[movies, interviews] When you think of superhero movies, you mostly think of huge, big budget affairs with a lot of flashy special effects and big name actors and actresses in cape and spandex. Canadian movie maker Michael Sparaga proves that you can do without all these elements. His independently made 'Sidekick' has been very well received on the independent festival circuit and shows that, when you have a lot of talent and creativity, you can make your own movie and see it become successful.
Interview with Sidekick creator Michael Sparaga
"Growing up, whether I actually did or didn't, I always believed I had pretty great reflexes," Sidekick creator/writer/producer Michael Sparaga says when asked how he came up with the idea for Sidekick. "I could catch falling objects before they hit the ground, catch flies in mid-air, y'know, that sort of thing. After a while, I started imagining that there might be something more to my reflexes - an energy that kicked in when I got close to the objects that pulled them into my hand. Essentially, "the Force", but only very slightly - it only worked within millimetres. A few years ago, I started auditioning storylines in my mind that I could fit a minimally telekinetic character into. I knew I wanted the story to be grounded in reality. And I definitely wanted there to be awe in the story. I think that's what's missing the most from today's big movies: There's simply no sense of awe. If I was walking down the street and I saw someone magically pull something into their hand from afar I would think about it for the rest of my life, be completely mesmerized by that moment. Today, there are so many superhero films in theatres that we've become accustomed to watching stories about people with superpowers. Even the characters in the movies are blase about what they are witness to.
But in the real world, if superheroes existed, it wouldn't be that way. Spiderman would be hunted down by the military and caught, if only to be studied. Superman would be vilified because world leaders would fear his power. This is the world I knew I wanted to set my story in. Then I thought it would be more interesting to have the protagonist not be the person with the extraordinary ability, but rather be the person who notices him."
Q: When you were a kid, did you have dreams of becoming a super hero yourself?
A: The music of John Williams was the score of my childhood. When I hummed his themes, I was a superhero. When I was 7 or so I used to have a Superman shirt that had a cape attached to the back. I would stand at the top of my stairs and sing the superman theme. My dad would get up from his lazy boy and stand at the bottom of the stairs and I would jump into his arms. For the brief moment I was airborne, with that music in my head, I was Superman.
Q: Did you read a lot of comic books in your childhood?
A:When I got a little older, maybe 11 or 12, I started collecting comics. My mother and step-father owned a variety store and I would work for them for 2 bucks a day. One dollar would go into a bank account and the other would go toward buying 2 comics (yes, they were once that cheap). I collected Spiderman, Superman and Star Wars.
Q: I read on your website that you made a movie before, but that it's on a shelf somewhere, even though it was successful during the single screening it had. How frustrating is that?
A: Yeah, experience is a wonderful thing. Whether or not you're left with good or bad memories, hopefully you've learned something. But honestly, making 'loaded deck, my first feature film, kicked the crap out of me. I worked on it for 3 years, from 1996 to 1999. I co-wrote it, co-produced it and co-directed it with 2 other people. We were all graduating from film school and all wanted to be big shots. We came up with a concept for a film that
had 3 intertwining storylines - this was before pulp fiction, really - so we could all write and direct our own segment. But by the time the film was actually finished, movies with intertwining storylines were old news. And honestly, our movie didn't have enough edge to be competitive in the indie marketplace. It's not that it's a bad movie, it's not, it's just not very good. A lot of the mediocrity came from there being too many captains so the film was very uneven. We sent it around to distributors and film fests and nobody wanted it. I was thrilled when we found a small distributor who was willing to invest some money into polishing the movie, but then quickly became disheartened when I realized that we were on completely different pages. The movie was a comedy, but since English wasn't the distributor's first language, the quick verbal jokes didn't go over all that well. What did go over well was kickboxing and nudity, which the distributor wanted us to add "here and there", but I refused and so now the movie sits on a shelf.
Q: Did this experience inspire you to this time really go at it alone?
A: The experience made me want to give up producing even though I thought I had a knack for it. I concentrated on my first love, screenwriting, and spent the next 5 years honing my craft. When I finally decided to produce again I knew the pitfalls of what not to do. The key is concentrating on one job at a time.
Q: It seems that there are quite a few people working on Sidekick, even though there was only a tiny budget. How were you able to convince these people to work with you on the movie? Or was there already a group of people who wanted to make a movie together, and this is the movie that turned out to be?
A: There wasn't a lot of work in the film business in toronto in 2003. SARS and a sinking dollar had companies looking elsewhere to film their movies. A lot of my very talented friends were out of work. This so happened to coincide with me feeling frustrated by my lack of progress in my screenwriting career. Although i had recently received a government funded
development grant and some industrial work, it had been years since i had actually seen something I wrote put to screen. I wasn't so much a screenwriter as a writer of unpublishable literary works. I had been writing in a void for so long that I decided it would be worth my while to privately fund my own feature so at the very least I could see if what I was
writing worked - could I tell an interesting story, was my dialogue actable, were my scenes interesting, etc. So I approached my out of work friends and asked them to give up 10 weekends of their lives to help me produce Sidekick. I'd like to say that they loved the idea and immediately signed up, but the truth is they wanted to see the screenplay first. I understood. those of them with 9-5 jobs faced having no spare time for 2 1/2 months, and
when you're in your 30's and married you need a really good reason to get that sort of time. But I guess the screenplay was worth it because in the end they signed up. And not only that, they found friends of theirs to sign up, too. And then the enthusiasm was really spreading. I think the fact that sidekick is an original superhero movie really helped, especially when
it came to signing up VFX artists.
