It’s been a while since we’ve reported on William Monahan’s Mojave, but the film is currently in post-production and apparently it’s moving along in a rather unique manner.  The film stars Garrett Hedlund as Tom, a depressed writer-director who’s fed-up with Hollywood.  He opts to go to the desert to clear his head and that’s where he runs into Oscar Isaac’s character, Jack, a brilliant and homicidal drifter.

Fran Kranz also has a small role in the movie, so while discussing his upcoming release, Murder of a Cat, I asked him how everything’s going with Mojave.  He did note that at this point, the film is out of his hands and he hasn’t seen any footage yet, but he has heard that there’s “very different” cuts of it being considered.  Hit the jump for more.

Update: Steve here. I've been interviewing Monahan for The Gambler and asked for clarification about Mojave. His response is after the original article.

Here’s what Kranz had to say about the status of Mojave and working with Monahan:

“William Monahan is such a great writer and that script is so, so good, but it’s out there and from what I gather, they are still trying to figure out what it is.”

Kranz also added this about his experience on set:

“[Monahan is] really out there and so incredibly talented and so kind of hyper intelligent that it’s a pace and an intensity that is not necessarily easy to keep up with, but it’s a lot of fun to be around.  My experience on that set, I play a small role [and] his ideas about it would change or all of a sudden he’d become so infused with passion about this one line I had, you know what I mean?  It was a very strange on-set experience, but really creative and you felt like you were involved in something very, very special.”

And now here’s where he gets into the current state of the edit:

“It’s just a really neat cast and I really have high hopes for it, but, you know, I don’t know what’s going on with it.  In fact, I’ve heard, because I’m friends with some of the producers and people that worked on it obviously, and, you know, the last I heard there are very different versions of the movie going back to the whole whatever script, shooting and post-production …”

When asked if those versions are different tonally, Kranz replied:

“I’m not sure what it means, you know?  And I don’t want to speak out of turn because it’s not my place, but I’ve just heard that they have very different cuts, whatever that means.  But there are giant, giant chunks of dialogue that are just Oscar Isaac, Garrett Hedlund at a table talking to each other for like 10 pages and they just both have long monologues pretty much, so you can only change that movie so much.  It really is this sort of showdown between these two people, this sort of Hollywood director and this kind of wanderer in the desert, devil character.  It’s pretty intense.  It’s pretty awesome and it’s some of the greatest dialogue.  Really funny.  Mark Wahlberg has a cameo in it.  I mean, it should be an incredible, cool movie and I was so proud to be a part of it, but you kind of have to forget about these things once they’re over, you know, and you just have to hope for the best.”

I’ve been hooked on seeing Mojave ever since Monahan said the film’s tagline should be “Mojave is what it is what it is.”  Even though we’ve got a good deal of concrete plot details, I still can’t quite wrap my ahead around it, but I really appreciate that mystery and challenge.  Hopefully Mojave secures distribution soon so we can finally see what it’s all about.  (And also to see what logline the marketing team winds up coming up with.)

Catch Kranz talking about Mojave in the video clip below and be sure to keep an eye out for our full interview with him on Murder of a Cat coming later this week.

William Monahan as it happens is presently being interviewed by Collider for The Gambler and has this to say:

Mojave was colorized, scored and mixed this summer at a length shorter than I might have liked, and lacking some nuance, but I don’t know one director who doesn’t say that.  It’s remotely possible that people not myself might have independent second thoughts about that version, but there is no back and forth whatsoever involving me. I don’t have anything to do with marketing,  and I don’t have final cut. I haven’t looked at Mojave since I completed mix in the summer.  As far as I know from the person in my company that deals with these things, there’s a marketing plan in place suitable for an original film that cost under three million dollars, and no mystery; but I appreciate the interest and even the speculation and confusion. Fran is brilliant in the film, with superb comic ability, and he’s right: Mojave was a special experience for all of us.