Mystery Behind Quentin Tarantino's Very First Movie Revealed (And No, It Wasn't Lost in Fire)
You thought Reservoir Dogs is Tarantino's first movie? It's actually not.
Quentin Tarantino 's filmography includes little-known works: he helped rewrite the screenplays for Michael Bay's The Rock and Tony Scott's Crimson Tide, and guest-directed an episode of Robert Rodriguez's Sin City.
But few people actually know about the director's very first movie, which was shrouded in mystery until recently. And no, it's not Reservoir Dogs.
Not many people know about the very first movie by Quentin Tarantino, partly because the director rightly prefers to consider Reservoir Dogs as his debut.
My Best Friend's Birthday is very much a student, amateur, homemade movie, shot on a 16mm camera in very poor black and white.
Tarantino worked on it from 1984 to 1986, along with his friend in acting classes and co-screenwriter Craig Hamann.
The plot of My Best Friend's Birthday is a proto-version of True Romance. Both movies have a similar plot and the same names of the main characters.
Radio DJ Clarence decides to book a call girl for his best friend Mickey's birthday, who introduces herself as Misty Knight, but things get out of hand when her pimp appears.
Despite the fact that this is a very cheap movie (it took only five thousand dollars to produce it, and every cent is visible on the screen), the director's signature style is already seen in it, which will be present in all other Tarantino movies: black humor, movie mania, foot fetishism, a lot of cool dialog and an unbridled love for Brian De Palma.
The length of the movie was originally supposed to be 70 minutes instead of the final 36, but there was a legend among the director's fans that half of the filmed material burned down in a fire.
Such a myth gave the movie a mystical flair and made viewers bite their elbows because they would never see the whole movie, which eventually turned into a short movie that can be viewed on YouTube.
In 2019, however, a book by Andrew J. Rausch My Best Friend's Birthday: The Making of a Quentin Tarantino Film was published that revealed the true fate of Tarantino's first movie.
Part of the filmed material was indeed irretrievably lost, but because it was simply erased by mistake.
Quentin deliberately allowed rumors of the fire to spread, as it gave his first movie an almost legendary status.