IFH 480: Making Quentin Tarantino's Lost First Feature Film with Andy Rausch

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Now, I was scanning the web the other day, and I came across a book about the making of Quentin Tarantino's first feature film. Quite fascinated that someone took the time to dig into the unreleased, My Best Friend's Birthday, which I've spoken about a bit on my podcast and also written a couple of articles about the film. So, as per usual, I invited the author, Andy Rausch to the show to talk a bit more about his book. Before this interview, I did not know that Andy has spent years interviewing other prominent industry names and has authored over forty non-fiction on specific works of established entertainment contributors. Writing forty books is no small feat. Some of Rausch’s publications include Turning Points in Film History (2004), The Films of Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro (2010), Making Movies with Orson Welles, a Gary Graver memoir, and Fifty Filmmakers: Conversations with Directors from Roger Avary to Steven Zaillian (2008). But today, l would like to get into the weeds on Rausch’s 2019, My Best Friend's Birthday: The Making of a Quentin Tarantino Film book, which 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. Check out the show notes below for links to some of Andy’s other books, all available on Amazon. Enjoy my chat with writer, Andy Rausch.