Politics are all around us, you can't escape it. It's natural that the best movies are going to reflect what's going on in people's everyday lives.

The key to a good rib is for us to leave them alone and let the hickory and the ribs do all the work.

Summer is when audiences expect us to deliver excitement. Some movies just didn't fulfill that promise.

These movies are asking sensitive questions about racial intolerance and Middle East politics. It's been an amazing year, very much like 1968, '69 and '70, when you suddenly see all of these political movies coming out at the same time, out of the watershed of politics. Some of it is due to our own insecurity about the voices representing us in government right now. We feel like our government has set us adrift, and we're trying to make our voices heard. We're telling them to be worried about these things.

Polly has done a fantastic job overseeing some of our most important movies. She has great creative instincts and can handle any production. She is a key part of our creative group, and I am lucky to have her on our team.

We're still small enough to have a snail-like pace in opening new locations. We're still hands on enough that it wears us out.