My Best Friend's Birthday: The Making of a Quentin Tarantino Film

by Andrew J. Rausch

“This is a cool idea for a book.” — Quentin Tarantino My Best Friend’s Birthday: The Making of a Quentin Tarantino Film is the story of a group of friends who set out to make their own movie in 1983, financing it with Tarantino’s minimum wage earnings from his job at a video store. In most biographies and Tarantino histories, this unfinished $5,000 film is mentioned only in passing and is looked upon as little more than a curiosity. But with this oral history, author/editor Andrew J. Rausch details how each of the friends came together, other early film projects they worked on, and how they ended up making (or trying to make) a black-and-white screwball comedy. He also makes the argument that My Best Friend’s Birthday is something far more meaningful than a curiosity. Not only did it mark the screenwriting and directorial debut of Quentin Tarantino, one of the greatest filmmakers in history, but it also launched the careers of two other professional filmmakers, Craig Hamann and Roger Avary. My Best Friend’s Birthday: The Making of a Quentin Tarantino Film provides an in-depth look at the film from its conception to its eventual demise and proves that even at the young age of 20, Tarantino already possessed the talent (in a still rough, unpolished form) that would lead him to make classic films such as Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, Django Unchained, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. The film and screenplay for My Best Friend’s Birthday, rough as they may be, provide us a glimpse of an artist on the verge of real success, still trying to find and hone his voice.  

206 pages, Hardcover

First published October 5, 2019

About the author

Andrew J. Rausch is a film critic, author, and celebrity interviewer, as well as film producer, screenwriter, and actor. He had written or co-written nearly 20 books on the subject of popular culture, including Turning Points in Film History, Making Movies with Orson Welles (w/Gary Graver), and The Films of Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro. He is the screenwriter of the motion picture Dahmer vs. Gacy and the author of three novels, The Suicide Game, Riding Shotgun, and Elvis Presley, CIA Assassin. He can be reached at cruelkindgom@gmail.com.

Reviews

[Max Stirner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating book, not only on the film, which through the breakdown of the script and the few available scenes one actually gets to experience in a way, but also on the beginnings of Tarantino, his friends and his whole late 80s broke LA minimum wage/acting class/film buff scene and their adventures.
I really disliked the author's commentary, which was annoying, constantly forcing down his own vulgar, stupid conclusions, contradicting and repeating himself, but luckily it's mostly confined to the beginning and end with the main parts consisting mainly of interviews of the major figures of the story.
It made me love Tarantino and want to make my own film even more and I wish I could watch the film in its entirety.

[Sandy]

Absolutely adore this. Quentin Tarantino’s “Hamburg era” pre Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. This book is one big permission slip to aspiring filmmakers who are either broke and/or have never gone to film school. If you have a fascination for QT, mild or obsessive, get your hands on this one. So fun and endearing <3

[Joseph William Lewis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential for QT obsessives.

[Douglas Lobo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Este livro detalha a produção do primeiro filme de Quentin Tarantino, o qual jamais foi lançado. Interessante acompanhar o diretor nos primórdios, quando seu talento ainda era cru, não-lapidado.