This week, the film world got a little bit of a treat as what’s left of Quentin Tarantino’s first feature film, “My Best Friend’s Birthday” hit the web. Tarantino started work on the 16mm film in 1984 on a $5000 budget, and shot it over the next four years. The incomplete film (more on that in a second) has been shown several times for those lucky enough to catch it, but never released.
Dangerous Minds (via Movieline) discovered the video on YouTube — 36 minutes of original Tarantino (curiously, it’s been sitting on the video site for almost a year and no one noticed. Huh). Though, it’s only the first half of the actual film which ran approximately eighty minutes long with the rest of it lost in a lab fire, never to be seen again. Thanks to the Internet, fans have a new, if half-finished, work to appreciate.
The film stars a ragtag collection of his video store co-workers and friends at the time. It was co-written with Craig Hamaan (“Boogie Boy”) and Roger Avary, who would win an Oscar with Tarantino for co-writing “Pulp Fiction”, worked on the crew of the pic. Filmed in black-and-white, the movie centers on Mickey (Hamaan), who loses his girlfriend on his birthday, so Clarence (Tarantino) tries to cheer him up. Tarantino has referred to this film as his “film school,” as it was his first step to launching the directing career he has today, with plenty of early evidence of the pop-culture laden dialogue and rock ’n roll elements that populate his films. Still no word yet if will get any kind of official release, but that seems to be the next logical step.
No official word yet on what Tarantino will be doing next (though rumors and speculation have been plenty) but he is set to receive the first Critics’ Choice Music+Film Award this Friday with mind-boggling musical tributes from Maroon 5 and Keri Hilson.