In Hollywood, There’ll Always Be A Time To Cut

If you walked out of the film “A Time to Kill” feeling distinctly underwhelmed, you aren’t alone. Star Samuel L. Jackson blames changes in the editing room.

“It’s a good movie, and I’m proud of it, but it could have been so much better,” Jackson told the Nashville Tennessean on Tuesday.

Jackson stars as the character Carl Lee, a man accused of killing two white men who had raped his young daughter. In director Joel Schumacher’s film, which is based on the book by John Grisham, Jackson is defended by an attorney played by Matthew McConaughey.

Jackson says one particular scene that further developed his character was cut.

“Loss of that scene changed the concept of Carl Lee,” Jackson said. “I don’t usually complain about cuts, but that one really hurt.”

Loose talk

Kevin Costner, mistaking real life for one of his movie roles, on the notion that terrorists blew up TWA Flight 800 (on “Extra”): “If I knew who did it, I think I would rally up with any group of my friends and handle it and take care of it.”

We hear he’s been havin’ some troubles with his lady

Robert Cray turns 43 today.

She walked in, winked and asked, with a smile, ‘Got milk?’

The factual item involved actress Salma Hayek (“Desperado,” “From Dusk Til Dawn”) appearing on the cover of a Los Angeles magazine dressed only in whipped cream. The interesting part, though, came when she was asked whether this was the first time she’d ever worn only a dairy product. “No,” she said, “but it’s the first time I got pictures.”

After all, there’s no grass in Madison Square Garden

As for the National Enquirer’s declaration that the delivery of Madonna’s child will be a “three-helicopter birth,” the pop diva’s publicist, Liz Rosenberg, merely snorts. “They’d like to do that if Madonna was giving birth on the grass,” she says. “But that’s not really the way it’s going to happen.”

Every night grandma reads to him from ‘Richard III’

Just thought you’d like to know, Lady Sarah Catto, 32-year-old daughter of Brit-royal Princess Margaret, just bore a 7-pound, 12-ounce son. The boy, yet to be named, is 14th in line for the crown.

We thought Burundi was lead singer of Smashing Pumpkins

From the We’re Only Human files, comes this correction that ran in the New York Times: “Burundi is more than twice the size of Connecticut, not the same size.”

For Mitford’s friends, death isn’t always such a grave issue

At Monday funeral’s for writer Jessica Mitford, who died last week of cancer, several of those who attended had stories to tell about the author of that classic work of non-fiction “The American Way of Death.” One, columnist Molly Ivins, spoke of attending a show on embalming in ancient Egypt with Mitford, who whispered to her, “Now there was a culture where they let the funeral directors get completely out of control.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Color photos

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Compiled by staff writer Dan Webster