- Stay tuned to Mississippi Educational Television for a Southern Expressions special, An Evening with John Grisham, next.

This Southern Expression special is made possible in part by a grant from North Park Mall providing options for shopping in central Mississippi.

- Good evening, I'm Gene Edwards.

Just ten years ago, John Grisham lived here.

A small town Mississippi lawyer, a part time legislator, new husband, new father.

He wanted to be a writer.

His first novel, A Time to Kill, took the better part of three years to write.

He sold it by loading copies into the back end of his car and hitting the road.

He next wrote The Firm, and on the first Sunday of 1990, an agent called to say the film rights had been sold for over a half million dollars.

John Grisham's first five novels have sold more than 55 million copies.

His novels, The Firm, The Pelican Brief and the Client are hit movies.

And on the occasion of the publication of his sixth novel, The Rainmaker, John Grisham has come to spend an hour with us tonight.

Ladies and gentlemen, John Grisham.

(applause) How are you?

Good to see you.

Have a seat.

Have a mic.

- Y'all gonna wire me in?

- We will.

Hand this to you here.

I think it's all organized.

We have a lot of people here who have questions to ask of you.

There you go.

We'll just clip that on right... - I always wanted to be on Oprah.

- See, I even do the-- I even do the technical work, you know, so I would.

Let me ask about this business before we do anything else.

Okay?

Time to Kill.

How many copies, hardback, in the first run?

The only run?

- The original hardback printing of A Time to Kill was somewhere between four and five thousand.

- And you bought?

- A thousand.

(laughter) - The Firm, how many copies in the hardback first edition?

- First edition, they printed 55,000 copies of The Firm in 1991.

- Yeah?

- March of 1991.

- Went on to sell 7 million.

- It sold 600,000 hardback and sold somewhere around 13 million in paperback.

- I figure where I'm going here.

- Okay, - Pelican Brief, the first edition hardback copies were all-- (laughter) I know, I know, I'm just-- - The Pelican was uh... Pelican was first edition, first printing of Pelican, I think it was 450.

- 450,000.

Okay.

And the first printing of The Client was about... - I think, 1.8, 1.9.

- So getting up there.

And then The Chamber, the first printing was.

- Two and a half.

- Two and a half.

And this book, this Rainmaker, how many copies in the first printing?

- 2.8.

- Million?

- 28,000??

(laughs) You think we're losing ground, man?

- Man, that's incredible.

So here's what I want to know.

You go to bed at night, you put your head on the pillow, you go to sleep.

Do you ever think when you go to sleep at night, I'm going to wake up in the morning and it's all going to have been a dream?

- I did for a while.

But I guess it's like anything else in life.

You sort of get used to it.

The Firm was published four years ago, and and so there's been a lot of attention ever since then.

Book number six just came out.

And I mean, I don't take any of it for granted, but we've sort of become used to certain elements of it, certain aspects of being published, certain levels of attention.

We get as much as we can stand.

But there were some early days early on with The Firm where I thought I'd often ask myself if it was a dream.

Now, still, every day, I mean, there's not a day that doesn't go by that I don't really stop and think about it.

It's still new, it's still fresh, it's still happening.

I mean, the books are still you know, again, The Firm was four years ago, so it's happened awfully quick and we sort of got ambushed by it.

So it's been a real adjustment.

- Is there any way to prepare yourself for that?

- No - No way to do it?

- No, there's no way to prepare for it and there's no way-- There's no way to...

It's been very frightening at times, as there's no one to go to for advice, because you really can't find anybody who's been through anything, you know, similar to it.

Stephen King came to Oxford last year and we went and met each other and got to be kind of buddies.

And so we spent a lot of time riding around... riding the low roads of Lafayette County and talking about, you know, books, movies, success.

And it was a lot of help to me just to have somebody else to talk to, somebody who'd been through it.

And it was very beneficial.

But that advice has been pretty rare.

- A best seller's support group.

- Yeah.

(laughter) We get a lot of sympathy.

(laughter) - Well, we have a wonderful crowd of people here tonight.

We've got 150 people or so who have come to ask you questions.

They want to know all kinds of things.

I hope some of them have surprises for you.

Do you have a surprise?

What's your question?

Go ahead.

- Good evening.

In an interview with Bryant Gumbel, I believe it was right before the Pelican Brief came out, you stated that after A Time to Kill did not sell many copies when you sat down to write The Firm, you set out to write a book that would sell.

And I have always been fascinated by that statement.

And my question is how does a writer accomplish that?

The Firm was a naked stab at commercial fiction.

I had spent three years writing A Time to Kill, a book I hoped would get published.

But right when I finished A Time to Kill, I went to the next book, which turned out to be The Firm.

And I thought back then that A Time to Kill would have a limited appeal if it was ever published, because it's very Southern.

It's very sort of emotional, and maybe even controversial.

I just didn't see it as a big seller even if the book was ever in bookstores.

At the time, I didn't have an agent.

I don't know if the book is ever going to get published.

And I had spent three years writing it and it had become a very much a secret hobby, a daily habit, something I did for a few minutes or an hour or maybe every day.

And I said, Look, if I'm going to do this, if I get up at 5:00 in the morning and go to the office and hide trying to write, I'm going to write something that's going to sell.

I'd like to get paid for doing this.

And how do you do it?

I don't know how you do it.

You you just try to come up with a good story.

You try to come up with a story that people find suspenseful, people are hooked into early on and don't want to put it down for a long time.

