There are stand-up comics who are content to make jokes about whatever the most popular TV shows, fashion trends and slang terms are at any given moment.

And then there are people who seem to use their comedy to plumb more profound depths.

Patton Oswalt has increasingly placed himself in the latter camp.

There is plenty of delicious nonsense in Oswald’s first collection of essays and spoofs, “Zombie Spaceship Wasteland.”

But there is also a long and often moving piece about the summers Oswalt spent as a teenager working in a multiplex and what he learned from them.

Some of Oswalt’s most popular work these days is as thought-provoking as it is laugh-inducing, namely the transcript of the commencement address he gave last year at his Virginia alma mater, Broad Run High School, and a pop-culture manifesto, “Wake Up, Geek Culture,” that ran in Wired magazine in December.

The latter is a gonzo call-to-arms that only semijocularly advocates destroying everything in our popular culture and starting over. The former ranks among the best celebrity commencement addresses ever delivered to a subsequently grateful student body.

In both the book and the commencement address, Oswalt advocates experiencing the world in a non-judgmental fashion, the theory being that beauty can even lurk under the surface of things that may seem at first to be merely ugly or banal.

Of course, Oswalt still passes withering judgment on a lot of things that more than deserve it. It would be hard for him not to and still be an effective stand-up comic.

However, Oswalt says in a phone interview, “I think I hold up a lot more of the stuff that I love than tear down the stuff that I don’t.”

Oswalt acknowledges that more and more of his comedy is inextricably entwined with a search for bedrock truths, but he denies that he is trying to share wisdom.

“At this point,” he says, “I am still trying to figure myself out, control myself, and understand my own motivations. It would be arrogant of me to try to pass myself off as someone who has it all figured out.”

Oswalt has certainly adopted a non-judgmental and all-encompassing strategy when it comes to his career.

He has appeared in movies (“Ratatouille” and “Big Fan”), live-action TV series (“The King of Queens” and “Caprica”), sketch comedy programs (“Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!” and “Reno 911”) and animated shows (“The Venture Brothers” and “SpongeBob SquarePants”). He has played comic characters and solemn ones.

Asked whether there are certain types of work that he would automatically turn down on general principles, he says that he used to think so.

“I can’t say for sure anymore,” he says. “I see so many people doing jobs that I discounted and bringing such a creative perspective to them. It’s possible that something original can be done with almost anything.”

Oswalt even continues to work as an uncredited “punch-up” man on the scripts for potential blockbusters. He has worked on “Shrek 2” and “Shrek 3,” “Monsters, Inc.,” “Borat,” “Shallow Hal” and “Rango,” which opened Friday.

Oswalt has grown famous in his own right since he first started earning extra money in punch-up groups (he likens them to the writers’ room on the “The Dick Van Dyke Show”), but he says he will keep doing it because he loves doing it.

“I love those rooms, and I love working with other writers, bouncing ideas off them,” he says. “It doesn’t bother me at all that I don’t get credit.”

As for fame, Oswalt says it has its uses, but not the ones that perhaps most unfamous bystanders fixate upon.

“I want to keep doing stand-up and I want to be free to try different approaches,” he says, “so I think using it to achieve those ends is legitimate. But if you’re using it for validation, it will get pretty sour very quickly.”

Oswalt acknowledges that he still gets stage fright, and he experiences many moments in live settings where he is not sure what should or will come next. He says he doesn’t dread those moments.

“Some really amazing stuff can come out of moments of uncertainty,” he says, “times when a comic isn’t sure of himself and decides to trust his material and plow through anyway. I cherish those moments, actually.”

2010 was an eventful year for Oswalt in positive and not-so-positive ways. On the positive side, Oswalt’s daughter, Alice Rigney Oswalt, turned 1 year old in April.

On the opposite side, Oswalt’s material was plagiarized by a fellow comedian and a Columbia University valedictorian. Oswalt’s rants about these incidents on his blog were as hilarious, as they were genuinely heated.

“Who was that guy – Mike Barnicle? – who got caught stealing George Carlin’s material?” Oswalt says. “And he defended himself by saying they weren’t Carlin’s jokes in the first place, that he had gotten them from someone else. I don’t think a lot of people realize how much work goes into writing jokes. They don’t come out of joke books.”

Asked how he plans to stay ahead of the plagiarists in the digital age, Oswalt says, “I will just outcreate them, I guess.”

Win IMAX tickets

The new IMAX theater at Jefferson Pointe’s Rave multiplex opens Friday, but there is a special VIP preview that happens at 7 p.m. Thursday.

And a few lucky readers of this column could be a few of those VIPs.

The movie will be “Inception,” and I have five pairs of tickets to give away. But you must first answer a trivia question, and here it is:

The title of the first IMAX short film, and Charlie Sheen’s recent assessment of what runs through his circulatory system, have one word in common. What is that word?

Send answers to Features Editor Terri Richardson at The Journal Gazette, 600 W. Main St., Fort Wayne, IN 46802, e-mail them to trich@jg.net, or drop them off in the lobby of Fort Wayne Newspapers.

Include the words “IMAX Contest” in the subject line of the e-mail or at the bottom of the envelope, and include a first and last name and a contact phone number.

We will accept entries through 5 p.m. Tuesday. A winner will be randomly drawn from correct entries submitted.

Good luck.