Q: Superhero movies are mostly big budget affairs. Did you get any ideas for the movie that you had to leave out because you don't have a huge budget?
A: I wrote Sidekick with budget in mind. I knew i would be producing it myself and knew there would be limitations to what i could pull off in the time I wanted to pull it off in. I limited my visual effects scenes and spread them throughout the film. I also conferred with Cliff Daigle, my VFX supervisor, about what was possible and how long it would take to make it possible. I didn't want to wait 2 years to have a movie. And I knew I would never be able to compete with the visceral thrills of Spider-Man or X-Men, but I believed I could compete with their screenplays. If Sidekick was just plain interesting enough, people wouldn't notice that a whole city wasn't blowing up as part of their entertainment.
Q: How did you come up with the idea that the superhero is not really the hero of the movie at all, but the sidekick is the one who truly has his heart in the right place?
A: With sidekick, I wanted to addresss the real questions people would want to hear the answers to if they had the chance to talk to a superhero. In Superman, I always loved the scene where Lois Lane interviews Superman on her rooftop terrace (before the "can you read my mind" song kicks in). I liked that Superman answered specific questions about his ability and his intentions - "to fight for truth, justice and the american way." That's what most interested me - what are the intentions of someone with a superpower? If they're good, we have a hero. If they're bad, then we have a villain. But what if they're somewhere in between? I think that's where most of us would sit. If I had superpowers I'd like to think that I would help people, but I'd also probably help myself a bit, too. But I couldn't risk having someone who might come off as unlikable as my protagonist so I came up with the idea of using a wannabe sidekick as the moral centrepiece for the film. That way, I would also have a character who could ask all those questions I wanted to hear the answers to.
Q: The superhero genre is filled with cliches. Did you try to avoid these cliches (well, you already did of course by making the sidekick the real hero) or do you think movies like this need at least some of these cliches in order for people to be able to enjoy them to the fullest?
A: There's a line I like in Sidekick that Chuck (Daniel Baldwin) says to my sidekick, Norman (Perry Mucci): "It's not cliche, it's formula." I believe in that line. It means two things 1) that you can give people something they've seen time and time again as long as you give it to them in a way that is interesting and 2) people like getting things given to them in a way
that they are used to getting them. I knew sidekick belonged to a genre that had very specific demands put on it by its fans. I am one of those fans and I didn't want to let myself down. I planned out which formulaic aspects I wanted to include and which I didn't (ie. i wanted a scene that took place in an alleyway, but I didn't want a montage training sequence).
Q: Where did you find the actors for this movie? Were they people you already knew or worked with beforehand?
A: I knew a few of the actors I wanted for Sidekick. David Ingram (Victor) and Mackenzie Lush (Andrea) are talented friends of mine who were perfect for certain roles and who I believed deserved the break. For most of the other roles we held open auditions over 3 days and looked at a lot of people. The biggest surprise find was Perry Mucci, who plays Norman, the lead.
Physically, I pictured a Paul Giamatti type as I wrote the role, but then this pipsqueak of a guy walks in and auditions and just blew us all away. There was an excitable sparkle in his eyes that captured the spirit I was looking for. I knew an audience would believe in him.
Q: How cool was it to work with Daniel Baldwin?A: My director, Blake van de Graaf, and I are huge Homicide fans and loved him on the show as Beau Felton. A friend of my co-producer, Tom Mudd, happened to be Daniel's assistant and he put us in touch with Daniel, who happened to be in town shooting a pilot. We met him at a starbucks and pitched him the role of Chuck, a nerdy comic book store owner. He seemed happy to be offered a role that was different from the cop or killer roles he's usually offered so he took it. We shot his scenes over 2 nights and he was a total professional. And what a work horse, too. I think I remember him calling "action" himself a couple of times. And it's great timing, too, becuase his weekend occurred half way through our 10 weekend shoot so the crew was really jazzed for the remaining weekends.
Q: I read on your website that the lack of funds also made you creative in finding locations and props for the movie. How did you solve this, and did you get into any kind of trouble?
A: In indie filmmaking you're forced to solve problems creatively because financially is out of the question. I tried my best to make all the creative decision before production began so we weren't scrambling for locations and permits. We were on too tight a schedule to handle being kicked out of locations.
Q: You recently had your first screening of the movie, how did that go? Were you nervous beforehand, and what were the reactions of the crowd?
A: We held a premiere fundraiser preview screening on June 13, 2005, here in Toronto at the oh so beautiful Isabel Bader theatre. All 500 seats were sold out weeks in advance and there was a huge waiting list, too. Half of the people in attendance were of the 'friendly' variety, family and friends sort of thing, but the other half were comic book and indie movie fans who were out to see something new. I was nervous as hell beforehand becuase after 2 years of enthusiastically telling people how great the movie was it either was great or it wasn't. In the end, there was huge laughter, cheering, the whole works. And at all the right places. I sat at the back of the theatre with tears in my eyes, totally relieved. It was a magical night.