- How much help was your wife in all that?

- I think there were a couple of instances along the way where she was crucial and had she not been there, I don't know what would have happened.

- For example?

- For example, when she read the first chapter of A Time to Kill, it was on legal pads.

Um, she didn't know I was writing it, and I was a nervous wreck when I gave it to her.

And I said, I've got something I want you to read.

And I left the house.

while she read it.

And when I came back, she said, This is pretty good, She said, I'd like to read some more.

And I said, okay, I'll go write some more.

(laughter) That's all I had, you know.

That was that was a big moment.

And there was a really funny story we tell occasionally.

Looking back, it's all a lot of fun.

I guess about once a month around our house, I'll-- when I can finally stop for long enough, I'll say, okay, I need 5 minutes, I need 5 minutes.

That means I have an idea for a story and that's been going on for a long time.

And it better be good because normally I get less than 5 minutes.

She loves to shoot the ideas down and I've got to give her three or four or five quick sentences with a good, you know, a good story, a good hook, a good, compelling idea.

And as I was finishing A Time to Kill, as I typically do, I'm looking forward to the next book.

I'm always anxious to start the next one for fear that I might not have one, you know?

I think writers do that.

Um, but Time to Kill was almost through, and one day I said, Look, I, I need 5 minutes.

I have an idea.

And so I gave her this idea of a young lawyer who goes to work for a law firm that's secretly owned by the Mafia.

And once you join the firm, you never leave.

And he tries to get out.

And what do you think?

And her reaction was amazing.

She said wait a minute, do that again.

You know, repeat that.

And I did.

And she said, that is a big book, if you can get it written, that has a huge commercial appeal to it.

And my reaction was, because we do this all the time.

My reaction was... really?

You think it'll work?

And so off we went.

Those two moments were very crucial.

She still has a lot of input.

She still reads each chapter as they come off the machine.

And we have some pretty healthy discussions about them, the fiction.

The kids used to think we were really seriously fighting, but they've grown up with it now.

They realize, no, they're just arguing over the book.

- At what point-- At what point though, in The Firm did you realize that it was really working, that it was really happening?

- I had written half of The Firm when I got the phone call from New York that A Time to Kill was going to be published, which is amusing when I read where people have written, It's obvious he wrote The Firm just for the movies.

I mean, when I wrote, you know, half of the book, I didn't know if the first one was ever going to get published.

But I was writing every day.

A Time to Kill was published in June of 1989.

And a couple of months later, I finally finished The Firm.

Um, I sent off to New York and I had an agent then.

He had sold A Time to Kill.

A Time to Kill had just come out.

I was very proud of it.

You know, I really liked the book and...

I thought The Firm was just, honestly, I thought it was just okay.

I was convinced it was not nearly as good as my first book.

I sent it off with a great deal of hesitation because, I mean, A Time to Kill, we printed 4000 or 5000 copies.

I bought 1000.

I couldn't give them away, personally.

The bookstores sure couldn't give them away.

The book wasn't selling.

I wasn't really pumped up about being a big author at the time.

And and I was convinced at the time that The Firm was sort of a step backwards.

And if my wife had not, you know, intervened and said, send the thing off, I'm not sure I would have.

My agent got it in New York in the fall of 1989.

And it sort of languished in his office for a while.

And there was no great stampede to buy The Firm.

He showed it to a few publishers, sort of unofficially editors.

And I mean, the reception was lukewarm.

It was just it kind of languished in his office for six months.

So I never-- I mean, I did not-- Long after I finished the book, I didn't really see the commercial angle to The Firm.

I thought it was a pretty good story.

That was it.

- Hi John, I have a two-part question.

The first, is less serious than the second.

- I'll try to remember the first part, when you get to the second.

- You will.

- I always forget the first one.

- I was always wanting to write you a letter saying, Dear John, your first name is John.

My first name is John.

You have a son and a daughter.

I have a son and a daughter.

You served in the legislature.

I'm serving in the legislature.

You're creative.

I'm somewhat creative.

And you were born February 8th, 1955.

I was born February 8th, 1955.

- Could be twins.

- Do you think that we're long lost twins?

Separated at birth?

(laughter) That's the first one.

No, but seriously, my question is, I worked in the film industry for a little while as Film Commissioner for Mississippi.

I know that at certain times, people have an interest in injecting themselves, especially with their writers, and they come up with the creation and they want to make sure that that creation, when it's put on film, is true to their original vision.

Have you had that that desire and an inclination?

And in terms of having more control over your film product, that you going to do with A Time to Kill very soon up around Oxford?

- Yeah.

- Did you exercise more of your artistic license and artistic control in that project or do you have such a desire?

- Well, we're sort of in the middle of it now.

I've had three movies, uh, Firm, Pelican and Client and, uh, I had nothing to do with any of them.

It was very easy to stay away.

I've always had a very cowardly attitude toward Hollywood.

By staying away, If they really mess it up, I can say, don't blame me.

I didn't make the movie, and if they make a really good movie, then I can take all the credit because I wrote the book anyway.

And by staying away from it, I've been sort of insulated.

And that's still is pretty much mandatory with the exception of A Time to Killl because that is my favorite book.

It's very special and dear and a sentimental, all that kind of stuff.

And at the time we began negotiating to sell the film rights to A Time to Kill, last August, I had and still have the ability at this point in time to get certain things out of Hollywood.

