What if you mix the mayonnaise in the can, with the tuna fish? Or — hold it! Chuck! I got it! Take live tuna fish, and feed 'em mayonnaise! Oh, this is great. [Speaking into Dictaphone.] Call StarKist! — Bill Blazejowski, Night Shift, 1982

When I show up at Amelia's Espresso & Panini in Santa Monica at 9:15 a.m. — 15 minutes before our prearranged time — Michael Keaton is already waiting, his New York Times mostly read, two-thirds of his first latte gone. Despite its precious-sounding name, the café has a mom-and-pop quality to it; after I get my cappuccino, the genial owner sees I'm sitting with Keaton and throws me a well-worn: "You're hanging with this guy? If I'd known that I'd have charged you double … "

Truth be told, I was actually a little nervous about this interview. Short of an occasional Letterman appearance, Keaton rarely does sit-downs — and is famously a private person. This is why I was also OK with throwing the entire conceit of "Dinner With Daniel" out the window when I heard Michael preferred to meet for coffee rather than a meal. Besides, as much as I enjoy gorging myself on the company dime (and I do), coffee also seemed like it would invariably lend itself to a shorter interview. I was wrong.

Daniel: [fiddling with 99 cent iPhone recording app] I hope this fucking works.

Michael: Technology, you know. I'm pretty horrible. I use it, but mostly I like to view it from afar. But I'm still fascinated by it.

Daniel: I was pleasantly surprised that you would do this. Seems like you're not a kind of guy who does a lot of these sorts of interviews.

Michael: [laughing] I'm not. But I say that I actually — I admire all this stuff, too. I read in the New York Times the other day, the article — what's that game on NPR? "Wait, Wait —

Daniel: … Don't Tell Me."

Michael: It's fantastic. Anyway, there's an article about these types of shows and blogs and trying to appeal to a younger audience.

Daniel: I read that too.

Michael: I just think it's fantastic — and yet I'm not usually a participant [in interviews]. Something suffers, I guess — if you call it suffering. You might not get this job or that magazine cover, but what you get is a higher level of normalcy.

Daniel: No, I get that.

Michael: I'm actually getting ready to do a movie with Larry David. It's funny. He was one of the first guys I met when we were both doing stand-up. He actually remembered the exact month we met standing in line outside of Catch a Rising Star. At the time, I was going back and forth [from Pittsburgh] to New York — driving my '65 Volkswagen bug — trying to be an actor, or to write, and I'd just started doing improv. So the other day Larry and I were talking about that world and I said, "Do you miss that stuff?" And I didn't even finish the sentence, and he said, "Yeah. I do. But I like to do it the way I like to do it." Which I get. So [instead of a traditional interview] every now and then, I may go do a college Q&A. They're fantastic, especially with college students, people that use their minds — and they're still really active and fun, and, you know, dangerous …

Daniel: [laughing] Right, you mean as opposed to the old, dead minds the rest of us have.

Michael: [laughing] Yeah.

Daniel: So what's the Larry David thing you're doing?

Michael: I'm doing this movie — really an improvised movie — where he sets it all up in the outline and says, "Here's what happens … "

Daniel: Oh, so like Curb Your Enthusiasm but the movie —

Michael: Yes.

Daniel: That sounds like fun.

Michael: Well, I have no idea what we're going to do yet.

Daniel: You just said OK, and show up?

Michael: [laughing] Yeah.

Daniel: You know, I actually went online and watched some of your old stand-up. It was from when you were just starting out.

Michael: I've never seen it. I'd guess what's out there is not probably very good.

Daniel: No, it actually held up pretty well. Like, you do this bit where you're reading a Bazooka Joe comic to the audience — and it's typically inane. You explain how he's throwing a clock "to see time fly" — but then you leave their boneheaded world and keep "reading" the comic as if, inexplicably, Bazooka Joe and his doltish friend are suddenly having a deep metaphysical discussion about [space-]time continuum and Einstein and parallel planes. It was funny.

Michael: [laughing] Oh yeah — no, that was actually a really funny piece, I loved that piece. And it was like four and a half minutes …

Daniel: [laughing] Yeah. It was solid. Speaking of the new world — I was kind of surprised to see you were on Twitter. You seemed to have a pretty substantive following …

Michael: Well …

Daniel: But then one day you made an Anthony Weiner joke … and, boom, you were gone. Dust.

Michael: [laughing] Yeah, I was over it. But I think it's the greatest tool. So ingenious.

Daniel: No, you were funny — I remember you said "Jimmer Fredette of BYU will go down as one of the greatest scorers ever. He also looks like a guy who would own a Nissan dealership."

Michael: He does, right? I think I have to start doing it again.

Daniel: You went on a pretty big Trump run on Twitter for a while.

Michael: I watch Morning Joe occasionally, I used to watch a lot more than I do now, but I watched it, and all of a sudden, there was this love fest, for crying out loud, this inexplicable love fest one morning, for The Donald. And I thought I was hearing things! Honest to fucking God, I thought I was fucking hearing things. And I was so enraged that of course now I couldn't go back to sleep, now I'm pissed off.

Daniel: And then — just as suddenly — people were thinking about him as president? I felt the same way. Like, what world are we living in?

Michael: It's unbelievable! Plus — how come no one called this motherfucker out on "his people"? He's got people. He always has people. "I got people in Hawaii checking in, too." And, OK, fine, finally after two years of him talking about his "people," Bob Schieffer or somebody finally said, "Can you tell me who the people are?" Which is what I'd been saying — I want to know who the people are! Give me some names …

Daniel: Just be transparent …

Michael: Yeah, because maybe you're onto something. I just can't stand it — what we give these people. These people gain power and they're morons.

Daniel: So is your son [Sean, 29 years old] political too?

Michael: Definitely. He's an observant dude, he listens to NPR, he...