In high school, actor Rainn Wilson was a geek. In fact, he says, "I was every kind of geek, and one of the geeks that I was, was a band geek."

He started playing the recorder, moved to the clarinet and, then, the bassoon. "I'm probably the first bassoonist you've ever interviewed," he guessed (correctly) by cell phone from Philadelphia during a publicity stop for "The Rocker."

Wilson was so close and yet so far from Scranton, backdrop for his NBC sitcom, "The Office." He plays Dwight Schrute, the Dunder Mifflin paper salesman with the unfortunate haircut, personalized bobblehead and secret office romance.

Asked if he was swinging by Scranton, Wilson said, with a sheepish tone, "You know, it's not on my schedule. I imagine the relationship that I have with the good people of Scranton, that every single Scrantonian -- man, woman and child -- will be showing up on Aug. 20 to go see 'The Rocker' so probably there's no need for me to show up."

He stars in "The Rocker" as Robert "Fish" Fishman, a drummer for an '80s hair band called Vesuvius who is kicked out of the group just before it hits big. Twenty years later, his nephew asks him to join his band, called A.D.D., and Fish has a second shot at fame.

After moving from Seattle to Chicago, Wilson formed a band in high school with an equally improbable name: Collected Moss. He started acting at the same time, scoring a role in a school production of "Time out for Ginger" ("a modern classic about a little girl who wants to join the high school football team").

Acting trumped music, especially after Collected Moss didn't get into the school's battle of the bands. "I gotta move with the acting thing because that's panning out," he decided, "and pan out it did, my friend."

"The Rocker" vaults Wilson into a leading movie role, and it was an adjustment.

"I've always been in supporting roles, kind of reacting to other people, and my character, Fish, the heavy-metal drummer, he's got to drive the film. It's his energy and his wants and needs and desires that are the motor that push through the film, and that definitely took some getting used to."

Already able to read music, he got a crash course in playing the drums, learning the songs for the movie and mastering the heavy-metal stick tricks, what he calls the "fun things to do behind the kit, to pump up the crowd and put on a show."

Wilson and his fellow actors didn't only want the music to be good, they wanted the audience to believe they were performing. "There's so many disconnects in Hollywood movies, even in 'Almost Famous,' as great a movie as that is, the music kind of sucks. I mean, who remembers 'Fever Dog' as a song?"

That is why the filmmakers were thrilled to land Teddy Geiger as the sensitive singer in A.D.D.

He's a singer-songwriter who started as a teen in suburban Rochester, N.Y., while the movie plunks him into a garage band in Cleveland, Ohio. "You got to believe that this kid is writing these songs and can sing and play them. He just looks so natural with a guitar slung over him and it's such a great voice, and you can tell that it's his voice singing, not some studio musician's voice."

A drummer who can relate to Fish's story of near-superstardom appears in the movie as himself: Pete Best, original drummer for the Beatles who was sacked and replaced with Ringo Starr.

"I got to hang out with him. He was a great guy. He has a really great sense of humor and a great sense of peace about the whole thing. He is the original booted drummer and, I guess, the spark for the idea of the movie."

After Fish is booted, he ends up in some 9-to-5 jobs that prove real life can be boring and "soul crushing." Wilson had his share of workaday gigs back in the day.

"I've waited on about a billion tables in my lifetime, catered about a million catered events, but I also had office jobs." He worked for the Multiple Sclerosis Society of New York, answered phones at an advertising agency and was an assistant to an office of insurance brokers. Or, as he colorfully puts it, "I was living a David Mamet play."

For the first nine years of his acting life, he concentrated on theater, including Shakespearean productions on and off Broadway.

"What it gives you -- especially Shakespeare and other classic texts -- is the importance of language and how to use it, the importance of making strong choices about the character and about where they begin and where they end, and the use of physicality to support the character and the language." In other words, the building blocks of acting.

He has the Vesuvius drum set from the movie in his garage and plays almost every day but says he's still "pretty mediocre." Beating the publicity drums for the movie on a multicity tour, Wilson sensed audiences might like "The Rocker" more than critics.

"People are really digging this movie. I don't know about reviewers, it's not like the most original movie in the world, I guess, but it's such a feel-good, fun, old-fashioned romp and audiences go crazy for it. I think, also, movies nowadays are very R-rated and dark ... 'The Rocker' kind of feels like a John Hughes movie, a fun for the whole family kind of rock comedy."