Courtesy of Overture Films

Traitor takes a lot of political risks: It portrays some terrorists as sympathetic, vulnerable people, while also defending counterterrorist strategies. Did the story line change your political views?
I don't know if I see any of the characters as very sympathetic. I think you see in some of the terrorists the potential for being better people. [My character] Samir sees a kindred spirit in Omar, a Muslim terrorist. Jeff Daniels's character, who's a rogue element in the U.S. government, truly believes that what he's doing isn't terrorism. There's a point in the film in which well-meaning people become terrorists because they've been told, "This is just the cost of getting the bad guys." But in this movie, there's no point when you can say, "These guys are good, these guys are bad." Everyone is both.

Photo: Getty Images

So what’s with the new album’s title, OH(Ohio)?
Well, what I liked about it was that it really didn't make a lot of sense. There's something about it that's intuitive — that starts seeming right even if I don't know why. And that's a lot of the work that I do and why people can't always understand what my songs are about, because it's kind of an intuitive feeling. It just sort of felt right.

Courtesy of Pitchperfect PR

So, what’s up with the freaky photo of your face covered in blood on the tour’s Facebook page?
Listen, if you deal with classical-music people, the kind of head shots you have to have as a composer are APPALLING. Go to ten composers’ Websites, you’ll want to kill yourself. It looks like some seventh-grade … it’s so bad. I just thought, Fuck that, it’s so uninteresting. The stuff I was sending out of myself last year was like, you know the one where I look all giddy and sort of like a serial killer? They were like, “Do you have anything more serious?” And I was like, “Well, yeah, I do, but I’m going to have blood on my face.” There’s no in between. It’s sad, too — have you ever noticed, you see a picture of Philip Glass and it’s always that same pose? You can just hear the photographer being like, ‘Put your hand over your mouth, look pensive!’ You’re like, ugh, God. It drives me crazy. You know who has great head shots? James Levine. It’s that one of him looking super excited to be conducting Berlioz. It’s awesome.

Photo: Getty Images

Your main character, Brill, is a critic. It seems surprising for a novelist to characterize a fictional critic so kindly. Do you feel a sense of warmth for your own critics?
Warmth for my critics? No, not particularly! They’ve often been very tough with me. To tell you the truth, I tend not to think about it very much. I present Brill as an open-minded person, someone who’s interested in literature. I don’t talk about the kind of reviews he wrote, but I wouldn’t imagine he’d be slashing other people’s work to pieces. He’s an enthusiast.

Photo: Joan Marcus

So, is it more nerve-wracking to do a sex scene onstage than it is on Weeds?
Actually, it’s less. When you do it on camera, there’s only four or five people around, but it’s so intimate because you’re not projecting any emotion, it’s just right there, so it’s a little weird — a little close. Plus then it’s on tape, so it makes it onto the Internet, and it’s frozen in time. Onstage, all that awkwardness just doesn’t exist.

Photo: Getty Images

With this meta-convention of playing yourself onscreen, you must have asked "How do other people perceive me?" … right?
No.

Why not?
I don't know. I guess I'm not smart enough. [Laughs.] Maybe that's my downfall. I don't really care what people think of me, to be honest. Maybe if I cared more, I could create a persona and be more successful.

In the film, "Elisabeth Shue" says that what she misses most about being an actress is making out with her cute co-stars — and that, as a nurse, she can't make out with her patients.
That was definitely my contribution to the script.

Photo: Getty Images

So the movie is pretty over-the-top. How did you and Ben Stiller decide when to draw the line between funny and…
Heeeere we go. I know what's coming. [Laughing] I can see ten minutes into the future!

Well … I was going to say, between the funny and the totally ridiculous.
Neither he nor I are fans of cruel humor. Like the kind of humor that just makes people feel shitty. We're very careful when we tee up our subject, which was Hollywood and actors here. So obviously Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.), as sort of the most risqué character, was the one we were most careful with. There's nothing funny about African-American jokes, but there's something very funny about actors playing African-Americans when they're white. We wanted to do a send-up of those Method actors who become anorexic and dysmorphic when they get parts, you know, live the role, pluck bald spots out of their hair.

Photo: David Atlas / Retna

You've been opening for Radiohead all week. What was it like meeting them?
It was great. They immediately came up to us on the first day of the festival and introduced themselves; they were super gracious and made us feel comfortable and at home, which was a total relief. It was really surreal too, since we’ve all been such fans of theirs since we were, like, in high school. So we all just sort of tried to not dork out and be as normal as possible. We sorta talked about … the weather.

Photo: Joan Marcus

How did you make the decision to leave Spring Awakening?
I'd never dragged my feet into that building, I'd never not wanted to be there — even when I'd done it 500 times, I still loved it. But it really felt like it was time to move on and do something new, and we knew Hair was coming up in the summer. Lea Michele and I didn't want to do the show without each other — we left on the same day.

There’s an entire YouTube community devoted to your last curtain call.
Oh no, really?

You kind of don't get a word in edgewise.
Well, we planned that. Lea's very good at talking in front of big groups of people. We were very organized. She had a dramatic monologue planned.