Monday, November 4, 2019

Raiders of The Lost Media - My Best Friend's Birthday


My Best Friend's Birthday (1987)

Hello and welcome to yet another addition of Raiders of The Lost Media. This time around I'll tell you the story of a partially lost film by Quentin Tarantino. Let's begin.











Part One - What is My Best Friend's Birthday




My Best Friend's Birthday is a black and white comedy film written by Quentin Tarantino and Craig Hamann and directed by Quentin Tarantino. The film was developed from 1984 to 1987 while Tarantino was working at Video Archives in Manhattan Beach, California. The plot of the movie is a man is trying to do something nice for his best friend's birthday. However his efforts completely backfire on him.





Part Two - The Story of the Footage




The film began as a 30-40 page script by Craig Hamann. Then Tarantino joined then him and Hamann extended the movie's script to 80 pages. The movie was made a budget of $5,000 and filmed on a 16mm reel over the next few years. The film's complete cut runs for a total of 70 minutes. Before the film could be released it got destroyed in a fire at the processing lab with only 36 minutes of the film remaining. The remaining footage has been shown at film festivals but has never been given an official release and only bootlegs of the film have surfaced.





Part Three - Tarantino's Thoughts and Remaining Footage




Quentin Tarantino would later go on to say that the direction of the film was not great and always refers to as his "film school", what he means by that is the movie helped him gain experience that would later go on to help him for his future projects. So far the only things that remain of the movie is the fact that it was adapted for the 1993 movie True Romance (which Tarantino also helped write) and the first half of the movie. Other than that there's nothing left.















Well that's all for me. Come back on Thursday, November 7th for a new edition of What You Probably Didn't Know and this time I tell you facts about the creator of Star Wars himself George Lucas. Until then enjoy the rest of your day.

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