Now, it's not going to last forever.

I didn't have it three years ago, and I may not have it three years from now, but right now I've got them over a barrel and I can get what I want, especially with A Time to Killl.

They knew when they came to us with A Time to Kill, that there were some rather severe restrictions on it.

And with that in mind, we still negotiated and I got everything I wanted.

Um, approval of the director, approval over certain casting decisions.

Um, the big one is script approval and also approval of where they film it.

I want it filmed in Oxford, in Memphis.

And so that fell into place and I got there with that deal.

Every deal is different.

The Chamber, um, which probably will also be filmed this summer.

I have virtually no control.

Looking back, I wish I hadn't done it, but I did.

And so it's done.

I hope it's a good movie, but I treat the same way I treat The Firm, you know.

Theyr'e making the movie somewhere, but I have no desire to make movies.

I have no desire to hang out on.

I know nothing about filmmaking and don't want to learn.

I'm busy writing books.

I just don't want to get involved in it, and I don't want to inject myself into it with A Time to Killl, I want to be able to control the script.

I know if I can control the script and I have approval over it, then it's hard to mess up the story.

And that's really all I want.

Uh, beyond that, I don't, um.

I may change next year.

We hadn't sold the film rights to The Rainmaker yet.

If I sell the film rights tomorrow, I know I could get script approval and certain things.

And so I'll probably get it just to show them I can get it.

(laughter) Uh, but, you know, again, two years from now, it won't be that way.

Um, every, every deal has been different.

And I'm still learning.

I'm still learning.

I haven't been burned yet.

I've been lucky.

- Congratulations on your literary successes.

- Thank you.

- We're all proud you're a Mississippian.

- Thank you very much.

- One question: A Time to Kill was originally entitled Death Knell.

Is that correct?

Can you tell us a bit about the evolution of the name from Death Knell to A Time to Kill?

- Sorry you mentioned it.

(laughter) Oh, it was a working title.

I really don't know where it came from.

Uh, let me think a minute, I started writing the book over ten years ago, and it had to have a title.

I don't think it had one for a long time and somehow, evidently I like short titles, The first thing my new agent in New York said was, title's got to go.

And I said, Okay, title's got to go.

And so we went through a bunch of them over a period of a year, I guess, trying to find the right one and A Time to Kill was, I don't know, 10, 15 choices deep.

And we got to it.

And really we were getting close to publication.

We had to have a title for it and it was certainly not my first pick.

Um, it fits now, but it was a hard getting there.

The Firm was always the title.

The Pelican Brief was almost simply The Brief, which would have worked.

The Client was always the title.

The Chamber was almost The Row.

Death Row is called The Row, and I was determined even to have a shorter title than The Firm.

I wanted to call it The Row, and they talked me out of it.

Rainmaker was always the title, so sometimes I have it when I start.

Sometimes in the book I'm about to write now, I'm lost.

- You know, Rainmaker strikes a lot of people as what?

What is a Rainmaker?

- Read the book.

Go buy the book.

- I have, (laughter) For those who haven't.

- Well, you hear it all the time in legal circles.

Uh, the two areas I've heard a lot were among lawyers and among lobbyists.

A Rainmaker is a person who can bring in the business.

And it's quite common in those two circles.

I'm not sure about other areas, probably so.

But, um, it was a term I was very familiar with.

- So were you a Rainmaker when you were a lawyer?

- I was the Rainmaker.

I was a lawyer.

I was a paralegal.

I was a secretary.

It was a one man office.

So I was everything.

No, I've never made it rain.

- It's a fascinating story about The Rainmaker, where he goes out to the old folks home and sits around and does what was it called, Geezer Law.

Geezer law.

Did you practice geezer law?

Did you have to do that?

- Well, the first chapter.

Of Rainmaker is a very accurate recollection of a course I had in law school called Legal Problems of the Elderly.

And it was a non required course.

It was an elective, very easy two hour course and we would back then, I'm sure they still do.

We would save all of our easy stuff for the last semester.

Bunch of us were getting married and we were just looking for a way to goof off anyway.

And it was a two hour course required no work and we lined up for it.

The only hard thing about the course, we'd have to go out to the senior citizens buildings, not nursing homes, but community centers, where these seniors would come for for a daily meal and speeches and and songs and all that.

And we'd have to go meet with them and and hear their legal problems and give them advice.

And the advice was always pathetic, but we did whatever we had to do to get through the course.

Plus, we'd have the advice for them, we were law students.

We didn't know anything.

And for that reason, we were scared to death, just mortified sitting there, afraid of what these people would lay down before us.

And they looked at us.

We had suits on and, you know, looked intelligent.

They thought we had possessed great wisdom and we were scared to death.

But that's but in doing it, I met quite a few people who who were the victims of insurance fraud.

And also you'd see all kinds of crazy stories about wills.

They'd bring their wills with them.

And so that's where the idea kind of came from.

- We have, you know, on those television talk shows where they where they take phone calls from the outside world?

- Oh, you didn't tell me.

- We have a caller on the line.

Caller, are you there?

I think we have a caller on the line.

We did.

- [man on phone] John?

- There he is.

- Yes.

Yes, sir.

- [man on phone] This is Willie Morris.

(laughter) - And it really is Willie Morris.

- Who?

Hello Willie.

- [Morris on phone] I'm at a book store right now in Durham, North Carolina, on a national book tour.

And I just wanted to send my best to you and Renee.

