Vulture’s 100 greatest screenwriters of all time
Author: tennscreenadmin
Meet the 2023 TSA Board of Directors
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 10th 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.

Nashville Film Fest screenwriting manager offers do’s and don’ts
By G. Robert Frazier
The Tennessee Screenwriting Association was honored to host Cat Stewart, Screenplay Awards Manager for the Nashville Film Festival, at its May 13 Zoom meeting. In her second year heading up the competition, Stewart offered a wide range of advice, do’s and don’ts about writing screenplays for the competition as well as for Hollywood.
Below are some of the highlights from her talk:
Reasons to Enter a Contest
- Just to be read
- Just for fun
- To win prizes
- To launch a career
Common Mistakes Writers Make
- Majority of scripts fail on premise or don’t have a commercial concept
- First act has nothing to do with the rest of the screenplay
- Protagonist is unclear or there is no journey for the main character
- Nothing significant happens at the midpoint to raise the stakes or provide a twist
- Too many pilots fail to hook an audience in the first few pages
- Flowery language
- Premises that have no logic
- No theme
First page keys
- Make me want to keep reading
- Genre needs to be clear
- Clear protagonist
- Don’t open with a flashback
Practical Advice
- Re: Flashbacks/voice overs – “If it works, it works. As long as it adds to the story, it’s OK.”
- Keep in mind cost of the screenplay.
- “Emotion is the most important thing on the page. Make me laugh, make me cry, scare the crap out of me. Emotion is the number one thing that sells a script.”
- Re: Grammar/spelling – “If it’s a great script, I don’t freak out about it. We’ll get it fixed.”
- “Don’t write in 47 genres. No one wants to rep someone who’s writing everything.”
- Hour and half-hour pilots are where things are selling.
- Don’t chase the market. “It’ll turn on a dime.”
- “If you’ve not have a lot of luck or are kind of stagnant with your scripts, volunteer to be a reader. You’ll start finding something you do yourself. I highly recommend being a reader to anyone who wants to educate yourself.”
- Read, study, break down films. Write! Write! Write!
On Diversity
- “Last year we had an incredible number of diverse scripts.”
- “Scripts that have diverse people that are written by diverse people are generally better than scripts written by non-diverse people. It’s not always the case, but if you’re writing about African-Americans and you’re a white man, it doesn’t come off the same way as it does if it’s an African-American writing about African-Americans.”
- “I think it has to make a difference if the characters are diverse. There should be a reason for them to be in there or don’t write anything about what race they are and let the best actor get that role.”
On Covid-19’s impact
- “Don’t write a coronavirus script. Hollywood doesn’t want them. If they do, an established writer is going to write it.”
- Hollywood is looking for lighter stuff in the current climate.
- Use fewer locations and background actors, but there’s opportunity for cgi
- More Zoom writers rooms. “That might open up more opportunities for people who aren’t in LA.”
Encouraging Quotes
- “Screenwriting is hard. Just be aware, it’s a long, long, long game. As long as you stay at it and you have a solid idea for a script, you might get there.”
- “As far as a logline goes, what you really want to do is get a request to read your script.”
- “A good film is a simple story well told. Complexity isn’t about the story, it’s about the character and how they deal with it.”
- “If I’m absorbed in the story, I don’t care what genre I’m in.”
51st Nashville Film Festival
- When: Oct. 1-7
- Where: Hollywood 27, Nashville
- Final entry deadline: June 26
- www.nashvillefilmfest.org

James V. Hart scares up Script-Com fun
Tennessee Screenwriting Association held its 2019 Script-Com Symposium over two days in June, beginning with a special screening of Bram Stoker’s Dracula at Full Moon Cineplex in Hermitage with screenwriter James V. Hart. Photographer Thom King helped us commemorate the event:

TSA to read your scary scripts on Oct. 30
It’s time once again to let your best scares out. TSA members are invited to share their spookiest short scripts at our Oct. 30 Halloween meeting. Scripts can be up to five pages and must be a complete story. Bring them in and hear them read aloud before the group. We dare you to scare us!
Note: Anyone can attend our meetings, but you must be a TSA member in good standing to have your script read. Click here to join TSA.