Here’s why Quentin Tarantino’s first movie My Best Friend’s Birthday was left unfinished. Tarantino seemingly emerged out of nowhere in 1992 with Reservoir Dogs, which takes place in the aftermath of a heist gone wrong with the surviving thieves going over what happened – and questioning if there’s a traitor in their midst. The movie’s combination of a great cast, quotable dialogue, shocking scenes of violence and a catchy soundtrack made it a cult success.

Tarantino soon followed up with Pulp Fiction, cementing his status as a unique and exciting new filmmaking voice. Over two decades later he still holds that status, with his most recent movie being 2019’s highly-praised Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. Tarantino plans to retire from directing following his next movie, though it’s currently unknown what this project will be or when it will be released.

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Quentin Tarantino’s origin story has also been an inspiration to up and coming filmmakers, where he rose from being a film nerd working at Video Archives alongside future filmmaker Roger Avary, who co-wrote Pulp Fiction. While many presume Reservoir Dogs to be Quentin Tarantino’s first movie, his first attempt was a project called My Best Friend’s Birthday. Work on the movie began in 1984, with the script being co-written by Tarantino and fellow another Video Archives employee Craig Hamann.

My Best Friend’s Birthday was intended as a screwball comedy where a man named Clarance (Tarantino) wants to surprise his friend Mickey (Hamann) on his birthday, which keeps going comically wrong. The movie was an indie production in every sense, with the budget being estimated at $5,000, and the movie shooting in bits and pieces over three years. The most commonly repeated story surrounding the film is that half of it was destroyed in a lab fire, with the other half available to watch online for curious fans.

The fact the only footage available from My Best Friend’s Birthday is roughly half the length of its intended 80-minute runtime only backed up the lab fire story, but it isn’t true. The 2019 book My Best Friend’s Birthday: The Making of a Quentin Tarantino Film by Andrew Rausch clears up some misconceptions thanks to interviews with Tarantino and others who worked on it. There was no lab fire but a couple of rolls of film were destroyed by accident, but Tarantino didn’t correct the fire story when it first emerged as it felt it sounded more interesting.

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The footage available from My Best Friend’s Birthday is really a collection of scenes Tarantino liked and edited together after he decided not to finish the movie. The director was said to be disappointed with the overall quality of the movie, though he felt his directing in the scenes he shot later in production were an improvement over his earlier footage. In Tarantino interviews he credits My Best Friend’s Birthday with being his film school, and the seeds of what became True Romance and Reservoir Dogs can be seen in the movie. A Quentin Tarantino My Best Friend’s Birthday restoration isn’t out of the question, as he confirmed talking to author Andrew Rausch he still has the original footage and may, someday, complete it just to have it.

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Padraig Cotter
(3485 Articles Published)

It’s pronounced Paw-rick, not Pad-raig. Now that’s out of the way, a brief introduction. Padraig has been writing about film online since 2012, when a friend asked if he’d like to contribute the occasional review or feature to their site.

A part-time hobby soon blossomed into a career when he discovered he really loved writing about movies, TV and video games – he even (arguably) had a little bit of talent for it. He has written words for Den of Geek, Collider, The Irish Times and Screen Rant over the years, and can discuss anything from the MCU – where Hawkeye is clearly the best character – to the most obscure cult b-movie gem, and his hot takes often require heat resistant gloves to handle.

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He’s super modern too, so his favorite movies include Jaws, Die Hard, The Thing, Ghostbusters and Batman. He can be found as i_Padds on Twitter making bad puns.

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