Triple threat Actor/writer/director Michael Showalter BY BILL RODRIGUEZ

The Baxter, which is playing at the Rhode Island International Film Festival, is a charmingly goofy little comedy. A Baxter, you see, is one of those settle-for guys left at the altar at the end of movies like The Graduate. We follow the déjà vu travails of tax accountant Elliot Sherman as he loses his latest fiancé to her former movie star-handsome boyfriend. Though the punchline is preordained, brisk pacing and tightly written scenes make the joke a fun one to follow as Elliot learns to be a take-charge leading man.

The Baxter will be shown on Friday, August 12 at 7 pm at the Columbus Theatre in Providence and on August 13 at 8 pm at the Revival House Cinema in Westerly. Also on August 14 from 1 to 2:30 pm, "A Conversation With . . . Michael Showalter," the film’s star, writer, and director, will take place at Artini’s in Providence. Admissions are $15.

Showalter will be on hand to receive the festival’s first-time director award, which last year went to Zach Braff. Showalter is a graduate of Brown University (’92) where his concentration was modern culture and media. He became a familiar face on the MTV spoof series The State, which he created and starred in. That developed into Stella, a quirky comedy club group. Showalter also co-wrote and starred in Wet Hot American Summer (2001), a campy camp movie with Janeane Garofalo and David Hyde Pierce.

Showalter spoke recently through a fading cell phone connection from his home base in Brooklyn.

You’re a triple threat —writer, director and performer. Do you consider yourself more threatening at one skill than the others?

I don’t consider myself particularly threatening at any of them. The writing is probably the one thing that I feel I couldn’t live without. It’s the thing that I’m most compelled to do. The other two are sort of in service of the writing.

On The Baxter was there a disadvantage to being all three people at once — did you make a point of getting outside feedback as you filmed?

Yeah, I had a really strong cinematographer who had an enormous amount of responsibility. And I had a lot of people on-set with me who were watching takes and stuff when I wasn’t able to, most of the time. I think there was a disadvantage: as a first-time director it’s important to be able to spend as much time focusing on the directing as possible, and I was also having to be the actor in all the scenes. It made what was already a challenging situation even more challenging.

But since you’re so accustomed to improvising in a comedy group, you’re probably not the sort of actor who relies on a director. You’ve learned to trust your own instincts?

That plus the fact that having written the movie, I had the character in my mind. I had acted out every character, every part in the movie in my mind over time, so I certainly had all of the line readings in my head.

Your character in your first film, Coop, was sympathetic. In developing the character of Elliot in The Baxter, were you at all concerned that he might become too much of a dweeb for people to care about him?

I’m definitely kind of realizing that some people find him off-putting. Having seen the movie screened, I see that there will be people who just don’t like him. That wasn’t my intention — nor did I think that he was like the coolest guy in the world. Basically, the idea of it is that in romantic comedy you always have the leading man played by guys like Tom Hanks and John Cusack, who are charming and funny and smart and romantic and nice and every possible good thing you could ever say about somebody. And they usually have a character flaw that they fix at the end.

I do find some of his dweebiness kind of — not charming, but endearing. Because even though he’s a dweeb and even though he’s off-putting, what I like about that character and identify about that character is how hard he’s trying.

When it comes to performing, do you prefer the reassurance that a live audience provides in a comedy club, compared to the dead silence when you’re trying to be funny in front of a camera?

I’m not your kind of Liza Minnelli, put-me-in-front-of-an-audience-and-let-me-go kind of guy. I’m not that kind of performer. So I don’t soak up the audience’s approval. I do love performing live. But I have a feeling for an audience even when I’m in front of the camera. And there is an audience when you’re in front of the camera — there’s the crew, and there are other people that are part of the project, and the other actors. It’s not a desolate environment. Each has been a little different, and I do like them both.