Dear Nicko,
Tricky...
This film, which participated in the 1968 Cannes Film Festival, and
whose actors were Oscar nominees, seems to be very-hard-to-find. It
even became some kind of a test: ?Cute girl at work asks him to go
out to Happy Hour. He refuses because he has to go home and set his
VCR to tape Charlie Bubbles on
Bravo that night. Ouch!? (From: Larry Legallo "Re: How to Tell a
Cineaste from a Human Being"
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=%22Charlie+Bubbles%22+tape&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=3d7268d3.78837567%40netnews.att.net&rnum=2).
Unfortunately, this film was not released, at least not commercially,
on VHS or DVD. I am saying "at least not commercially", because the
University of Portsmouth claims to have a copy (in PAL system, of
course) in their Video Library (See: University of Portsmouth, School
of Social, Historical and Literary Studies, Video List,
<http://www.port.ac.uk/departments/academic/sshls/resources/videolist/>).
Maybe, the librarian there would be kind enough to explain how they
got it (perhaps they had a permission to copy/record it for
educational reasons), or to lend it in interlibrary loan, to your
library (and again, please remember that PAL, the system that is used
in Europe, is different than the North American one).
Another option, as you mentioned yourself, is to try to check, when it
will be on TV or will be released commercially.
Video ETA <http://www.videoeta.com/movie/6187> have an email update
list, and will update you when the film will be released.
MSN movies have a system, where they check the availability of a
certain film on TV on a bi-weekly prediction:
<http://entertainment.msn.com/tv/search/?scope=title&query=Charlie+Bubbles>
, this of course is available in the US and Canada only and depends on
your TV options (cables, satellite, as explained before).
Finally, tape trading could be a solution, though you will have to
check the legality of the exchange in your area and country. Tape
Trading networks consist of people who trade tapes of wanted films
between themselves. Such a huge network could be found at
Alt.video.tape-trading
<http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&group=alt.video.tape-trading>
A similar site is "My Release", that has the tape in their Liza
Minnelli section <http://web.lconn.com/mysterease/minnelli.htm>.
I hope that helped. My search terms were:
[film?s name] - alone, and with terms such as "tape", "tapes",
"bootleg", "bootlegs".
Please contact me if you need any clarification on this answer, before
you tip/rate it. |
