My Best Friend's Birthday

My Best Friend's Birthday is a 1987 amateur comedy film directed, edited, co-written, co-produced by and starring Quentin Tarantino.[2][3] The film was shot in black-and-white and was originally meant to have a runtime of seventy minutes, but only 36 minutes of the film are edited altogether, leaving the project unfinished.

My Best Friend's Birthday
Clarence (Quentin Tarantino) meets Misty (Crystal Shaw)
Directed byQuentin Tarantino
Written by
  • Quentin Tarantino
  • Craig Hamann
Produced by
  • Quentin Tarantino
  • Craig Hamann
  • Rand Vossler
Starring
  • Quentin Tarantino
  • Craig Hamann
  • Crystal Shaw
  • Allen Garfield
  • Al Harrell
  • Brenda Hillhouse
  • Linda Kaye
  • Stevo Polyi
  • Alan Sanborn
  • Rich Turner
  • Rowland Wafford
Cinematography
Edited byQuentin Tarantino
Distributed bySuper Happy Fun
Release date
  • 1987 (1987)
Running time
70 minutes (original version)
36 minutes (remaining version)
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$5,000 (estimated)[1]

Plot

It’s Mickey’s birthday, and his girlfriend just left him. His friend Clarence shows up to give him a birthday he'll never forget.

Cast

Production

The film was made while Tarantino was working at the Video Archives, now closed, in Manhattan Beach, California.[3] The project started in 1984, when Hamann wrote a short 30- to 40-page script.

Tarantino became attached to the project as co-writer and director, and he and Hamann expanded the script to 80 pages. On an estimated budget of $5,000, the film was originally planned in a Super 8mm format. However, when Tarantino was able to borrow a 16mm camera from film director Fred Olen Ray, the film was shot in 16mm over the course of the next four years.[5] Hamann and Tarantino starred in the film, along with several video store and acting class buddies, and worked on the crew, which included fellow Video Archives employees Rand Vossler and Roger Avary. It is the most overtly comedic film that Tarantino has made. In an interview with Charlie Rose (available on the Region 1 Collector's Edition DVD of Pulp Fiction), he referred to it as a "Martin and Lewis kind of thing."

It was long alleged that the original cut was about 70 minutes long, but due to a film lab fire, only 36 minutes of the film still exist.[1] In 2019, a book titled My Best Friend's Birthday: The Making of a Quentin Tarantino Film, written by Andrew J. Rausch, was published by BearManor Media. The book features interviews with all of the film's principal personnel, including Quentin Tarantino, Craig Hamann, and Roger Avary. In the book, it is revealed the fire story was fabricated, with Tarantino choosing not to dismiss it as he thought it sounded interesting. In actuality, some rolls of film were simply discarded by mistake, and Tarantino, unsatisfied with the final product, edited together the scenes he liked, leaving the project unfinished.[6] However, he has not dismissed the possibility of restoring and completing the film one day. The surviving footage has been edited together and shown at several film festivals.

See also

References
  1. O'Connor, Roision (October 21, 2016). "Quentin Tarantino: Director's first film My Best Friend's Birthday on YouTube". The Independent. Archived from the original on November 17, 2020. Retrieved July 21, 2018.
  2. Ferrari, Alex (October 14, 2015). "Quentin Tarantino's Unreleased Feature Film: My Best Friend's Birthday". Indie Film Hustle. Archived from the original on November 16, 2020. Retrieved January 18, 2021.
  3. Wild, David (November 3, 1994). "Quentin Tarantino: The Madman of Movie Mayhem". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on November 17, 2020. Retrieved January 18, 2021.
  4. Barnes, Alan; Hearn, Marcus (March 1, 1996). Tarantino A to Zed: The Films of Quentin Tarantino. B T Batsford Ltd. ISBN 0713479906. Retrieved March 19, 2022 – via Wayback Machine.
  5. Gaydos, Steve (March 14, 2007). "Q&A with Tarantino…when he was Mr. Green". Variety. Archived from the original on April 13, 2019. Retrieved April 6, 2020.
  6. Rausch, Andrew J. (November 6, 2019). My Best Friend's Birthday: The Making of a Quentin Tarantino Film. Albany, Georgia: BearManor Media. ISBN 9781629334837. Archived from the original on March 3, 2022. Retrieved March 3, 2022 – via Google Books.
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