On Thursday night at the Hi-Pointe I caught a special screening of “Box Elder,” a very independent comedy directed by Todd Sklar of Columbia, Mo. Sklar’s Range Life Entertainment caravan is rumbling across the Midwest to promote his movie and three others by kindred indie filmmakers.

The last-minute booking precluded showing two of the tour’s films–”Registered Sex Offender” and “In Memory of My Father”–and although the meta-movie “On the Road with Judas” was certified by Sundance in 2007, the lousy weather seemed to ensure a dismal turnout.

I attended for the same reason I buy Kool-Aid from kids on street corners: to lend moral support. But now that I’ve drank the Kool-Aid, I’ve seen the light on this whole D.I.Y. distribution concept. I was thoroughly hooked by “On the Road with Judas,” but without the name Charlie Kaufman in the credits, it’s the kind of clever puzzle that could fall through the cracks of theatrical release. And although “Box Elder” is to die for, it’s too homegrown to attract Hollywood’s attention.

As a comedy about Peter Pan pal-hood in the provinces, “Box Elder” is as good as “Diner”–with considerably more rude humor. The long tracking shot that opens the film, to the tune of Jonathan Richman’s “Roadrunner,” does for the Mizzou campus what Orson Welles’ “Touch of Evil” did for Tijuana. And an actor named Alex Rennie is the best deadbeat roommate since my Mizzou classmate Brad Pitt toked from a honeybear bong in “True Romance.”

A big part of Sklar’s roadshow crusade is the personal interaction with the audience. Much of the mostly male contingent that came out in the freezng rain on Thursday had already seen the movie in Columbia, where it has become something of a cult phenomenon. Sklar, who honed his craft while volunteering at the Sundance Labs, is serious about networking, whether through Facebook or post-screening sandwich runs with his new best friends. So he promised us that next spring he will deliver St. Louis another helping of slacker cinema on rye.