My Best Friends Birthday

Plot

A young man continually tries to do something nice for his friend's birthday, only to have his efforts backfire.

Production

The film was made while Tarantino was working at the now closed Video Archives in Manhattan Beach, California. The project started in 1984, when Hamann wrote a short 30–40 page script.

Tarantino became attached to the project as co-writer and director, and he and Hamann expanded the short script into an 80-page script. On an estimated budget of $5,000, they shot the film on 16mm over the course of the next four years. Hamann and Tarantino starred in the film, along with several video store and acting class buddies, and worked on the crew, which included fellow Video Archives employees Rand Vossler and Roger Avary. It is the most overtly comedic film that Tarantino has made. In an interview with Charlie Rose (available on the Region 1, Collector's Edition DVD of Pulp Fiction), he referred to it as a "Martin and Lewis kind of thing."

The original cut was about 70 minutes long but due to a film lab fire only 36 minutes of the film survived. The 36 minute cut has been shown at several film festivals, and had been officially released on the 2 disc edition of Pulp Fiction, but the 70 minute version is considered lost. Several actors in this film later appeared in Tarantino's other films Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Kill Bill.