If you're going to max out your credit cards it might as well be by making a movie.

Toronto writer-producer Michael Sparaga red-lined his plastic creating Sidekick, an airtight little addition to the superhero genre that cost all of $35,000, sold out halls on the festival circuit and is now touring the country in a theatrical run that brings it to Cinéma du Parc this weekend.

We should also mention Sparaga's screenplay has been optioned by Focus Features, the American mini-major studio behind Brokeback Mountain, The Constant Gardener and that other inspiring low-budget picture in town right now, Rian Johnson's Brick.

"I sent an early version of Sidekick to Focus," the excitable Sparaga said earlier this week from Halifax, another stop on a tour that will end up in Vancouver. "I just wanted to hear what they thought about it."

Sparaga's hail mary got nothing but silence from Focus for a couple of months, which is what he feared. Then, out of the blue, and with all hope gone, the phone ran.

"It was Focus, saying they were interested in having the picture remade. I took Cinderella-story meetings in New York where they said 'this is a calling-card picture, shelve it, and write us a first-draft screenplay' for a much bigger American remake."

Sparaga thought about the offer. He thought about the 10 years he'd spent kicking around the Canadian film industry and the doors that could swing open now, south of the border.

Then he thought about his cast and crew, who gave of their time and talent shooting a movie on weekends and credit, a movie that should really never have happened at all.

"My friends said they would completely understand if I sold them all out. But we all worked so stinking hard on that picture, I didn't want to lose it or let them down."

Though Focus protested it would never shoot a remake of an English-language that had had a theatrical release, Sparaga stuck to his guns. Focus blinked, optioned the screenplay anyway, and Sparaga got to keep all rights to the movie you should really be seeing now.

Sparaga calls the current Canada-by-car tour "direct marketing". He, director Blake Van de Graaf and star Perry Mucci can't afford conventional TV, print and theatre-trailer advertising, so they've set up shop online and have been targeting comic book stores to generate advance buzz.

Why comic book stores? Hello, it's a superhero movie, and Mucci plays a computer geek and comic book nerd who gets a life of sorts when he discovers a fellow office worker has untapped telekinetic bilities.

It's paying off. The website www.sidekickmovie.com has received 15,000 hits, the tour is fully booked, comic store lurkers are stoked and the Sidekick road crew is spreading the DIY message to grateful film-school kids everywhere.

Not that Sparaga plans this pavement-level approach to film promotion again in the foreseeable future.

"Now I know why they pay publicists. Promotion is exhausting. But we wanted the adventure of getting the movie out there, and just doing it. And we're doing it."

Sidekick plays Cinéma du Parc, 3575 Park Ave. tonight and tomorrow at 7 p.m.