Tell the Story:

A Hollywood Odyssey

Tell the Story is the story behind what we see on screen; how it happens--and more often does not.  A story for cinephiles, film enthusiasts, aspiring artists, romantics, wishers, dreamers… and all of us who just love an original tale.

Tannen’s story begins as a lost and depressed teenager on a Georgia farm, rebelling against the cultural strictures of the South with only one goal in mind--a life lived rather than imagined.  He made his way to Washington, D.C., where, while working on Capitol Hill, the world began to school him in its actual ways.  There he found a calling -- storytelling.  

Through embellishment and invention, that drive brought him to Hollywood where he caught the eye of a wealthy producer looking to make a movie.  That experience—itself resembling a darkly comic film-- would in time propel him to the upper stratosphere of the movie business where some of the world’s most respected filmmakers began asking for his services, implying Oscars were within his grasp.  

Tell the Story: A Hollywood Odyssey offers a window into what it feels like to constantly flirt with fame, yet the window closes each time. It’s a very 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. It is also a cautionary tale that reminds us that, for all our dreams and ambitions, life has a way of writing its own script. 

✺ Featured in the Wall Street Journal and Literary Hub ✺

Read the BookTrib review here:

Read the Kirkus review here:

  • "Tannen has crafted a work from the heart that serves as an enlightening journey through the latter of half of 20th-century Hollywood. A smooth-reading Tinseltown chronicle sure to satisfy both cinephiles and fans of introspective memoirs."

    -Kirkus Reviews

  • "Funny, frustrating, endearing and inspirational. A terrific read."

    -Rosie Shuster, original writer and co-creator of Saturday Night Live

  • "A touching and humorous true-life account of a story teller's journey from a Georgia farm to a Hollywood mansion. Terrell Tannen's incidental odyssey is a clear and candid look at the joy, hearbreak, success and failure that awaits all of us who arrive with ideas, desire, and a dream."

    - Phillip Noyce, director of Rabbit Proof Fence
    and Clear and Present Danger

  • "I'm generally a slow reader, but I devoured TELL THE STORY in one big gulp. When I was forced to put it aside for work, I found myself thinking about it. Terrell Tannen not only tells the story – many stories, expertly – but he sucks us in to 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. There were moments where I laughed, growled, and even gasped out loud. Tannen talks about the 'almosts' of Hollywood, but there's nothing 'almost' about this book – it's a full-on, full-tilt stunner."

    -Joe Schreiber, NYTimes bestselling author of Chasing the Dead, Star Wars: Death Troopers, and Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick

  • "Terrell Tannen recounts, in lively prose, how he rose in the Tinseltown ranks from an unknown documentary film maker to a sought-after screenwriter and director. His romp through 80’s and 90’s Hollywood is as fun and eye opening as it is cautionary, for though it provided him with nice cars, a mansion in the hills and dates with starlets, quirks of fate deprived him of that ultimate Hollywood payoff-fame. Still, Tannen tells his story with wit and self-deprecating humor as he takes readers deep inside the star-making machinery as only a Hollywood insider can. Everyone who loves the movies will love this book. "

    - Ken Wells, author of Swamped! and Meely LaBauve

  • "If you think you heard it all when it comes to Hollywood memoirs, I urge you to read Terrell Tannen's refreshingly honest (and hugely entertaining) TELL THE STORY. Tannen's career has taken him to all corners of the globe working with Tinseltown royalty (John Huston! Sydney Pollack!) but he doesn't shy away from detailing the far more common Hollywood experience: the agony of the near miss -- to the point where his life story begins to feel like a thriller."

    —New York Times bestselling author Duane Swierczynski, author of California Bear

  • “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.”

    - Judson Mitcham, Townsend Prize winning author of Sabbath Creek and Georgia Poet Laureate 2012-2019.

  • "A personal, yet universal tale about ambition. Tannen reminds us how tantalizing, yet elusive dreams can become when we have nearly made them a reality."

    -Roger Birnbaum, Co-Chairman, MGM Studios, Owner, Spyglass Entertainment

From Koehler Books,

available here.