When it comes to funny, Michael Showalter is as serious as Jacques Derrida. That's because the comedian, writer, director, and star of the new romantic comedy, The Baxter, is very much a product of studying a bunch of deconstructionist philosophy at Brown University, where he received a degree in Modern Culture and Media in 1992. "I am very, very interested in why things mean what they mean," says Showalter, who also writes and stars in the new absurdist sketch comedy show, Stella, on Comedy Central. "I need to understand why something is funny." He says his style gestated in the East coast comedy scene often described as meta-comedy; "It's comedy about comedy."

Showalter spoke with the Writers Guild of America, west Web site about his new film, performing what he writes, and how he keeps perspective on what's funny during those long scribing sessions.

What were the origins of The Baxter?

I made this movie, Wet Hot American Summer (2001), and it's a great movie, but it's sophomoric, which was kind of the point. I wanted to work on something a little more polite and clean, like an old Frank Capra movie. Everybody gets a happy ending in this movie. There's lots of ribbons getting tied at the end. I like the simplicity of an old Hollywood movie. There's a kind of symmetry to those movies that I love.

Also, I've always wanted to do a romantic comedy with the kind of paradigmatic "wrong boyfriend" type character like Bill Pullman in Sleepless in Seattle. In that film it seemed to me the interesting thing was what happens to the nice-but-wrong boyfriend — Tom Hanks has all the things a woman is looking for and Pullman is kind of a boob — a nice guy, but a boob. I find that type of character a lot more compelling.

You wrote Wet Hot American Summer with David Wain. Do you prefer doing comedy writing solo or as a team?

I like them both a lot. They're so different. I would not want to give either one of them up. In a sense, writing alone is nice because, ultimately, it's all you. There's no disagreement. But with collaborating, you get other people's strengths — your weakness can be someone else's strengths. Particularly if everyone involved knows their strengths and weaknesses.

Michael Showalter and Michelle Williams in The Baxter.

I think one advantage of being a performer and a writer is that when I'm writing, I am performing, there's just no audience. I'm there speaking in voices, running around acting things out, using my performance ability to embody the character and have fun, so writing is not dry for me. It's enormously intense, crazy fun but also a painful process.

In a sense [when I'm writing], I'm recording a performance. [But before the performance] I do a lot of outlining and talking notes and writing out structure.

The Baxter has a really conventional structure. For me, the blood sweat and tears of writing is in finding the story that has dramatic drive, that isn't just a series of scenes strung together. You have to find the engine that carries the story.

Is improvised material always funnier than written or vice versa?

That's a good question. I think my favorite all-time comedies were written. I've heard that The Office is almost entirely scripted [and] that's the funniest thing I've ever seen. And I also think Woody Allen movies are the funniest thing I've seen and they're all scripted. But I also love Bill Murray, and I know he improvises [a lot of] his dialogue, so … it depends.

Whatever's funnier is what you like?

Exactly. The person I would emulate would be Cameron Crowe. His stories are memorable and memorably funny.

Is it easy during long writing sessions to lose your perspective on funny?

Very.

How do you keep it?

Other people. I ask other people what's funny. There's no question when you live with something for so long you lose your perspective on what's funny and what's not. You have no idea. What's funny and not funny also changes from audience member to audience member, so I do lose perspective and that's why having a good story is so important.

Do you get better at it the more you do it?

I'd like to think so, but comedy is really hard.