SPEAKERS
DEBRA
MARTIN CHASE
Debra
Martin Chase is executive vice-president of BrownHouse Productions and
the producing partner of it's president, singer/actress Whitney Houston.
The Disney-based company was established on October 1995 to develop and
produce motion picture and television projects. It's debut production of
Rodgers
& Hammerstein's Cinderella, which starred Brandy, Houston and Whoopi
Goldberg, aired in November 1997 on ABC's The Wonderful World of Disney
and was an enormous hit attracting over 60 million viewers and gave the
network its best Sunday night ratings in over a decade. The musical received
a total of seven Emmy nominations including Outstanding Variety, Musical
or Comedy Special. The home video version has shattered previous records
to become the best-selling video ever of a made-for-television movie.
Chase
was senior vice-president and head of Mundy Lane Entertainment, Denzel
Washington's TriStar Pictures-based production company, from April 1992
to August 1995. Mundy Lane's first theatrical production was TriStar's
Devil
in a Blue Dress which was based on the Walter Mosley novel of the same
name, starred Washington, and was directed by Carl Franklin. Chase and
Washington also executive produced one of the most acclaimed documentaries
of recent years, Hank Aaron: Chasing the Dream, a two-hour show
on the baseball legend which aired on the TBS Superstation in April 1995.
It was nominated for an Oscar and an Emmy, and received a Peabody Award
for Best Cable Documentary, the Crystal Heart Award from the Heartland
Film Festival, and the Chris Award. It was also voted Best Documentary
by the National Association of Minorities in Cable.
Chase
executive produced the 20th Century Fox feature Courage Under Fire,
which starred Washington and Meg Ryan and was directed by Edward Zwick
(Glory, The Siege). She co-produced The Preacher's Wife,
a Touchstone Pictures remake of the 1947 Cary Grant / Loretta Young classic
The
Bishop's Wife. The Preacher's Wife starred Houston, Washington and
Courtney B. Vance, and was directed by Penny Marshall. Chase originated
and developed this project at Mundy Lane.
Prior
to her arrival at Mundy Lane, Chase held several positions at Columbia
Pictures. She joined the studio in July 1989 as an attorney in the Motion
Pictures Legal Department. A year later she went to work for then-studio
chairman Frank Price as his executive assistant. Just prior to his departure
from Columbia in 1991, Price made her director of creative affairs.
Chase
began her career as an attorney and worked at several major law firms and
Fortune 500 corporations in Houston and Manhattan. She received her J.D.
from the Harvard Law School and graduated Phi Beta Kappa, Magna Cum Laude
from Mount Holyoke College.
Chase
has a long-standing interest in politics and the arts. In the 1988 presidential
campaign, she served on the national and New York finance committees for
candidate Michael Dukakis and was a delegate to the Democratic National
Convention. She was a founding member of the Contemporary Friends of the
Studio Museum in Harlem and served four years on the Community Resource
Advisory Committee of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In 1994, she
was selected to be a member of the British-American Project, an annual
international symposium sponsored by the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced
International Affairs. In 1995 and 1996, she served on the Nominating Committee
for the President's Commission on the White House Fellowships. In 1996,
she joined the Board of Directors of Manhattan-based Film Forum.