Richard Wong wasn’t really engaged during his high school days. This was during the ’90s, when Wong was walking the halls of George Washington High School just worried about getting a C in his classes and keeping a low profile. Then he took an economics class. And he finally found something that kept his interest.

“My senior year, I did a video project for class — a commercial for souped-up cars. It was really fun,” Wong says about his economics assignment at the San Francisco high school. “It was the first time I was really into doing something for school.”

Since that teacher’s task, Wong has pretty much been working in film.

His latest assignment is “Come as You Are,” a funny and touching story about three young men with disabilities who embark on a road trip to lose their virginity. The film will open at the Roxie during the San Francisco Independent Film Festival on Thursday, Jan. 30.

For Wong, San Francisco will be a fitting place to play his new film, which hits theaters nationally on Feb. 14. He has lived almost his entire life in the Richmond District, attending Alamo Elementary, Presidio Middle School and Washington High. When he got the filmmaking itch, Wong enrolled at the College of San Mateo and then at the Academy of Art in San Francisco, financing his education by working nights at Costco.

He had a penchant for cutting classes in college, but it was for film work, not for avoiding his studies.

“School was never the answer. I never even bought a textbook,” he said. “Learning became the most important thing. Having mentors was the best education.” He found important mentors at Videofax, a professional video equipment rental house, where he immersed himself in the video engineering field.

Wong’s timing was perfect. It was the dawn of the high-definition age, and he learned to become a digital imaging technician. In the initial years of the digital video revolution, these technicians not only were responsible for color quality control, but also worked on set right beside the cinematographer and the director. DITs were in high demand, and soon, Hollywood beckoned, affording Wong the opportunity to work closely with talented auteurs and cameramen.

“That was my film education,” Wong said.

For the next six years, Wong toiled in Los Angeles as a DIT on television shows, including “Oliver Beene” and “Arrested Development.” He was on a clear track to garner cinematography gigs for TV shows, but Wong had other plans — to helm a feature film himself.

“After season two of ‘Arrested Development,’ I said, ‘I’m gonna make something. And that was ‘Colma.’ ”

“Colma: The Musical” was Wong’s 2006 feature debut, a low-budget and humorous look at the Bay Area city that’s known for having a lot of cemeteries. The film, which has a 90% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, was a collaboration with longtime friend H.P. Mendoza (a formidable filmmaker in his own right), who handled the screenplay, composed the music and played a lead acting role. Made for only $15,000, the coming-of-age tale won numerous awards, was distributed by Roadside Attractions and delighted film critics.

But despite all the accolades, Wong’s directing career didn’t exactly take off. This was partly because of his inexperience in navigating the film business, he said. The writers’ strike of 2007 and early 2008, which virtually shut down Hollywood, didn’t help matters, either.

“I learned you better capitalize on the window before it closes,” he said.

Wong directed a few other projects, but they didn’t gain a lot of attention. With the directing window seemingly closed, he began concentrating on his cinematography work, convincing himself that he didn’t need to direct.

“I told friends that I was never directing again.”

They didn’t believe him.

A few years ago, Wong was having dinner with a friend in Los Angeles and learned about a screenplay called “Come as You Are,” based on the Belgian film “Hasta la Vista.” The dinner conversation quickly changed to their children, but Wong felt a need to learn more about the project, which follows a pack of disabled friends who hire a woman to drive them to a brothel in Montreal that specializes in accommodating special-needs clientele.

“I couldn’t get the story out of my mind,” he said. “It seemed right up my alley.”

The stars began to align. The American rights to the Belgian story were in the hands of Grant Rosenmeyer, whom Wong had known from years back when Rosenmeyer was a child actor on “Oliver Beene.” Wong read the script, and Rosenmeyer viewed “Colma.” During a drive back to San Francisco from Los Angeles, Wong was on the phone the entire time with Rosenmeyer, who would eventually play a lead role in the movie.

As part of the deal, Wong also would have to help secure financing — something that he didn’t relish. Yet after some deft maneuvering at the Sundance Film Festival, the project was eventually pitched to a group of 40 millionaires meeting in Chicago. Wong was serving on jury duty at 850 Bryant St. when Rosenmeyer called him with the news that “Come as You Are” had been green-lighted.

“Directing is the most fulfilling thing you can do on a film,” Wong said. “There’s a reason I came back. I really missed it.”

Wong did the camerawork and directed the movie in 20 days, then edited the film in his family’s two-unit building, where he lives with his wife and daughter on one floor, with his mother in the upstairs apartment. His father is only six blocks away.

“We have the best domestic situation,” Wong says. “It’s great for my daughter. I grew up with my grandparents, too.”

Wong doesn’t shy away from questions about the fact that people with disabilities were not cast in the lead roles, and in fact welcomes any discussions about it. “There’s a lot of authenticity in the film – we represent people with disabilities properly,” he said, noting that the community has welcomed the upbeat message of “Come as You Are.”

“I want people to feel a sense of humanity,” he said. “I wanted a positive movie in what is a dark time.”

Those are high aspirations for someone who considered school an afterthought. But Wong’s experiences in the film world have taught him an axiom to live by: “You really are what you do,” he said. “You just have to do it.”

“Come as You Are”: Opening night film of SF Indie Fest, by director Richard Wong. 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 30. $15. Roxie Theater, 3117 16th St., S.F. www.sfindie.com