- Well, it's good to hear your voice, Willie, and the best to you.

I spent 8 hours at Lemuria today signing books, and we talked about you and your book and we told a bunch of Willie stories.

John Evans did.

- John, I've been to a lot of bookstores around America the last month and I've had to climb over tall stacks of The Rainmaker everywhere (laughter) I was writing about, you know.

- If you find one without tall stacks, let me know.

I'll call Doubleday and we'll get some books in there.

- There is.

- [Morris on phone] I was signing My Dog Skip at the front counter of the big Doubleday Book Store on Fifth Avenue in New York the other day.

16 people bought your new book in 8 minutes.

So that augurs well.

How do you feel about it?

- Well, right now it looks like the book's really selling as well as could be expected.

And I'm very happy that one of these days, really, I'm going to I'm going to publish a book.

They're going to print a couple of million copies and nobody's gonna show up and buy it, I don't know what I'll do.

- [Morris on phone] Then I'll buy five.

I started Rainmaker on this trip and I think it's your best since your first one, A Time to Kill, which as you know, I like it so much.

- Really, you read it before anybody else did years ago, I took it.

- [Edwards]And that is the original connection, isn't it, that you took it to Willie Morris?

- [Morris on phone] Well, it was through Ed Perry, mutual friend Ed Perry and we're in the legislature.

- We were in legislature and Willie was living in Oxford, but he was in Jackson a lot.

And we talked about it one night at Hal & Mal's and then I finished the book.

Willie read it and liked it.

And then shortly thereafter I had an agent who wanted to handle the book.

Well, I didn't know any New York agents, so I drove down to Oxford one night.

I had another long dinner with Willie and Ed Perry, and I said, Willie, here's this agent's name.

Can you check him out for me in New York?

And Willie made some phone calls and came back and said, the guy's reputable and the guy is still my agent.

- [Morris on phone] You've been with him ever since.

- Yeah.

Yeah, he's I mean, he's negotiated everything ever since.

- [Morris on phone] John, wherever I go on this national book tour, people ask about you and I say, you love your wife and your kids, your dogs and baseball.

- What else is there, Willie?

- [Morris on phone] Well, also.

I like that magazine, The Oxford American a lot.

- We're doing real well with it.

It grows every month.

And and I'm very proud of it.

It's going to be a bigger magazine next month and next year.

- [Morris on phone] Well, I admire young Mark Smirnoff as an editor.

And I think you all are on to something I think this magazine could be one of the best in the country.

- We're determined to make it that way.

- [Edwards] That's Willie Morris on the phone calling us.

- [Morris on phone] Hold on!

I have one suggestion for John.

- Okay.

- John, I want you to buy the Chicago Cubs and make me the manager.

(laughter) (applause) - Thank you, sir.

Thank you very much for calling.

- Thanks, Willie.

- Let me ask you about this Rainmaker.

This is what Entertainment Weekly said: Smoother, more confident, A minus.

USA Today said it's going to be the most popular book since The Firm.

These are positive reviews.

- Yeah, I'm really worried about that because the last few books have been trashed and they all sell well, so now I'm getting good reviews and I'm worried about sales.

Yeah, it's not typical for me.

- I like to coach third base.

Your characters carry the story.

I'm really interested in what you go through in giving them their names.

- Names?

Oh, they come from everywhere.

A lot of them come from obituaries because the people are dead and they can't sue you.

Plus, they run the whole name.

You get some really great indigenous names in obituaries and telephone books.

I'm always looking for odd names.

Weird names.

You can't get too weird.

They got to be names you can the average reader can identify with.

You can't use real common names because, you know, you see them every day.

So you want you got to strike a happy medium somewhere with a name.

And I'm always struggling with that.

But, excuse me, I would say I'd say most of them come from the telephone books.

- I'd just like to thank you.

About four years ago, when The Firm, you know, was not real popular, you took the time and effort to sign about 30 books for some clients of mine, and some judges that you went to law school with.

They appreciated it very much and occupies a prominent place in their home, as it does in mine.

- You're welcome.

I wish I had time to do more of that.

There are thankfully a lot of books out there now and I've realized I can sign books for the rest of my life.

And most people are very understanding though when I can't get around to it.

But we were at Lemuria today signing books for a long time and we were reminiscing about those days back when the signings were not as long and we could, uh, we could enjoy visiting more and signing books.

But I guess it's kind of the price you pay.

- Does it surprise you how popular those signed books have become?

How valuable?

- I wish I had those thousand books back.

Yeah, I kept-- I sold 900 of them.

I kept 100 and a few got misplaced and I gave some away.

I'm down to about 50 now and they're buried in the backyard.

We don't give them away anymore.

- I'd like to know about the editing process.

When you finish a book and you take it and an editor gets hold of it.

How different is it from from your finished product to the publication date?

And how difficult a process is that for you?

- It's always difficult because by the time I finish the book, I'm really sick of it.

And last thing I want to do is redraft it five times.

It's probably the most crucial part of the book, though, because it's the first time the editor-- and I have the same editor.

The guy who did The Firm is still my editor.

It's really crucial for him to get his hands on it and invariably start cutting.

We cut, uh, you know, every book.

And, uh, from the time he gets the first draft until it goes to press, I'll do four or five, maybe even six different drafts of the book in about six weeks because we're invariably up against a deadline to get the book finished and get it to the press.

Um, so I no disrespect, but we like to talk about editing.

It's really painful.

