So, who are the slackers responsible for the fact that I can’t get an American DVD version of Richard Linklater’s seminal and brilliant film Slacker?

Back in high school, I managed to hunt down and dub a copy after some effort, and it soon became one of my favorite films. (I haven’t seen it in some years, but it’s still in the top five.) But, appropriately enough, I lent that copy to an acquaintance and never saw it again. Now, I’m doing a little research for a talk I’m giving in September on generational politics, and thought “what better time to watch Slacker again?” But the American VHS version currently in print is apparently a “fullscreen” affair that cuts off a lot of the action. There is a DVD version available in Britain, but it’s got region 2 encoding, so I’d need a modded, regionless player if I were to order that.

So, seriously, what gives? How is it that the definitive film about early 90s Gen-X culture, the Breakfast Club of its time, fer chrissakes, is available to our Brit cousins, but not in the country it captures so well? Someone had better be working on a US DVD release or I’ll… well, sit around and drink a lot of coffee, probably. But someone ought to get on that anyway.