The movie Quentin Tarantino found “embarrassing”
Some three decades into his career, Quentin Tarantino has long been considered one of the greatest directors of his generation. Delivering masterpiece after masterpiece, including Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, Inglorious Basterds and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Tarantino’s films are simply some of the most memorable cinematic moments audiences have ever seen.
However, like everyone hopeful artist, Tarantino had to start somewhere. He’d also had a deep passion for film, and for five years in the 1980s, he worked at the Video Archives store in Manhattan Beach in southwest Los Angeles. It was during his time there that Tarantino developed his early understanding of the history of film, a knowledge that would serve him well throughout his career.
In the 1994 BBC documentary Quentin Tarantino: Hollywood’s Boy Wonder, Tarantino explained how his first forays into making films, rather than just watching and recommending them, did not exactly go as planned. “I was 22 when I started at Video Archives, and by the time I got to about 23, I decided to make a film,” Tarantino began.
He continued: “It was a film called My Best Friend’s Birthday. It was like a comedy, like a Martin Lewis kind of thing”. The film came out in 1987, shot in black-and-white, and though it was meant to run for 70 minutes, only 36 minutes are actually spliced together.
In the video, there’s a clip from the film, with Tarantino acting admittedly rather badly. “There’s a dark cloud hanging over my head,” his character says. “I was gonna commit suicide. I was gonna go up in the bathroom, fill a tub of hot water and slice open my veins. I was gonna do it.”
Tarantino’s character was expressing the thoughts he had as a three-year-old and then explained that he was saved by watching a funny cartoon, after which he didn’t feel so bad. The director plays Clarence in the film, who turns up at his friend Mickey’s house (whose girlfriend has just left him) to give him a memorable birthday.
My Best Friend’s Birthday had originally been intended to be shot in Super 8mm format, but Tarantino was able to borrow a 16mm camera from Fred Olen Ray, a fellow director, and set about shooting his first film over the next three years.
“I was shooting this thing for three years,” he said before explaining how he ended up feeling about the poor quality of the movie. “I thought we were shooting something really special. It was kind of embarrassing when I really started looking at it again. Ultimately, I think making a movie is the best kind of film school there is.“
The director continued: “I thought, ‘Well, I didn’t know what I was doing at the beginning, but I know what I’m doing now. I’ve had the experience, and I’m not gonna make a movie like that anymore.’ So I wrote True Romance, and I wrote it to be done for like $1.3 million.”
Some of the dialogue from My Best Friend’s Birthday was actually included in True Romance, the 1993 romantic crime film directed by Tony Scott, written by Tarantino. The director sold the rights to the film so he could finance his debut feature Reservoir Dogs, which came out the year before, marking the beginning of his excellent future career.
Never Miss A Take
The Far Out Quentin Tarantino Newsletter
All the latest Quentin Tarantino content from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.