Before anyone was talking about eating a Royale With Cheese or making lengthy superman analogies to justify having shot a vengeful ex-girlfriend in the head, Quentin Tarantino cut his directorial teeth on an amateur production entitled My Best Friend’s Birthday. Teaming up with co-star Craig Hamann for the writing, the film was based on a 30-40 page script which took four years and a budget of $5,000 to commit to endearingly grainy 16mm film. You might be able to produce infinitely crisper images filming on an everyday smartphone today, but it wouldn’t have the same old-school charm.
Before anyone was talking about eating a Royale With Cheese or making lengthy superman analogies to justify having shot a vengeful ex-girlfriend in the head, Quentin Tarantino cut his directorial teeth on an amateur production entitled My Best Friend's Birthday. Teaming up with co-star Craig Hamann for the writing, the film was based on a 30-40 page script which took four years and a budget of $5,000 to commit to endearingly grainy 16mm film. You might be able to produce infinitely crisper images filming on an everyday smartphone today, but it wouldn't have the same old-school charm.{{page_break}}
The film is ostensibly a comedy and although strangely compelling, you'll struggle to find many laughs among the painful gags. ("You look like shit." "That's funny, I feel like diarrhoea." being an especially egregious example). Much more interesting are the number of story details that fed into Tarantino's later work, including the K-Billy radio station that turned up in Reservoir Dogs, a bad drug trip (that includes Tarantino superbly howling "I AM IN HELL!") echoing Mia Wallace's post-dancefloor troubles, and a reference to actor Aldo Ray, whose name inspired that of Brad Pitt's character Aldo Raine in Inglourious Basterds.
The first cut was 70 minutes long, but half the footage was famously lost to a fire. The 36-minute YouTube video you can watch above is all that survived and is a fascinating insight into the germination of one of the most vital cinematic talents of the '90s.
[via Movieline]
