Terrell Tannen
Terrell Tannen is a film producer, director, screenwriter and author. He has written and directed the feature films A Minor Miracle and Shadows on the Storm. He has also written screenplays for Honor Bound, Gospel Hill, Dalton: Code of Vengeance and Returning to Earth, winner of Best Short Film at the Florence International and Istanbul International Spring Film Festivals.
Tannen has written commissioned screenplays for four academy award winning directors including John Huston, Hal Ashby, Sydney Pollack and Hugh Hudson. Tannen has adapted the Jim Harrison novels and novella A Good Day to Die, Sundog, The Man Who Gave up his Name, and Farmer. His commissioned literary adaptations also include An Innocent Millionaire by Stephen Vicenzey, Bones of Coral by James W. Hall, Meely LaBauve by Ken Wells, and the Joseph Conrad classics Victory and Nostromo.
His commentaries and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, The Lancet, Washington Times and Literary Hub. His memoir When Blood is Gone was published in 2013. An adapted chapter was excerpted in The New Yorker Culture Desk as the essay “Finding John Huston.”
His second memoir Tell the Story: My Hollywood Adventures will be published by Koehler Books on November 5, 2024. Adapted chapters have appeared in The Wall Street Journal and Literary Hub.
Before becoming a filmmaker, Mr. Tannen worked for the Joint Committee on Congressional Operations, U.S. Congress and as a freelance journalist in Washington, DC. Tannen began to produce, direct, shoot and edit political documentaries, including Tricks Win Fights, which was featured at the Telluride, New York and Venice Film Festivals and put into the archives of the esteemed Prague Film Institute where director Aleksandar Petrovic proclaimed it to be “the most accurately profound and critical examination of American society I have seen in a documentary film, capturing both the American dream and American myth.”
Upon moving to Hollywood, Tannen met the late director John Huston, who starred in Tannen’s feature debut as a writer-director, A Minor Miracle. Aside from a one-year stint with Universal Television, Tannen has remained a feature screenwriter and director. He lives in the Hollywood Hills.
