LOS ANGELES — “Do we have an entourage for tonight?” Taika Waititi asked his publicist. It was just a few hours until the Governors Awards on Sunday, a major Oscar-season pit stop where potential contenders go to schmooze and be seen, and Waititi was in his hotel room, wondering if he could still add a few friends to the guest list.

“How many are we talking?” his publicist replied.

Waititi wasn’t sure. He’d never been to the Governors Awards before, but he knew he would be mingling with A-list actors and wondered if he might seem out of his depth. After all, what could a quirky director like Waititi do to compete with the crowds commanded by stars like Leo and J. Lo?

The answer, he decided, was to not take things that seriously. “I want our group to feel more like a gang,” he ultimately declared. “Joaquin and them, they’ll be the cool people. We want to be the rebels!”

In an Oscar season dominated by American masters like Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino, Waititi, a 44-year-old New Zealander, is poised to crash their party with “Jojo Rabbit,” a World War II comedy about a German boy named Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis) whose imaginary best friend is Adolf Hitler. Waititi cast himself as an awfully goofy führer, and dialed the satire up to 11: The opening-credits sequence equates German nationalism with Beatlemania by playing “I Want to Hold Your Hand” over footage of Nazi rallies.