I know, it's no fun.

- Your wife played a big role in editing the latest book.

- No she hits the back door when it's editing time.

She is of no help whatsoever.

She gets involved when I'm writing the book.

She's really good at reading the original ideas, the original chapters, and telling me what she thinks is wrong, you know, the characters or the plot.

But when the really we get down to the crunch time of editing and re-editing, um, there's not a whole lot she can do.

When we get the final, uh, copy edited manuscript back to go through one more time, then she will sit down at a table somewhere and I'll read one page and give it to her.

And we go through the whole book again.

Um, and it's quite tedious.

So for that reason, I have no desire to ever go back and read anything I've written, because I've written them so many times and read them and I'm really proud of them, but I'm sick of them.

- And you know how they end.

I know the end.

Yeah.

Let's go to the movies.

All right.

We've we've got a little movie compilation here of some of the moments from some of the films that have been made from from your novels.

Watch the monitors here.

Let's go to the movie.

Do you find something being attacked?

It's got nothing to do with the law.

It's a game.

We teach the rich how to play it so they can stay rich.

The IRS keeps changing the rules so we can keep getting rich.

Teaching them.

It's a game.

One you just played very, very well.

Where's your beer?

I decided to wait for the room.

I hear it's good down here.

Everything's good down here.

You deserve a taste of all that.

You want to talk about the movie.

Everyone I've told about the previous dead.

I'll take my chances.

You boys attempted to interrogate a child outside the presence of his mother without her consent.

He specifically asked you if you need a lawyer, and you said no state.

And as one of your reasons, the idea that lawyers are a pain in the ass, I'd like to confer with my client and maybe two people in my office tomorrow.

I'd say 3:00.

And if I need anything from you boys like the truth, well, I expect to get it.

I get you.

And again, I'm going to use the tape as blackmail.

My law.

Indictment.

We haven't really.

So I wonder I wonder what's it like to be sitting in the movie theater at the first screening of The Firm and The Firm?

Yeah.

They're they've all been different.

The first The Firm was of course, the first one.

And we watched it in the worst possible place in the world.

It was a real ritzy, glitzy New York premieres with 5000 strangers.

And we had tuxedos and long dresses.

And if you know.

Popcorn, you know, everybody's looking at you and it's just miserable.

But we knew going up there, we said, okay, look, you know, for the first 30 minutes, let's don't look at each other, you know, because it was it was very emotional.

It got very emotional real fast to realize it.

You know, there it was.

And to it becomes bigger than life when you see it on the screen.

And when we would see certain scenes in the movie that happened to be in the book and realize and some of the some of the things we could even remember, you know, where we were when those scenes were written.

And so, you know, The Firm, with all of its shortcomings and all the things I'd like to change about the movie, that's all it was all outweighed by just the sheer excitement of being there and seeing it.

And and I'll always look back on the movie with a lot of smiles.

I mean, again, I'd like to change some things.

The Pelican Brief, what we saw at the White House and private screening with about 20 people.

And and that was a lot more fun.

We had popcorn and film and the client was about a year ago, Joel Schumacher, the director, brought a copy of it to Oxford, and we rented out a theater and it was René and myself and both kids, and we sat down and watched the movie, just the four of us, and, and liked it immensely.

And, um, and Joel set in the back.

He was scared to death.

He, he was going to leave the theater while we watched it, but we may stay and watch it with us.

And, um, and I'm glad he did.

And he was glad he did.

Favorite of the three.

Well, I really have to watch what I say because all three.

Director among friends you know.

Yeah.

And that you can really run into I know how things get repeated.

Um, I've had three really good directors.

Sydney Pollack did The Firm, Alan Pakula did The Pelican Brief, and Joel Schumacher did the, the client.

And I know them all, you know, not real well, but I got to know him while we were doing the movies and I would never want to hurt their feelings.

They're like one bear in the other.

So that's how I chickened out.

And don't answer the question.

But you got to meet some really neat people.

Got to meet stars.

Yeah.

Wow, that's.

You just got through saying that you never read your books again.

You hated them.

So I'm interested in knowing whose books do you read and who do you enjoy?

I love to read Willy Mars.

I tend to read the kind of stuff I don't write.

I don't read a lot of legal books or a lot of suspense.

When I do, I like to read.

Uh, Robert Ludlum is almost a childhood favorite when it comes to good suspense and espionage.

Um, John le Carré is a favorite.

I usually read, um, I try to keep up with other young Southern writers, most of whom have been published for the first time in the past ten years.

Um, and living in this part of the country, you get to meet them because they're going to come through square books in Oxford, they're going to come through Lemuria here in Jackson, and you get to meet you know, you can go to the bookstore here in Oxford and meet great writers.

A lot of them are just starting off.

And so I try to keep up with what's happening in southern modern Southern fiction.

Um, from people I've met.

I love Pat Conroy.

He's got a new book coming out June 28, You Get the Wrong Date, which is the on air date for this.

It's also pub date for Pat Conroy's new book.

Thought I'd Straighten Out.

Do you ever read your fan mail?

And if so, what are the most interesting letters?

Or maybe the most interesting?

Interesting.

I read it for a long time and then reach a point where I could read it and answer it myself for a long time, up until a couple, three years ago when it just got to be too much.

I mean, it's now with a new book coming out, it's sometimes 100 letters a day and it's just it's impossible to to keep up with it.

I mean, I have a full time secretary of the Annals of Mail and I mean, there's no way I can read.

