"I want to put the awe back in superhero movies," says filmmaker Michael Sparaga, "The characters have sort of become blasé about what they could do, as well as the people watching them." His movie, Sidekick, screens as part of SF Indiefest on Thursday and Saturday at 4:30pm at The Roxie, has no shortage of awe: mild-mannered comic enthusiast Norman is bowled over to discover a coworker with superpowers. As a sidekick, Norman loyally prepares Victor to fight crime and defend liberty ... but Victor has other ideas. It was important to Michael that Victor's freaky abilities be handled with reverence -- "in the real world," he told us, "if we saw anybody do anything phenomenal, we'd be so awestruck we'd think about it the rest of our lives. I wanted to make a realistic superhero movie. We can't identify with somebody flying from outerspace -- although we love superman -- but you can put a lot of magic in something simpler."

In a departure from most superhero movies, Sidekick is told from the point of view of, well, the sidekick. "I think the sidekick, in some ways, is Canada," says Michael "It's not purposeful, but I can see, being a Canadian, why I would choose a sidekick to be my hero. There's a part of me that feels, the odds are I wouldn't be the guy with the power." But in fact, Michael's won himself some considerable clout with this film; Focus Features, a studio for hipster navel-gazers, negotiated with Michael for the rights to remake his film with a big budget.

They nearly made him promise never to show the original: "some of Sidekick can only exist in the indie world. They were like, 'great job, we'll buy the screenplay off you; and you'll get rid of THIS movie. Don't show it.' And I was like, I can't. I've been working on it for over year and a half now, all my friends and family worked on it, and I believe in it."

One scene in Thursday and Friday's screenings that won't be in the remake is Micahel's favorite. "The alleyway scene is tricky. In fact, in rewriting, it was one of the first things gone. It was a little risky for a mainstream superhero movie. ... Victor decides to teach [some criminals] a lesson by making them, uh, do things to each other. And that's a realistic thing to do -- 'you making fun of me, how about THIS?' And it's one of those moments that the audience is laughing, and then when Victor takes it too far, where maybe a decent person wouldn't, and the audience gets quiet, like there's a nervous laughter. And that scene is one that I had to fight for ... it works because everybody in the theater questions why they were laughing and enjoying it in the first place."