Each day in a small rented office space in Canton the director looks at the dailies as he pieces together the actors' performances. In February, editor William Steinkamp (The Firm) assembles a print that runs over four hours. The director chops out the trial's long opening statements, Jake's and the Klan's quests for lists of potential jurors, and scenes revealing the private lives of the white jurors.

''I had no intention of releasing a 2-hour-and-20-minute movie,'' says Schumacher. But in the spring, when A Time to Kill's two test audiences award it ''definitely/probably recommend'' scores of 87 and 89 (the average test score is around 45), Warner Bros. asks the director to leave well enough alone. By now Schumacher and Grisham are friends again — and their search for Jake is more successful than they ever expected.

On July 15, McConaughey showed up at an advance screening in his hometown of Longview, Tex., and he was greeted with the trumpets befitting a local boy-turned-hot property. Although Universal tried to snare him for a remake of The Day of the Jackal and Bullock reportedly requested his presence in Speed 2, Warner Bros. held McConaughey to his contract, which gives the studio two more films; his next movie for Warner will be Robert Zemeckis' sci-fi thriller Contact, opposite Jodie Foster. It wasn't long ago, while shooting in Mississippi, that he stood by anonymously watching his costars turn heads when they went dancing at night. But while A Time to Kill was still in production, CBS' 48 Hours featured him in a piece about the making of the movie. A few weeks after the telecast, McConaughey is on the set going over his lines and recalling the moment he knew his life had changed: ''I noticed that more people were watching me dance.''

Originally posted Jul 26, 1996 Published in issue #337 Jul 26, 1996 Order article reprints
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