The Tennessee Screenwriting Association is overseen by a board of directors, who are elected each December. A president, vice president, treasurer and secretary are then elected from among the board. Three provisional members are also elected.

2023 TSA Board of Directors

• President: Jeff Chase
• Vice President: Irish Johnston
• Treasurer: Dave Deverell
• Secretary: Paula Phelps-Weaver
• Elvis Wilson
• Mark Naccarato
• Pam Tate
• Daniel Spear
• Tom Steinmann
• Sandra Watson
• Wendy Weisling

Provisional board members (will have the power to vote at board meetings should a regular board member be unable to attend):

• Bob Giordano
• Pete Kremer
• Warren MacFarland

Webmaster (non-board member):

• Noreen Manvell

Jeffrey Alan Chase – President

Jeff Chase moved to Nashville from Mesa, Ariz., to hone his talents as a songwriter and screenwriter after several careers, including advertising executive and commercial Real Estate broker. As a songwriter, he’s amassed a catalog of over 600 songs, many of which have been cut by country and pop artists and include songs licensed in movies and TV.

As a screenwriter, Jeff has multiple full-length feature screenplays and numerous short scripts under his belt.   Two scripts were quarter-finalists in the prestigious Nicholl competition. His romantic comedy Grinder’s Switch took second place in the Tennessee Screenplay Contest.  Country Songwriters won the LA Screenwriting Competition for Comedy Short.

Jeff is a SAG actor who has appeared in numerous commercials, videos and industrial films. He has appeared in numerous films including, Ernest Goes to Jail and When the Eagle Cries and co-starred with Robert Carradine and Chris Mitchum in the thriller Lycanthrope.  He worked alongside Kathy Bates and Alfree Woodard in Tyler Perry’s hit movie, The Family that Preys.

He has been a board member and past president of Film Nashville, board member, past president and vice president of the Tennessee Screenwriting Association, board member and past vice president of Nashville Publishers Network. He is president of Chase Internet an IT consulting and web design company and president of Blue Drops Publishing Co. (ASCAP).

His interests include hiking, sailing, golf and rebuilding 1960s English sports cars.  He’s a licensed pro and amateur boxing referee.  He lives on a farm outside of Dickson, Tennessee with his wife and their dogs, cats and assorted chickens.

Irish Johnston – Vice President

Writer, actor, producer Irish (Burch) Johnston began as an actress in Los Angeles and Nashville. She currently spends most of her time writing screenplays, three of which have been finalists or won awards: Redhanded, Scents, and The Hole Truth, in several film festival competitions. Being a native Nashvillian, with a piano, she has finally surrendered to the siren call of song writing as well. She loves every aspect of the film industry, from writing and composing to acting, to her latest challenge, producing.

David Deverell – Treasurer

David Deverell is a Nashville screenwriter. He received his degree in Film and Television from Loyola Marymount University, and after graduating, wrote, produced and directed an award-winning 30- minute drama for Encylcopaedia Britannica’s Short Story Showcase Series, “The Hunt,” an adaptation of Richard Connell’s short story, “The Most Dangerous Game.” David went on to have a long career in the advertising industry and retired eight years ago.

In retirement, David returned to writing and has since written four feature-length screenplays. His first, The Shoe Box, won first place at the 10^th Annual Tennessee Screenwriting Association Screenplay Competition in 2010, when he became a member. His other screenplays have been finalists in other competitions, including The Page Awards, Table Read My Screenplay, Emerging Screenwriters and Access Screenplays.

In 2015, David relocated to Nashville from Los Angeles and is actively involved in helping the Nashville Film Community develop a robust industry.

Paula Phelps-Weaver – Secretary

Paula Phelps-Weaver is a relative newcomer to the world of screenwriting.  After a career as an internal medicine physician and then some years as a stay at home parent, she is finally pursuing her love of writing.

Though her academic background is in science, she has attended several writing courses and workshops, and will begin submitting her work to contests in 2019.  She is currently working on a dramedy TV pilot.

Her interests include horseback riding, kayaking, hiking, soccer, jazz, and growing things. She lives on a farm with her husband of thirty-nine years, her horses, and her dog.

Bob Giordano

Bob Giordano is a principal of Uproar Pictures, based in Nashville, TN. He is the 2017 Grand Prize Winner of “The Poe Contest” for his script, The Odds, and the director of The Odds feature. He has been a quarterfinalist, a semifinalist, a finalist, and/or won several of Hollywood’s most prestigious screenplay contests, including The Southern California Screenplay Competition (The Odds), Nicholl Fellowship (Sicko), Fade-In (Uprise), The Writer’s Network contest (Resistance), the Hollywood Symposium (Grendel) and Script Open Door.