And I used to get a kick out of it, used to be fun to read when I had time and and see what people said about the books.

And you get some strange letters and maybe a scary letter every and then it's probably best just to ignore.

Uh, I hate to say that, but it's.

It's a reality.

It's in one of your books, you refer to the name Hankie.

Oh.

Where'd you get that name?

Did you go through the thinking?

No, the kid's name is Josh Abbey.

He played on my baseball team last year and his nickname was Inky, and that's how he got in the book.

I've used all my baseball players scrambler names up and use them all the books.

That's where.

What book was that?

My dad's name is Hank.

That's funny.

How did you say you hankie panky?

Okay.

He's in town to kill.

I have no idea.

I know.

How do you know you were?

I got it from your father.

They say.

That's where it came.

From.

Found Dad's name in the phone book.

Yeah, I got it from you.

You were talking about letters that you've received, and some of them are a little disturbing, and some of them make you a little.

Why did you leave Oxford?

Oh, you know, I guess everybody dreams of going off and hiding for a year.

I mean, you know, it'd be fun to do.

And that's what we did.

Uh, we, um, we moved to Oxford five years ago before the farm was published, and we, we bought a farm and built our house on the edge of town, and that has become home.

We both grew up in South Haven, which is about an hour from Oxford.

We both went to school.

I went to law school only as my wife did, trying a graduate work there.

And it was always one of my favorite towns.

And so we were delighted to move back there.

And it, it will always be home.

Uh, I don't know, I don't care where we go or where we live will always be home.

But we felt the urge to get away for a little while, go hard and rediscover some privacy and get our kids back to ourselves.

And that's what we've done.

By doing.

This.

I've been.

Involved with Little League baseball for a good bit, and.

I know that you have to.

And with your success and everything, has it made it difficult.

For you be able to be involved with it or.

You know, not really.

Sometimes I think the other coaches are saving their best pictures for me and I never really ask them, but I've been suspicious before.

But, um, I'm coaching right now.

We won last night.

Um, we were too.

And to coach the team in Charlottesville.

And the great thing about Little League baseball, I mean, I love to coach my kid plays and I'm coaching for six years now.

Uh, when I'm on the field coaching the kids, it's, you know what it's like.

You forget everything else in the world except those 12 or 13 kids who are on your team and, and trying to make sure you provide some kind of leadership for them is nice if you win, uh, uh, but it's not everything.

But, uh, I find it, I can't say it's total relaxation because I get pretty uptight and I secretly dwell on the losses long after they do.

I want to write a novel and coach the kids at the same time.

No, I wouldn't.

I wouldn't even.

Have to do it in the off season.

You know, I've never done it.

I've never I don't think I've ever written.

During baseball season.

Willie Morris mentioned the Oxford American, and I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about why you chose to make the decision to get involved in magazine publishing?

I have no idea.

Um, Marc Smirnoff, the editor of the Oxford Americans, an old friend of mine, Mark, helps edit my books.

Um, after we finished the book and before us in the book to New York, Mark goes through it once or twice the manuscript.

And, um, through that relationship we became and then he started the Oxford American a couple of years ago, and it's a great magazine, but it needed help, financial help and some guidance and some business savvy.

And that's where I kind of helped out there.

I had no desire to ever be a magazine publisher.

I don't know what a publisher does, but I'm a publisher and I'm a hands off publisher.

The magazine is Marc's.

And, you know, I look at some of the stuff that we're we get a lot of submissions now.

And if I like a story, he'll now talk about it.

Or if I don't like him, we'll talk about that, too.

It's fun to watch it grow.

There's something very American about watching a small venture like that get started with nothing and take off, and we're in the process of building it and we're dedicated to the quality and I think it's going to work.

Thanks for asking.

I have two questions.

One, do you plan on coming back to Oxford?

We come back all the time.

I mean, to live.

Uh, I can't say.

I mean, I've learned a long time ago not to predict, you know, long range what might happen.

I never thought I'd leave.

Uh, but we're taking it one year at a time, and right now, we're very happy.

Uh, still hiding.

And I think as long as we're happy, we'll stay where we are.

But we're back all the time anyway.

Do you have any advice for a would be author?

Don't quit your day job.

I'm serious.

Treat it like treat it very much like a hobby.

And, uh, and don't try to write the book in 90 days.

Take your time.

The time to kill took three years, firm took two years.

And that was by far the longest periods of time.

It took me to finish a book.

Um, but getting the habit of doing a little bit every day, I would have never finished the time to kill had I not sort of secretly adopted the strategy of, uh, making myself do at least one page a day.

If you do a page a day in the course of a year, you've just about finished a novel in a year, not a very long time for writers.

Um, that's, that's probably the best.

Advice, but the motivation to get to the first page and the motivation that you use, you start writing at 5:00 in the morning doing what's, what's that?

Well, well I think once I'd finished a couple of chapters, uh, the first couple of chapters were written very late at night after, uh, I guess we had one kid then, uh, Ty was a baby once.

He was in the bed once and I was in the bed, I'd stay up late and in the first couple of three chapters are written like that.

And then once I realized it was, you know, might go somewhere, um, I got in the habit of going to the office early.

Uh, you need a certain time and a certain place to do that every day.

And that's what but why?

Why, though, really did you start?

I mean, what was the bug?

What made you pick a story?

My motives were pure.

It wasn't money.

I had a I had a story.

