They're in town, purportedly, to discuss Awesome; I F---in' Shot That, the innovative new concert film cobbled together from footage taken on hand-held cameras given to 50 fans at a 2004 date at Madison Square Garden. But after more than two decades together, they're so adept at riffing off each other that structured conversation is more or less impossible.

On this day, much of their material revolves around Horovitz's limited acting career, with him playing the part of the seasoned Hollywood veteran and lecturing his bandmates on the tricks of the trade. But more or less every topic becomes an excuse to go off on a different tangent.

A simple opening question on where their press tour is taking them leads to an extended bit on wanting to go to Regina, but being snubbed by all the "cooler-than-thou filmmakers" there who refused to take them seriously as artists.

A query about maintaining a youthful fan base into their forties somehow leads to an extensive discussion about Horovitz's father (playwright and screenwriter Israel Horovitz) working out at the same gym as Jay-Z and allegedly walking up to Yauch and telling him to "Google me, bitch."

Asking about their views on unauthorized video of their concerts leads Diamond into a monologue about the danger of letting audiences see them sweat. ("We're illusionists, like Penn and Teller or Siegfried and Roy. Sometimes, after about an hour into the show, we might actually break into a sweat. Now, if someone in the audience randomly takes a picture, and that sweat is depicted in said picture, that then ruins said illusion. It ruins it for the fans, and that's what makes me cry.") And then there's the final, innocent question about future projects, which leads to this:

Much of the humour is in the delivery, rather than the apparently improvised material; at the point of their relationship where they finish each other's sentences, all three have their comic timing down pat. But even when it occasionally falls flat, it's reassuring to see them gunning only for laughs.

Long having straddled the line between piss-taking pranksters and serious artists, New York's favourite white rappers seemed a couple of years ago to be heading a bit too far in one direction.

In one of their few moderately reflective moments, they seem to recognize that the more politicized tone of 2004's To the 5 Boroughs - particularly the song In a World Gone Mad, released early to express their opposition to the Iraq war - was not a complete success.

"Maybe In a World Gone Mad wasn't the strongest song," Yauch concedes. "We could've worked on it more. We just wanted to get something out there, and we kind of threw that together."

Asked about other rappers who've gone political, Yauch expresses his admiration for Public Enemy. "But more often than not," he allows, "it seems like you end up stumbling trying to do that stuff."

With a new DVD aiming solely at entertainment value - Awesome is loaded with extras that are basically comedy set pieces - the Beasties might be heading back to their comfort zone. But this is what they do best, and at this point in their careers they seem perfectly fine with that.

Asking how they're gauging the success of their film, one expects another tongue-in-cheek response. But for once, they give the straight goods. "If it's funny," Horovitz says evenly, "then I think we've succeeded."