Nick Offerman is an uncommunicative widower in the movie &quot;The Kings of Summer.&quot; (CBS films)

Here's how Nick Offerman would like to react when he reads a movie script: "Now, that's the kind of weirdo I want to play."

Best known for playing stolid Ron Swanson on TV's "Parks and Recreation," Offerman signed with new agents a couple of years ago. Shortly afterward, they approached him with a small part in "Smashed" that required him to make a wildly inappropriate remark to a colleague. The agents' reaction to the script was that it was an offbeat part that might appeal to their new client. Offerman's reaction to the script was: "Man, you've got my number."

Offerman's part in "The Kings of Summer," a coming-of-age comedy that opens Friday, is in a more Swanson-ish mode: He plays a grieving, incommunicative widower whose son disappears, moving into a clubhouse for the summer. The actor said, "Yes," because the script rang true.

"I remember ugly scenes with my own parents, who couldn't be more salt-of-the-earth, Norman Rockwellian parents," says Offerman -- who shares some of Swanson's courtly speech patterns. "It's just part of growing up, saying, 'I hate you, you wonderful, nice people.' And I know it's still happening. My older sister has two daughters, who are my nieces, if my math is sound. So I've been around a lot of teenage angst in my life."

Offerman plays the father of two in "The Kings of Summer," which would not be a huge stretch except that one of his offspring is played by Alison Brie, who is 30 and could not possibly have been fathered by the 42-year-old Offerman.

"I would have been 11 when she was conceived," says Offerman, drily (he says everything drily). "Alison, I guess, is one of those actresses who is perennially 22 years old and I, apparently, am one of those actors who is perennially a sheriff/principal/fire chief."

Surprisingly, the age gap never came up: "No one has questioned my fatherhood at any stretch of the process. I've learned that if you speak slowly, people think you're in charge. 'Don't worry about this marijuana, officer. I'm from Colorado. It's for an experiment.' Just say it slowly and you're fine."



Offerman also has a role in Diablo Cody's upcoming directorial debut, "Paradise."

"I have had a ridiculous amount of good fortune," Offerman admits. "In that one, I feel like I won the lottery. I got to play Holly Hunter's husband. So, if you say I have to end my career after that, I'd feel pretty good about it."

Former City Pages writer and "Juno" screenwriter Cody, Offerman says, was to the director born: "She's wonderful. She's very collaborative. When the writing is as good as hers, most of the answers to your questions are on the page, but she's also incredibly insightful. Every question I asked, she had a richly detailed answer at the ready."

Now that "Parks and Recreation" is on hiatus, Offerman is trying to fend off his agents for a while. "Most of the problem I have with them is, 'Would you quit sending me so many delicious opportunities because I need to go fishing with my wife' ('Will and Grace' actress Megan Mullally)."


"I've had enough lumberjacks, I think," says Offerman. "I'm ready to play a mincing fop. Please pass that along to the Weinstein brothers for me."