Over many years, Bob has worked on numerous short films and independent features as a writer, director, assistant director, camera operator, and editor. Since coming to Nashville in the1980s, he has continuously taught screenwriting and filmmaking to adults, teens and children, including his ongoing screenwriting courses at Watkins College of Art, Design & Film. He is also a past president and current officer of the Tennessee Screenwriting Association. As a prolific writer of dozens of completed scripts, he often says, “Daylight’s burning.”

Elvis Wilson

Elvis Wilson was born in Fort Wayne, Ind., and grew up in Cleveland, Tenn., where he was raised on a healthy dose of TV like The Twilight Zone, Gilligan’s Island and his favorite TV show, Space 1999.Like  most folks his age, Star Wars rocked his world in 1977.

Inspired by a steady dose of Coen Brother’s films and Monty Python reruns over the last three decades, he has written over ten screenplays, produced four short films, and directed scores of music videos and industrial films. In 2008, he and his wife produced an award-winning feature documentary, Being Lincoln: Men With Hats (which had a two-year run on the now defunct Documentary Channel and also aired on Showtime). In 2015, he started principle photography of his self-produced, award-winning feature FOGG. FOGG had a great festival run and was picked up by RedBox.

Elvis is currently working on FOGG 2 with Executive Producer Kelly Frey. He’s also written a  TV pilot called Strawberry Plains, which was in the top 30 scripts in the prestigious AMC’s Drama Pilot category at the 2018 Austin Film Festival (over 10,500 scripts were entered). While still not able to quit his  day job, Elvis writes almost every day and is happy to hang with his brothers and sisters of the TSA. 

Mark Naccarato

While working in Nashville’s TV and film production industry in the 90’s, Mark Naccarato‘s first TV spec script caught the attention of producers at Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and he was invited to pitch to the hit series. Even though he didn’t make a sale, the first story Mark pitched to them was nearly identical to a story that was already in production. 

 

Encouraged by that experience and then by a near-sale on Star Trek: Voyager, Mark decided to make his first “real” film. The Crusader, a superhero movie disguised as a true-crime reality show was a cult hit at comic conventions across the South and punched above its weight with a budget of less than $3,000 using a cast and crew of over a hundred volunteers. Mark’s current short film, The Romulan War, puts a spin on the sci-fi effects movie by using a documentary format and “found footage” from an interstellar war in the 22nd century.

 

Mark’s pilot script The Exodusters – an historical drama set during the Kansas Exodus of the 1870’s – has landed a finalist slot in the Nashville Film Festival and he’s a co-producer on several independent films, including Potter’s Ground and Gates of Flesh – both of which were filmed in Tennessee.

Pam Tate

Pam Tate grew up in Indiana, took a bus to Greenwich Village, sang in bands, acted in shows, wrote songs, paid standing room for Broadway, got a tan on her roof, released 3 CDs, gigged in famous clubs, drank espresso, and raised two kids who love Shakespeare. She played around with writing and ended up with a degree in film studies and screenwriting. Was Associate Director of The International Cabaret Conference at Yale – instructor, performer, producer.

Pam writes historical dramas about women who make waves, especially during times of social change, full-length plays and screenplays, numerous shorts of both. She won a national women’s playwriting contest for her play about Leni Riefenstahl. Pam writes a monthly column about innovative women in film, for Reel Lumiere, a magazine focused on women’s filmmaking.

Pam loves to act and teach acting. Favorite roles: Zelda Fitzgerald in The Last Flapper, hard-boiled Lorraine in Sam Shepard’s A Lie of the Mind, pill-popping Violet in August Osage County, and sweet, kooky Mary in A.R. Gurney’s Crazy Mary. (typecast as unstable women?) Among others, she’s been in the musical Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, twice.

Nashville was an unexpected detour five years ago. Bought a house on a hill, started co-writing, performing, made a CD with her band, Pam Tate & Her Men In Blues. Pam joined Nashville Women in Film & Television and serves on the Board of Directors. She’s proud to be a new Board Member of the Tennessee Screenwriting Association.

For fun, she watches any historical drama she can find, often over and over, she takes pictures, makes videos, hangs out with grandkids, is a great cook when she feels like it, gardens when she feels like it, throws the ball for Piper, her terrier, and takes drives with Harvey, her husband.

Proud member of SAG-AFTRA, AEA, The Dramatists Guild, and BMI. Her music is in all the usual places – Spotify, Amazon, Apple. http://www.pamtate.com.