My Best Friend's Birthday

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.

I mean no disrespect to any of the other commentators of this movie, but I never would have expected to hear someone say this is, would have, or could have been QT's best. In fact, I think Tarantino himself would have a good laugh at that notion. He might even take offense to it.

If you've ever seen the time Tarantino was on Charlie Rose, he talks a bit about this movie (without ever mentioning the title) and I can see and completely agree with everything he said about it. It's really an awful movie - largely due to the horrendous acting... but what are you gonna do; it's essentially a student film for a man who was never a film student.

In case you haven't seen the interview I mentioned, here's basically what he said: He admitted that the movie was really bad, but if you watched it, you could tell that he did it (very true). He also said this movie, while a complete failure, was his film school. He learned about film-making during the process of making this film; it really amounted to an experiment. In another interview he mentioned that, when he was in negotiations for Reservoir Dogs, when asked by a studio exec if they could see his previous work, he said no.

There are a few moments that are very much Tarantino, and a couple of them show up in evolved forms in his later movies. This is the reason referred to in the summary line of this review. QT is, without a shadow of a doubt, my all-time favorite filmmaker, so it's an interesting look back in time to see what a completely inexperienced, unprepared Tarantino with no budget whatsoever could do.

I realize I haven't quite specified what was so bad about this movie, but it's pretty much everything. It's not well thought out, it's disjointed, the sound and picture are horrible (don't worry, I'm not really counting against it for that - it's to be expected for such a low budget film), the dialogue is not up to par, and I reiterate that the acting is truly awful (with the exception of QT himself).

However, it is undeniably a Tarantino movie, and for that reason and that reason alone I can see fit to give it 5/10 stars. I can guarantee, though, that most of these people rating it at 10 stars would not give this movie the time of day if it were from a no-name director. I'm no different, but I admit it openly, and I'm not afraid to critique the man despite my near-idolization of him. I think it was actually a nice twist of fate that this movie was destroyed, making Reservoir dogs his first official film credit instead.

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.

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.

(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.