Hollywood Memoir Captures the Feeling of Flirting with Fame

LOS ANGELES, CA, UNITED STATES, November 18, 2024 /EINPresswire.com/ -- It’s a common exercise we all perform when determining what we want to do with our lives: weighing risk and reward, discovering one’s calling, and the immeasurable satisfaction of turning it into a reality.

TELL THE STORY: A HOLLYWOOD ODSSEY is the fascinating narrative of that pursuit by Hollywood screenwriter Terrell Tannen.

By many standards, Tannen’s career could be viewed as a resounding success. Writing screenplays for four Oscar-winning directors, including John Huston, Sydney Pollack, Hal Ashby and Hugh Hudson. Living the classic Hollywood lifestyle: Porsche, oversized house, dinners, and parties.

Terrell Tannen didn’t make it to the mecca of his profession. He became nearly famous time after time, living a good life and making a good living, but never quite clearing the last hurdle.

Yet playing on the Hollywood stage allowed Tannen to pursue his found desire for storytelling on many fronts and on a variety of projects. It’s not always about the badges and labels people wear that define them.

TELL THE STORY offers a window into what it feels like to constantly flirt with fame. At times resembling a darkly comic film, it’s a very humorous, literate and original American tale, illustrative of the driving forces of hope and ambition in a place—Hollywood—where these desires burn like an inextinguishable neon sign, imploring and taunting at the same time.

Readers will get to know Tannen years before he leaves his home in Washington, D.C., to pursue his dreams in filmmaking in Los Angeles, working odd jobs and diverse assignments until he caught the bug for storytelling.

Says Kirkus Reviews, “Readers will leave remembering the early sections most clearly, in which Terrell describes kicking around in his youth, finding new ways to make ends meet while yearning to carve out a space for his creativity and passion for filmmaking and storytelling.”

“This memoir,” adds Kirkus, “gamely avoids the salacious temptation of gossip in favor of focusing on a life spent making art, and the pitfalls and joys of pursuing one’s dreams. Tannen has crafted a work from the heart that serves as an enlightening journey through the latter of half of 20th-century Hollywood.”

Tannen eventually winds up in Hollywood, where he finds out that life has a way of writing its own script.

“The end result,” says Tannen, “was not heartbreak, though like nearly every Hollywood artist I endured serial disappointments. The end result was my personal evolution of accepting the turns in life that don’t always turn out the way we hope.”

Market research firm Ibisworld estimates that nearly 50,000 people work in the U.S. film and television industry. But 80 percent of those 50,000 include low-, middle-, high- and super-high-income people who have enjoyed, endured, or suffered through the highs and lows of a career making movies or television.

“Almost all of them,” writes Tannen, “labor in relative anonymity, performing the tasks—creative, technical, mechanical, supervisory, and financial—that make it possible for the movie industry and movie stars to exist. I have been one of those people for nearly 50 years.”

TELL THE STORY has already received high praise.

"Refreshingly honest and hugely entertaining. Tannen's life story begins to feel like a thriller," says New York Times bestselling author Duane Swierczynski, author of California Bear.

"Funny, frustrating, endearing and inspirational. A terrific read," notes Rosie Shuster, original writer and co-creator of Saturday Night Live.

Phillip Noyce, director of Rabbit Proof Fence and Clear and Present Danger, calls it "a clear and candid look at the joy, heartbreak, success, and failure that awaits all of us who arrive with ideas, desire, and a dream."

Adds Judson Mitcham, author of The Sweet Everlasting, Georgia Poet Laureate 2012-2019, "It’s a challenging account of one man trying to make a living in what seems to an outsider like a toxic and shallow world of inflated importance and radical uncertainty, driven by money, illusion, ego, and image. One comes away admiring the author's stamina, tenacity, and talent."

"Want to hang out on a tropical island with the legendary director John Huston? Have a long liquid lunch with the iconic writer Jim Harrison? Get a flattering phone call from Oscar-winning director Sydney Pollack? Terrell Tannen,” says Ken Wells, author of Swamped and Meely LaBauve, “recounts, in lively prose, how he managed to do all those things and more as he rose in the Tinseltown ranks from an unknown documentary filmmaker to a sought-after screenwriter and director. Tannen's romp is fun and eye-opening.”

"I devoured Tell the Story in one big gulp,” says Joe Schreiber, New York Times bestselling author of Chasing the Dead, Star Wars: Death Troopers, and Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick. “Terrell Tannen not only tells many stories expertly, but he sucks us into the very tapestry of life itself, from the frustrations and loneliness of youth to the nuts and bolts of working in Hollywood and the beguiling, funny, and sometimes heartbreaking trappings of near fame. It's a full-on, full-tilt stunner."

TELL THE STORY: A HOLLYWOOD ODYSSEY is available on Amazon and other popular retail outlets where books are sold.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Terrell Tannen has written, directed, and produced feature films, television, documentaries, and shorts for nearly 50 years. His credits include The Boogey Man, A Minor Miracle, Shadows in the Storm, Gospel Hill, Honor Bound, and dozens of commissioned screenwriting assignments around the world. His commentaries, stories, and essays have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, Washington Post, and The Lancet. His first memoir, When Blood Is Gone, was published in 2013. An excerpt, Finding John Huston, appeared in The New Yorker Culture Desk. Excerpts from Tell the Story: A Hollywood Odyssey have appeared in The Wall Street Journal (When Pele Met the Public at the Chart House) and Literary Hub (Your Meals in Life are Numbered).

Before moving to Hollywood, Mr. Tannen worked on staff at the Joint Committee on Congressional Operations, U.S. Congress, and as a freelance journalist and documentary filmmaker in Washington, D.C.

Terrell Tannen
Terrell Tannen, author
[email protected]
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