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My Best Friend's Birthday | |
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Directed by | Quentin Tarantino |
Screenplay by |
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Story by | Craig Hamann |
Produced by |
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Starring |
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Cinematography |
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Edited by | Quentin Tarantino |
Distributed by | Super Happy Fun |
Release date |
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Running time | 70 minutes (original version) 36 minutes (remaining version) |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $5,000 (estimated) [1] |
My Best Friend's Birthday is an unfinished 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.
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.
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.
Natural Born Killers is a 1994 American romantic crime action film directed by Oliver Stone and starring Woody Harrelson, Juliette Lewis, Robert Downey Jr., Tommy Lee Jones, and Tom Sizemore. The film tells the story of two victims of traumatic childhoods who become lovers and mass murderers, and are irresponsibly glorified by the mass media.
Quentin Jerome Tarantino is an American filmmaker. His films are characterized by stylized violence, extended dialogue often with profanity, and references to popular culture.
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Video Archives was a video rental store located in Manhattan Beach, California, and later moved to Hermosa Beach, California, owned and managed by Lance Lawson and Rick Humbert. Filmmakers Quentin Tarantino, Roger Avary and Daniel Snyder worked there before becoming successful in the film industry. The store was also frequented by screenwriters Josh Olson, Jeff Maguire, John Langley, and Danny Strong.
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Quentin Tarantino is an American film director, screenwriter and film producer who has directed ten films. He first began his career in the 1980s by directing and writing Love Birds In Bondage and writing, directing and starring in the black-and-white My Best Friend's Birthday, a partially lost amateur short film which was never officially released. He impersonated musician Elvis Presley in a small role in the sitcom The Golden Girls (1988), and briefly appeared in Eddie Presley (1992). As an independent filmmaker, he directed, wrote, and appeared in the violent crime thriller Reservoir Dogs (1992), which tells the story of six strangers brought together for a jewelry heist. Proving to be Tarantino's breakthrough film, it was named the greatest independent film of all time by Empire. Tarantino's screenplay for Tony Scott's True Romance (1993) was nominated for a Saturn Award. Also in 1993, he served as an executive producer for Killing Zoe and wrote two other films.
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