Q: How are going about getting this movie played in cinemas and at festivals? Is there already interest? How difficult is it to get distribution for a movie when you don't have some big studio backing you up?
A: Film festivals are the best and obvious route for exposure for a movie made waaaaay outside the system like Sidekick. And it's also our best chance to get it viewed by distributors the way we want them to see it - in a theatre with an audience. Our preview screening showed us that it does play well so we're confident-ish that some film festivals will say yes. It's just up to us to find those festivals. I've targeted around 25 of them that i think would appreciate Sidekick most - fests with first time directors, digital
video, sci-fi categories and such. We just started applying and have yet to hear back from anyone, but we're keeping our fingers tightly crossed.
As for distributors, we're just starting to get the word out to them now and one thing that having a produced movie actually lets you do is call up and talk to any acquisition executive you want to talk to. It's their job to look at movies. If they don't and it is picked up by their competitor and goes on to become a modest hit their job is on the line. I've found that
even if it's not what they're looking for they will still give you a polite no just in case one day you do make something they're looking for. But like I said, film festival exposure would be our desired method of attracting a distributor.
Q: I read something on your website that there is also some big studio interest in remaking your movie with a big budget and cast. Are you allowed to say anything about that?
A: I couldn't say anything about it for awhile because we were in negotiations, but since the contract is now signed, I guess I kinda can. Just after we completed our first rough cut, my co-producer, Tom Mudd, showed me a Variety with a cover story on Focus Features (The Pianist, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Lost in Translation). I am a huge fan of many of their films and admire their obvious respect to writers. I think they've won a best screenplay oscar for their films 4 out of the past 5 years or something. I could see that they had never released a true indie before - there's no Napoleon Dynamite or Open Water in their library - but I was curious to hear what they might say about the film overall so we sent it to them. I didn't hear anything for well over a month, but then I got a call from a great guy who works in acquisitions named John Hodges. He told me that he really enjoyed the story and concept and asked to read the screenplay in the meantime. I jumped around my apartment after the call. A week later I got a call from Amy Kaufman in development. She read the screenplay and loved it. And that's when the idea of a big budget remake came up. They liked the
original movie but worried that indie production values in a superhero movie wouldn't play with audiences. It didn't bother me. Like i said, they didn't really deal with true indies. then just before christmas an offer came in on the screenplay, which also included me doing a rewrite on it. But the original picture stood in the way. Ideally, they would have liked
me to bury it, use it as a calling card only, but it took me 2 years to make and all my friends and family pitched in. I couldn't watch all of that be relegated to a shelf. Plus, I actually think the movie turned out to be pretty good. Their offer came very early in post. I like to think they'll be surprised how great it looks and sounds now. It took 6 months of
negotiations before the final details of the contract were hammered out, but the bonus is I still own distribution rights to the original picture - but with a few restrictions (ie. I can't release my movie against their planned remake).
Q: Are you already planning any new projects? Anything you can say about that?
A: I've got a lot of screenplays ready to go. The one I hope to produce next is called in the stars. It's a romantic-comedy that received development financing from telefilm. The story follows a guy who finds a way to win back his astrology obsessed ex-girlfriend by rewriting her daily horoscopes in the newspaper. The only problem is, he ends up messing around with a lot of other people who share the same sign, including his own mother. I really dig the screenplay, but it's pretty big budget-ish, so it'll likely take Sidekick getting noticed for me to have the clout to make it right.
Q: We're in a period where there are a lot of superhero movies coming out. Personally I'm a bit worried about some of these projects and about the amount of superhero movies in the coming years. What are your thoughts on that? And what did you think of the recent movies in this genre?
A: Oh yeah, there are a tonne of superhero movies coming out and being made. And yeah, I'm worried about some of them, but no more worried than I am over films in other genres. Like all films, superhero movies can be good (ie. X-Men and Batman Begins) and they can be bad (ie. Daredevil and Electra). But it's not the effects that make one better than the other. Everyone knows Spider-man looks like a cartoon when he's swinging through the city on his web, but it doesn't matter, it all comes to story. Do i care about the characters and what they're doing? Hopefully, with Sidekick, people will care.
Q: Finally, can you tell us a little bit about yourself, what you have done before, and where you are from, things like that?
A: Wow, I can talk for hours about sidekick, but about myself not so much. I'm just a typical kid who grew up on movies and tv. I loved Star Wars, Superman and Spielberg. I split my childhood between niagara falls, where my mother and step-father lived, and Toronto, where my father and step-mother lived. I went to york univeristy for screenwriting and film production. I learned to love Scorsese, Vittoria de Sica and David Lean. I've always wanted to be a writer, even as a kid. Telling stories is what I am meant to do. If I get the chance to make a living at it, all the better!
If you want to read and see more about Sidekick: The Movie, then check the official website by clicking here!
Comments