment was being proposed to in front of an audience for Lord of The Rings: The Return Of The King! Brandy says she and Bryan started dating around the time the first Lord of the Rings was released and, “A few years later we worked with Elijah Wood at Fantastic Fest and then went on to get tattoos together, work on many of his films together and even collaborate on his collectible division Mutant now too. This would be my favorite full-circle celebrity moment for sure”.
As film experts, we asked Brandy what summer films she’s most looking forward to and she said she and her team are absolutely obsessed with A24’s The Materialist. She says it’s her favorite movie of the entire year and elaborated saying she thinks Dakota Johnson’s performance is flawless and with “the music, the fashion, the dialogue and costars Pedro Pascall and Chris Evans, it’s my new favorite modern-day love story movie!”
On the Fons front this summer Brandy says she’s excited to work with longtime client the Alamo Drafthouse on their Rolling Roadshow tour with upcoming screenings of Jaws on The Water in Austin, to celebrate a new film called Dangerous Animals at Volente Beach Resort and to celebrate Fantastic Fests 20-year anniversary (16 of which Fons has worked on it), where along with publicity, social, sponsorship and influencer coverage they have represented over 160 film campaigns during the festival – the largest genre film festival in the US! Brandy consequently has nine festival tattoos she says are “to celebrate the movies, hard work/endless hours/success and the community we genre fans we adore.”