My Best Friend's Birthday is a partially lost black-and-white amateur film directed, edited, co-written, co-produced and starring Quentin Tarantino.
My Best Friend's Birthday | |
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Clarence (Quentin Tarantino) meets Misty (Crystal Shaw) | |
Directed by | Quentin Tarantino |
Produced by |
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Written 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) |
Screenplay
A young man continually tries to do something nice for his friend's birthday, only to have his efforts backfire.
- Quentin Tarantino as Clarence Poole
- Craig Hamann as Mickey Burnett
- Crystal Shaw as Misty
- Allen Garfield as entertainment magnate
- Al Harrell as Clifford
- Brenda Hillhouse as wife
- Linda Kaye as ex-girlfriend
- Stevo Polyi as DJ
- Alan Sanborn as Nutmeg
- Rich Turner as Brandon Turner
- Rowland Wafford as Lenny Otis
The film was made while Tarantino was working at the Video Archives, now closed, in Manhattan Beach, California. 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, they shot the film on 16mm over the course of the next four years. 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."
The original cut was about 70 minutes long, but due to a film lab fire, only 36 minutes of the film still exist. The surviving footage has been edited together and shown at several film festivals. Several actors in this film later appeared in Tarantino's other films Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Kill Bill.
- List of incomplete or partially lost films