I had a great I thought what I thought was a great courtroom drama based on something I had seen in court one day.

And I kept thinking, you know, you take the story, you had a few plots and twists and I would love to be that lawyer representing the father who got his own measure of revenge.

What did.

You see in court that they.

Saw a little girl testify, a little girl who'd been raped and and it was, you know, terribly emotional thing to watch.

And I remember thinking that, you know, that was my daughter.

It'd be hard not to to do something and still feel that way.

And then I thought, well, what if the father did that?

And what if I was his lawyer?

And what if that same jury sitting over there was going to pass judgment on my client?

And they're all parents, and I'd love to do what my client did to a rapist.

You know, it was fun to think about.

It was a very compelling issue.

The idea of retribution, uh, vigilante justice.

And.

And I could just see myself as a lawyer trying the case.

Back then, I was doing a lot of criminal trials and things like that.

And, and so, I mean, I knew I knew the system and I knew about a lot of it.

And so I suddenly had the story.

And the first the first page of A Time to Kill was the first thing I ever wrote.

And it was just it just sort of flowed out.

I basically have two questions.

Number one, all of.

Your your stories are about the law, obviously, because you know about that.

Have you ever gotten ideas from other people or thought about writing about something else or would that be a mistake for an author to write about something he doesn't know?

First question.

Second question is how much research is involved in writing a book such as the Chamber?

I think it would be a mistake at this point to try something else.

These books are working and and write.

You know, you write about what you know.

I mean, I hate to go have to research.

I guess it leads into your second question.

Research.

I don't like the research.

It's just I hate to stop the creative process and go check a fact or go check a hotel in the city or whatever.

So I'll usually just fictionalize everything.

I have no interest whatsoever in writing outside the law right now.

One of these days I think I'll write the legal thrillers on one hand and the four county novels on another, maybe go back and forth, because there are a lot of ideas in both areas when you when you all you have to do is watch TV and you're inspired all day long to write stories about lawyers.

I mean, it's it's endless in our society.

You can't get enough of it, obviously.

The second part, the most fascinating research I've done in any book has been the Chamber, because I went to Parchman, went to death row, and I went to the gas chamber and they locked me and strapped me down and shut the door and there's a little switch they hit that just makes a hissing noise.

Nothing comes out.

And I think it's really funny.

I went out and they've got know it's really funny um, but I met the executioner.

I saw a mix of chemicals.

I talked to the inmates, I talked to the guards.

I talked to, uh, it was sort of a lazy way to research because it was terribly interesting, terribly depressing, but it made such an impact.

It was once you go there a few times and do that, it's easy to write about cause you can't forget it.

I'm assuming your children are quite young.

What is the name of your favorite children's book?

Favorite author may be of children's book.

Wow.

All of my kids read my daughter's reading, uh, Roald Dahl, and she's reading the, um Oh, What's The Little House on the Prairie?

All books.

My son is not reading.

He's a sixth grader.

He's.

He's 11.

My daughter's nine.

Um, my son is really embarrassing.

My son from school now brings home books.

His classmates are reading and want me to sign them autograph he has read.

None of them has no desire to read any of them.

But his friends are reading them and they send them home by.

But who's like a pack mule with books?

I read a lot, but he doesn't.

Care.

Is it occurred to you he could be selling them?

Could?

Yes.

Go ahead.

Go ahead.

Yeah.

I wish he was very innovative.

I wish he was doing something, but I was going to play baseball.

Any book you write now is obviously going to be made into a movie.

So when you begin to write that book and develop your characters in the past, have you had famous people in the in mind or faces when you developed the characters, or were they real people that you knew or were they just totally fictitious?

Because when I read them, they become who I think should be, you know, cast in the role of the movie.

I have learned I am really lousy at casting these things.

I don't watch a lot of movies.

Um, I can't tell you the last current.

I mean, I love a good movie like everybody, but most of them are pretty lousy.

Uh, so I get frustrated with movies.

I don't watch a lot of them, which hurts.

Especially now the time to kill, because they're calling me all the time now with names of actors to play certain roles.

And I don't know these people or they know they say, Well, we'll send you, they will send your movies.

And I everyday get a pack and with five or six movies, you know, for some actor or actress and I've got to watch these things and tell them what I think about the only person I've cast that's that's worked who's worked with Julia Roberts in The Pelican Brief.

Because when I wrote the book, she was 24 years old.

She long red hair, she good looking long legs.

You know, you can narrow it down pretty quick.

And now I didn't I didn't know if we were going to sell the movie rights.

This was, you know, a few books back.

And it was very odd to see how, you know, it all fell into place.

And she she was in the movie.

And so who are you thinking about?

Is Jake in the In Time to Kill, who would be your perfect choice?

Well, that's a pretty source.

From the three movies you've seen.

I tell you what, don't you, that we've decided not to use, uh, an older actor.

Jake can be anybody from 30 to 45.

Uh, we're not going to use an older guy, but an established star with a big name because when you get somebody like that in a movie, you expect them to win the case, whatever it is.

And that's not.

Jake Um, so we're going with a 30 or 35 year old actor.

Um, and we have not agreed on one.

And it's, uh, it's getting frustrating because they'll call me with somebody name and I'll say, Nope, I don't like him if I've happened to see his movies.

And they'll say, Okay, who do you want?

And I have nobody else to give.

But as far as as far as casting the rest of the most right on casting was, uh, was Julia Roberts is that what you thought?

