My Best Friend's Birthday

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.

Based upon seeing what little footage remains of this movie, I don't think that the full-length version would have been a great movie. What's seen here is a jumble of different scenes that each advance the story very little. Tarantino clearly didn't yet have a full grasp of more proper ways to plot and execute a story. Still, despite this (and the very primative production values and acting), the footage is a fascinating cinematic document of sorts. The movie is full of ideas (and dialogue) that Tarantino later polished up and reused in other movies (primarily TRUE ROMANCE.) So while this is mostly amateur hour as a *movie*, it is very entertaining as a cinematic notebook.

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.

(32%) A curiosity piece that's for Tarantino fans only as about half of it is 100% missing forever, and what's left is largely a mixed bag. Quentin himself is about the best thing here and gives a good dose of effort and comic timing to his performance. The writing is somewhat decent at times; although like a lot of things here it's clearly the product of the inexperienced, and many will claim that it's nothing more than typical Tarantino movie name dropping, which really is only partly true. For a very low budget first attempt this isn't too bad, and it does at least show some future potential of what was yet to come.

SPOILERS AHEAD

To those who wonder how I discovered My Best Friend's Birthday, I found this video on ebay, and it was definitely worth the money despite the deteriorated quality of the copy. This is filmmaker Quentin Tarantino's first independently funded film, and from what was assembled (the film wasn't completed and this can be seen since a couple of plot points are left un-answered at the end of 40 minutes) I can tell that it was one of those well-intentioned (if slight) signs-of-things-to-come.

Clarence Pool (Tarantino, with a full-on "Elvis Man" look) is a disc jockey at K-BILLY Radio (Reservoir Dogs' music conductor in a sense), and is planning to give his friend Micky Burnett (co-writer Craig Hamann) a call-girl for his birthday party (a story later re-used for True Romance). This is used as more of a signpost for the film to follow as the characters, in particular Clarence, go off on riffs of Dialog - the "I'd f*** Elvis" speech is in its first revelation - and it's often very funny. Even a kung-fu fight between Mickey and the call girl's pimp (Al Harrell) is executed with the similar sense of dark hilarity that has made Tarantino the pro he is now. Truth be told, the film isn't without its shortcomings for a budget of so little, and a couple of the scenes really don't work at all. Yet for what it's worth it's a small ruby of underground cinema.