My Best Friend's Birthday

Clarence Pool, a radio DJ, is planning a birthday party for his best friend, Mickey Burnett. However, his great intentions and best efforts don't always work out as planned.

Written and directed by and starring Quentin Tarantino, this should have been his first film. However, the second and final reel of the film was lost in a fire and the complete version was hardly ever viewed. What remains is and incomplete movie of about 36 minutes (technically making it a short).

Hence it not been counted among Tarantino's movies (plus, wouldn't you rather say that Reservoir Dogs was your debut film?).

What remains isn't bad, though isn't great either. The first thing that strikes you is that it is a comedy. Tarantino's dramas always have an element of comedy about them, due to the clever, stylised dialogue but this is a pure comedy, not an action-drama with comedic elements. Moreover, it works, mostly. Tarantino takes the clever dialogue and moves it from entertaining filler to centre stage. Add in some physical gags and you realise that Tarantino may have a gift for comedy (though I'm glad he ended choosing a different cinematic path).

There's also a stoner-slacker aspect to the whole thing which reminds me of Clerks. Tarantino could have been Kevin Smith before Kevin Smith was Kevin Smith!

(This said, I have no idea what path the second half of the movie took, so it could have ended more like the Tarantino we know and love).

In addition to the clever dialogue, there's another Tarantino trademark: long discussions about movies or music. Always entertaining, and edifying.

As mentioned, not great though. The plot is a bit disjointed. Tarantino was clearly still learning his art as a director and editor: the scenes are quite choppy. The whole movie has an overly rough-around-the-edges feel to it.

Also, difficult to rate a movie highly when you're only able to see half of it!

You can, however, see glimpses of what was to come. As mentioned, the sharp dialogue is there. In addition, some of the plot details remind me of True Romance.

Just wish that the whole movie had survived. But then Tarantino would have already made 10 movies and, due to his self-imposed quota, would now be in retirement, so maybe it was for the best!

Needless to say, due to the movie being in this state it is in, this is really only for Tarantino fans, to see where it all began and complete the collection.

Tarantino is the man! The movie is watchable (surprising for how old it is), obviously its lacking the polish (both script and video) of his later movies but who cares. This movie probably cost him the price of a six pack and it shows. Whats great about it, is that it shows this generations greatest director in his youth giving this whole "movie" thing a shot. In that respect this movie really succeeds. It's one of those things that you watch and then say "Hey I could do that... why arn't I doing that?". Really cool to know that this guy started with this... offbeat... film and then went on to direct the Pulpiest of Fiction (hands down, best film ever). The best part of this movie is not the script, directing or acting. The BEST part of this movie is that it has inspired me to get going on a film of my own.

Thanks QT No time like the present.

QT's "first" film is a glimpse of what was to come from a very talented writer/director; rich banter with an entertaining and skewed look at life. Shot in black and white, on a very small budget, the film has many shortcomings compared to the director's other films. However, it is still part of Tarantino's body of work.

In the mid 80's there were not many ways a filmmaker could get a film made - short of getting a film camera and making one with their buddies - and a quick look at the production credits for "My Best Friend's Birthday" suggest this to be the case.

I heard this film was unwatchable, but it is actually quite instructional for all hard-core Tarantino fans. Many have stated that this film was QT's film school; so be it. Cream rises because it is less dense than the milk it is found within and eventually makes its way to the top.

However, until someone takes a spoon and scoops the cream off the milk, it's stuck there. The Reservoir Dogs producer (Lawrence Bender) skimmed QT from the vat and we are the happy recipients of some rich delicious ice cream due to such.

We will never see this movie in it's full glory. The final reel of this movie was destroyed in a lab fire that broke out during editing and the only surviving parts were edited together to make this 34 minutes short movie. Still you never get the feeling that you're ever really missing any sequences while watching this movie.

This is a Tarantino movie alright. It has some absolutely amazing dialog. The story isn't really about much but the dialog makes sure that this movie is an interesting enough one to watch. The line 'Your ass is grass, and I'm the lawnmower.', right before two persons get into a fight, is an absolute classic in my book and now actually one of my favorite movie quotes. The movie is interestingly told and divided in several different parts, in the same style as "Pulp Function". This movie would latter also form the basis for Tarantino's script for "True Romance".

Real problem with this movie is that it lacks style. It's a very amateur like looking movie and it uses standard camera-positions and weak editing. Because of this not everything in the movie works very well, such as most of the comical moments and the weird kung-fu fight toward the ending. Tarantino's vision was obviously already present but he didn't had the right tools and persons around him to make the right movie he had in mind with it. Oh well, he eventually ended up alright with that!

Probably only truly recommendable to Tarantino fans though.

7/10

http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

Well I finally saw Quentin Tarantino's "film school", which is what's left of his 70 minutes long debut, never officially released (saw it on a bootleg DVD), film My Best Friend's Birthday (35 minutes). This worth watching stuff that is just for fans of Tarantino; for me QT delivers here, not quite because of his direction, not quite because of his cast but just because of his dialog and his participation as the main character, radio disc jokey rockabilly Clarence Pool (the birthday of the title is the one of Clarence's best friend). Basically Clarence Pool is the best thing of the 35 minutes, and Tarantino doesn't deliver a truly fantastic performance but his character has pretty much the best dialog, he is fun. The 35 minutes are very fragmented: we have first Clarence at work, we have stuff at the K-BILLY radio station and we have three other characters (two K-BILLY workers and the guest of Clarence's show). It's both very funny and not quite funny, for instance is hilarious when Clarence recalls certain reaction that he had when he was a 3 year old kid but is not quite all the stuff with the other two dudes, except when one gives cocaine to Clarence (and Clarence sniffs, not hesitating because of his guest)…it's poorly made but nevertheless fun! The other fragments mainly involves Clarence's best friend Mickey (played by Craig Hamann, who also wrote the film together with QT), the girl that supposedly will give Mickey a truly great birthday and that began doing her current job thanks to Nancy Allen in Brian De Palma's 1980 film Dressed to Kill (Misty is her name, played by Crystal Shaw) and Clarence's girl. Aside of a sort of funny fight with Misty's black pimp the scenes with Mickey are uninteresting just as the scenes involving Clarence's girl, even the very last fragment with Clarence and Misty is mostly not good (yet there are some cool lines and for QT fans may be interesting hearing from Clarence that he "has a food fetish"), well basically after the first fragment at the radio station the stuff I really liked comes from Tarantino's character: a really nice talk with a clerk about Elvis, Marlon Brando, Chaplin's swan song, The Beatles, Colonel Parker and stuff ("you see the same cake?", that was hilarious!). My Best Friend's Birthday is not a Tarantino thing that I would like to see a lot, basically once is good enough, funny bits, some memorable lines, let's re-watch True Romance