Or when you looked at the screen and saw other people, did you think, Oh, man, he's perfect, she's perfect.

That's just right on.

I've felt that a few times.

And the three movies, I thought Tom Cruise was fine from when I saw the film, much to The Firm.

They told me at that time they said, uh uh, we have every intention of offering it to, to Tom Cruise.

And so I always knew Tom Cruise would be, uh, Mitch.

I read in the newspaper a couple of weeks ago that you're going back into the courtroom to do, um, to be an attorney for family who's, who had lost a family member in a railroad accident.

Will this be the last time that we see you in action as?

LAWYER Yeah, uh, the case I took the case about four years ago, and at the time I thought I might take a case of two a year just to kind of stay sharp.

You know, the law, as it turned out, it's the last one I've taken and will probably go to trial sometime late summer or early fall in Brookhaven.

And, um, uh, once this one is over, I assure you it's the last one.

Yeah.

Have you been working at it all along?

I've been working hard for four years.

I hope my clients watch.

I mean, I can't say otherwise.

What do you have?

How many billable hours in this project.

I've got on a contingency fee?

Is it to continue keeping up with time?

This is the whole theme, though, of The Rainmaker, and it raises some serious issues about tort reform.

And, uh, if Congress has its way, would a case like this ever be able to be tried?

Uh, no.

What they're.

Well, they're considering, uh, doing with tort reform, um, uh, is placing some rather severe restrictions on the rights of people to sue and to recover.

And, uh, when I was in the legislature, um, I thought tort reform for, I mean, I was a trial lawyer, okay?

That's where I'm, that's my background.

And tort reform is nothing but an effort by insurance companies to, to save money.

And what they've done, they've lined up the doctors and a lot of well-meaning folks, hospitals and manufacturers and people like that on their side to present to the American people saying we're getting killed by lawsuit abuse, and that's what they call it.

Now, I can really pontificate on this.

We only have four or five.

I really don't want to talk about give us a for this trial.

This you're going to really be there.

You're going to be the guy.

Yeah, I've been there before.

Yeah, but but this is a different guy going in.

That is a guy who's sold 55.

Million books is going to tell you something.

What?

You're going to have everybody.

Well, but the good thing about Mississippi, we do not allow cameras in courtrooms.

Yeah, we have kept our brains.

They look what what they're watching in Southern California is a perfect example of why you don't put cameras in courtrooms.

That's they are, you know, close to that debate after this trial.

They don't belong there.

And in most jurisdictions, we don't have it.

Mississippi, you can't get near a courtroom with a camera.

Thank goodness our judges won't that this one's not going to be on TV.

Um, and once the, once a jury is selected, once the trial starts and all this other stuff is going to go away, it's going to come down to the facts.

The case will be trial in a week.

They can't pick two jurors in Southern California in a week.

We'll pick our jury in one day and we'll get on with the trial.

What you watching out there?

Is is la la land.

That's not the way you trial lawsuits.

Well.

I have a question about time to kill.

Did Wynwood press publish or produce galleys for that book?

You know, I didn't know what a galley was when when the book came out, I didn't know there were such things as advance reading copies.

I never saw one what they did and I've seen them later.

I don't heavy they they mimeograph the book, the galley sheets front and back page and they burn them together in letter sized paper they didn't have by 11 side sheets and they put the book jacket taped to the front of it.

That's where they shipped out.

And I never saw them.

Years later, I was in a bookstore and a had one.

He showed it to me.

It's the first time I've seen one, but they never sent me one.

So it was really odd.

In Oxford when you were with Stephen King, he said money was no longer the issue when he was writing.

Have you gotten to that point or when do you think you'll get to that point and when do you think you'll get back to writing the kind of books like the first.

Of was a loaded question.

I don't know how to answer that.

I I'm very concerned about book sales because I know when I publish a book now that the book is going to be purchased by a lot of people and they're looking for a certain level of entertainment for two or three days or a week from me, that's what they've become accustomed to.

That's what I'm known for.

And I want to deliver.

I mean, I want to produce.

I want to satisfy the readers.

So to gauge that, you have to monitor sales.

You have to look where the Rainmaker is being studied, probably as we're talking right now by people in New York to see sales patterns.

A book came out two weeks ago.

They want to know how the books are doing, what parts of the country and sales converts into dollars.

Real quickly, obviously, I would not write a book right now if I didn't think it would deliver what I'm expected to deliver.

I want to I want to I want to top the last book sales, not as a not out of greed.

It's just it's fun to see if you can beat the last time out.

Uh, the money's all finished.

Sure, but you reach a point pretty quick.

We don't really think about that anymore.

You're not worried about it, and it's fun.

It's fun to publish a book like The Rainmaker.

And lo and behold, you're getting good reviews, you know, happens better in three or four books.

Now, uh, that's.

That's fun to do.

But you want to deliver that type of book or that type of story, that type of entertainment.

Every time that you want to get better, you know, I want every book to be better.

Um, so the, the money question, I've, I've been very honest, if I didn't start this for money, I started because I had a story.

It quickly converted into money with The Firm because it was the work was too hard.

And I said, if I'm going to work as hard, I'd like to get paid for it.

I had no idea what was coming.

I had no idea what's going to happen.

Thank you for spending this hour with us tonight.

We have mightily enjoyed it.

The book is terrific.

The book's a big thank you.

Please come see us again by John Grisham.

by John Grisham.

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