My Best Friend's Birthday (1987)

Simply Perfect

hyped garbage

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

The opening scene is in my opinion one of QT's most (if not his and only matchless immortal most) iconic genius works of dialog. With a hypersensitive observer of pop ism like QT their works can grossly radically rewire the worldly adult computer mind. It can quite literally turn us into adult children. Either my mind is playing tricks on me from my godlike manic state from QT's genius or QT's writing can be comparable with JD Salinger or even Shakespeare.The opening scene is in my opinion one of QT's most (if not his and only matchless immortal most) iconic genius works of dialog. With a hypersensitive observer of pop ism like QT their works can grossly radically rewire the worldly adult computer mind. It can quite literally turn us into adult children. Either my mind is playing tricks on me from my godlike manic state from QT's genius or QT's writing can be comparable with JD Salinger or even Shakespeare.

Well I finally saw Quentin Tarantino's "film school", which is what's left of his 70 minutes long debut, never officially released (saw it on a bootleg DVD), film My Best Friend's Birthday (35 minutes). This worth watching stuff that is just for fans of Tarantino; for me QT delivers here, not quite because of his direction, not quite because of his cast but just because of his dialog and his participation as the main character, radio disc jokey rockabilly Clarence Pool (the birthday of the title is the one of Clarence's best friend). Basically Clarence Pool is the best thing of the 35 minutes, and Tarantino doesn't deliver a truly fantastic performance but his character has pretty much the best dialog, he is fun. The 35 minutes are very fragmented: we have first Clarence at work, we have stuff at the K-BILLY radio station and we have three other characters (two K-BILLY workers and the guest of Clarence's show). It's both very funny and not quite funny, for instance is hilarious when Clarence recalls certain reaction that he had when he was a 3 year old kid but is not quite all the stuff with the other two dudes, except when one gives cocaine to Clarence (and Clarence sniffs, not hesitating because of his guest)…it's poorly made but nevertheless fun! The other fragments mainly involves Clarence's best friend Mickey (played by Craig Hamann, who also wrote the film together with QT), the girl that supposedly will give Mickey a truly great birthday and that began doing her current job thanks to Nancy Allen in Brian De Palma's 1980 film Dressed to Kill (Misty is her name, played by Crystal Shaw) and Clarence's girl. Aside of a sort of funny fight with Misty's black pimp the scenes with Mickey are uninteresting just as the scenes involving Clarence's girl, even the very last fragment with Clarence and Misty is mostly not good (yet there are some cool lines and for QT fans may be interesting hearing from Clarence that he "has a food fetish"), well basically after the first fragment at the radio station the stuff I really liked comes from Tarantino's character: a really nice talk with a clerk about Elvis, Marlon Brando, Chaplin's swan song, The Beatles, Colonel Parker and stuff ("you see the same cake?", that was hilarious!). My Best Friend's Birthday is not a Tarantino thing that I would like to see a lot, basically once is good enough, funny bits, some memorable lines, let's re-watch True Romance

Tarantino's would-be debut film fortunately was not his actual debut film. There are a few fun scenes, but telling by the thirty-five minutes from which we're able to discern, his proclaimed "Martin & Lewis homage" is a forgettable, homophobic implosion of his pop culture-consumed mind.At least it's SOMETHING different from Tarantino in one respect, and that is that it's a comedy. There are a few laughs but not enough even for thirty-five minutes. However I do admire the fact that even though this makes no exception to Tarantino's filmography of nothing but homages to other movies, it bears no resemblance to a Martin & Lewis film at all. So he did manage to branch out further than an overt mock-up of the framework of what he intended to pay.

We will never see this movie in it's full glory. The final reel of this movie was destroyed in a lab fire that broke out during editing and the only surviving parts were edited together to make this 34 minutes short movie. Still you never get the feeling that you're ever really missing any sequences while watching this movie.This is a Tarantino movie alright. It has some absolutely amazing dialog. The story isn't really about much but the dialog makes sure that this movie is an interesting enough one to watch. The line 'Your ass is grass, and I'm the lawnmower.', right before two persons get into a fight, is an absolute classic in my book and now actually one of my favorite movie quotes. The movie is interestingly told and divided in several different parts, in the same style as "Pulp Function". This movie would latter also form the basis for Tarantino's script for "True Romance".Real problem with this movie is that it lacks style. It's a very amateur like looking movie and it uses standard camera-positions and weak editing. Because of this not everything in the movie works very well, such as most of the comical moments and the weird kung-fu fight toward the ending. Tarantino's vision was obviously already present but he didn't had the right tools and persons around him to make the right movie he had in mind with it. Oh well, he eventually ended up alright with that!Probably only truly recommendable to Tarantino fans though.7/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/