"In Buster Keaton's film Sherlock, Jr., Buster walks up onto the stage of a movie theater, then steps through the screen and into the movie itself. A film viewer becomes a film actor. In My Reel Story, Ted Perry - film teacher, critic, writer - does the same thing, mixing together personal experience and movies in a way that makes it hard to tell one from the other, so intertwined are they.".

"Perry bases his book on a series of visits to his native New Orleans, attempting to dissect the convoluted relationship between himself, his past, his family, the city, and the movies. His book demonstrates the extent to which consciousness itself is constructed. Inside our heads, we're all constantly involved in making movies; we're all filmmakers. Illusions we create, whether they originate in our minds or come from the screen, sustain us.

By exposing how he began a long love affair with the movies, Perry demonstrates how - like everything else we love - the movies challenged him, and the rest of us."--BOOK JACKET.