Swims up(main)stream

The new film “Role Models” finds cultish comedian and filmmaker David Wain making his first bid for a broader mainstream appeal.

In the film, happy-go-lucky party boy Wheeler (Seann William Scott) and acerbic sad-sack Danny (Paul Rudd) are co-workers and unlikely friends. After a seriously bad day lands them facing a choice between jail time or community service, they find themselves involved in a mentoring program called Sturdy Wings. Wheeler is paired with a foul-mouthed 10-year-old named Ronnie (Bobb’e J. Thompson), while Danny is placed with a shy teenager (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) who only really comes alive when involved with his fantasy-role-playing group.

That setup could go a lot of different ways, from schmaltz to lowbrow raunch. In the hands of Wain it becomes something else entirely, a deftly freewheeling vehicle for anything-goes humor. His first brush with studio filmmaking, Wain initially had his doubts about even taking the job.

“I wasn’t sure it was something I would want to do,” Wain said. “I had a lot of preconceived notions about what the experience would be like, many of which were not what happened.”

A member of the influential comedy troupe the State and later its offshoot Stella, Wain’s credentials in comedy circles are impeccable. His first feature, the small, 2001 summer-camp spoof “Wet Hot American Summer,” has gone on to genuine cult status. His follow-up “The Ten” featured performers such as Winona Ryder, Gretchen Mol and Oliver Platt in an irreverent series of short films on the Ten Commandments. His recent Web series “Wainy Days” -- which he worked on concurrently with shooting “Role Models” -- has also grabbed an audience online.

Wain’s particular brand of humor relies on absurdist twists and a nervous self-consciousness. This makes him an even unlikelier choice to be helming a broad-appeal, mainstream comedy like “Role Models.”

The project was already relatively far along when Wain was brought on by producers Mary Parent and Scott Stuber, with Rudd and Scott already cast and the script several drafts (and writers) along. Wain went to work with Rudd (a longtime friend) and frequent collaborator and State alum Ken Marino to rewrite the script. (The screenplay credit goes to Rudd, Wain, Marino and Timothy Dowling with story credit to Dowling and William Blake Herron.)

Wain said he came to the project and fell into production so quickly that it still felt in many ways for him like an indie-style scramble. The feeling put him at least partially at ease.

“I was somewhat surprised to see that once you get into it, it’s exactly the same,” he said of shooting on a bigger budget. “It’s still you and the cinematographer trying to figure out where the camera goes and working with the actors and trying to communicate the scene best.”

Wain populated the supporting cast with a virtual rep company, performers such as Elizabeth Banks (who had one of her very first roles in “American Summer”), Marino, Kerri Kenney-Silver, A.D. Miles and Joe Lo Truglio. Wain himself makes a brief appearance, as does his girlfriend, Zandy Hartig (pregnant at the time) as a lover of baby pandas.

Rather than see himself as merely a hired gun, Wain enjoyed the subversive challenge of finding a way to make his often-rarefied sensibility fit within a movie aiming for a wider audience. But making “Role Models” was a very different experience from working on his past films, where he and one other collaborator “were the only real major authorial voice from beginning to end,” he said. “This [movie] was never mine in that way, there were other writers involved and a studio and two very strong producers, and so I embraced that from Day One and made it really work. But I think what I’ve tried to do, and hope I’ve succeeded at, is kind of underlying my voice throughout it.”

Wain may in fact have disguised his true sensibilities too well. Rudd and Banks worked with Wain first, but are now both thought of as de facto members of the Judd Apatow comedy society. As well, with appearances by Mintz-Plasse from “Superbad” and Ken Jeong from “Knocked Up,” it would be easy to assume that “Role Models” is another film from the Apatow assembly line.

Where Apatow’s films tend to go for an unexpected tug at the heartstrings, however, Wain skews more toward the cerebral, often morphing into a deconstruction of comedy itself.

“I would say I’m more interested in undercutting it at the same time as embracing whatever I’m doing,” Wain said of what makes his comedy distinctive. “My instinct is often to make fun of what I’m doing as I’m doing it, or to be a little more meta or to point out the artifice of the scene. In most cases that really wasn’t appropriate in this movie, but there were just a few little hints of that.”

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