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Monday, April 27, 2009

Rarities: My Best Friend's Birthday

There's something you should know about me... 

I am a HUGE Quentin Tarantino fan!

He is my favorite director of all time and I think he is one of the best writers to ever breath air.

 I plan to fully review all of his movies on here and review one movie everyday of the week that Inglorious Basterds comes out. And then review that after I see it. 

I know, I'm a geek...

But anyway, My Best Friends Birthday is basically Quentin Tarantino's unofficial first film. It's a black and white and ultra low budget movie written by Craig Hamann and Quentin Tarantino and directed by Tarantino. 

They began shooting in 1984 with a budget of $5,000 and used friends from their acting classes and co-workers at a video store to star in the film, along with Hamann and Tarantino. After a four year period, they finally completed My Best Friend's Birthday. Unfortunetly, the film was in a house fire and now only 36 minutes of the movie remain. 

It's about a guy who is down about his ex-girlfriend on his birthday. So his friend tries to do things for him to cheer him up, but everything he tries goes wrong and makes him feel worse. 

This is Tarantino at his most comical. This movie is very funny and of course filled with long scenes of plot irrelevant dialogue that is always entertaining and one of the reasons we love him. 

While this film is very low budget and amatuer, Tarantino's writing and style are clear as day. You can tell he wrote it. Some lines are the exact same dialoge used some years later in True Romance, an early Tarantino script that was sold to Tony Scott. You can also catch references that would belong to many of his later films if you listen carefully. 

This movie could easily remind you of clerks in style and writing alone. The writing and story are very good, However the directing and the acting could be better, but I don't think it ruins the fun of it. besides, we can't be too harsh, it was their first film and was shot for only $5,000 in a time before computers and digital cameras. Back then you only had a film camera, and shooting in film is not cheap.

If you are interested in seeing My Best friend's Birthday, you can watch the 36 minutes that remain of the film  on Youtube at...     
                                                   

And I believe it is on DVD as well. Amazon.com would probably be your best bet there. 

If you are a fan of Quentin Tarantino then you should really check this out. I really enjoyed this movie and wish the rest of it remained. It's an interesting look at the early work of a man who would go on to make some of the best films of our generation. Tarantino admits that this film is poorly directed but he says that this was his film school. He says the experience he had with My Best Friends Birthday taught him a lot and made his future films possible. 

For a movie made by two film fanatics who funded the entire project with their jobs at a video store... 

Not bad. Not bad at all! 

7 comments:

  1. Cool to see someone who's still a big Tarantino fan like myself. It seems that there's been something of an anti-Tarantino backlash in recent years (perhaps due to cultural overexposure?), but I still think he's great. I'm really looking forward to Inglourious Basterds. I don't think I necessarily feel the exact same way about his work, but I do think he's damn good, and Reservoir Dogs remains one of my top movies.

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  3. Yes I agree. it's seems like people either love or hate him. I cant wait for Inglorious Basterds! I think it's going to be one of his best! I read half the script and was blown away!

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  4. jervaise brooke hamsterApril 29, 2009 at 3:31 PM

    quentin tarantino is a load of old rubbish and so are all of his films.

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  5. Great Post and I am looking forward to your future Quentin Tarantino posts.

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  6. Yay! a Tarantino fan. I think I'm in love with his films. The dialogue in them are like modern philosophies. I seriously cannot wait anymore for Inglorious Basterds to come out. Should be good.

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  7. I just read the script last night! This is going to be a great movie!

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