One of the series of decisions that the great screenwriter John McNamara made was about who to depict. [Ronald] Reagan had a role in HUAC, he was a friendly witness, but never went over-the-top about it.

Once you're a public figure, there's a certain amount of privacy you do give up.

As long as we, again, kind of keep earning the sequels with material and I'm confident Mike can, I'm in. You know I always want to do those. But I also want to keep going in some of the direction as Meet the Parents has.

I'm not one of these directors, so far, that wants to have a whole separate director's cut of these things. So far they've turned out to be kind of the length that they wanted to be.

I was always interested in the larger picture, I was pre-law in college, and had a degree in economics. I was very interested in the big question 'how then shall we live?,' how do we organize as a civilization when we are so different, and often don't get along, yet we know at some point we have to unite for the common good? I actually really care about those issues, and I'm driven to understand how it works.

But I couldn't cut that whole septic tank scene out because the audience liked it so much. So I sort of fell right back into getting a cheap laugh, but I still loved it.

On the other track I got to talk with Jon Poll, my editor, and we go into more detail about the decisions we made in both the production and the post-production. So I hope the combination becomes something worth collecting.