The Daily Orange: What is your opinion of college shows as opposed to other shows?Gary Jules: Unfortunately, it’s an extremely varied animal. College shows … basically there are two kinds of college shows: the conciseness booking and the sort of headline booking. If there are people who care enough, are interested and want you to play there, that’s excellent. You couldn’t possibly hope for a better audience than a bunch of college students. Particularly who are not home studying.

D.O.:Why’s that?G.J.: It tends to be a thoughtful … more thoughtful demographic, you know. You can sort of try stuff out and there tends to be a lot more dialogue. You can kind of work a little bit more subtly than you would if you were trying to get the attention of a general paying public.

D.O.: How did you get started in music?G.J.: I never did anything else actually. I joined a band in junior high school. I was in a band with Mike Andrews, a guy … who I’ve been playing together with for 20 years, and he was the writer for all the music on ‘Donnie Darko’ and the producer of all my records. I’ve always sort of played music and I never really considered doing anything else besides that.

D.O.: Talk about ‘Donnie Darko’ and your Tears for Fears cover. How did that come about?G.J.: Mike got sent a script when I started making my second record, which we were doing in the basement of his house. We both read the script … but movies are weird. The script goes around and they get people with ideas on how to do things, but reading it for the first time (we) thought it was really cool. At the same time, neither one of us thought it would get made. But later, Mike and I got into it and we wanted our music to vibe with the movie. When were young we would constantly play versions of popular ’80s songs. The whole process was something we’ve always done, and ‘Mad World’ was one those songs.

D.O.: How do you feel being so closely associated to the song?G.J.: It’s awesome. It’s a little strange, because especially in Europe it got more popular than I ever intended to be. It kind of put me in a position I wasn’t really comfortable with. Like in tabloids and TV and the European version of ‘American Idol,’ where one contestant was pretending to be me and they sent me to the video of it. The kid had my same tattoos on his arm, and he’s wearing the hat I used to wear and he sings just like me. That kind of stuff … for me and where I’m coming from, it’s not about that kind of entertainment.

D.O.: So what do you think of ‘Donnie Darko’ as a movie?G.J.: I know too much about the making of ‘Donnie Darko.’ I think pieces of art, once you put them out, take on a life of their own and becomes dynamic living, breathing organisms, and I think that’s part of the magic of art. So in the case of me being the guy a little bit behind the curtain doesn’t make any difference I think.