Why Edward Norton Cast Bruce Willis, Alec Baldwin and Willem Dafoe in 'Motherless Brooklyn'

At 50, Edward Norton (Birdman, Fight Club, The Incredible Hulk) just fulfilled his 20-year ambition to write and direct Motherless Brooklyn (from Jonathan Lethem's 1999 National Book Critics Circle Award-winning novel).

For the difficult role of the hero, Lionel Essrog, a 1950s New York detective with Tourette's syndrome — which gives him tics and repetitive movements and makes him blurt rude things that others might think but not say — he cast himself. A sensible choice, since few actors have topped Norton's performance as a murder suspect with another speech affliction (stuttering) in Primal Fear, which made him an overnight star in 1996.

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It also helps that he has a Yale education, a Golden Globe Award, three Oscar nominations, two Emmy nominations, two Film Independent Spirit Award nominations, as well as an AARP Movies for Grownups Award nomination.

To fill out his cast, Norton looked to some of the greatest grownup actors in the business. Bruce Willis, 64, plays Lionel's beloved detective boss, whose murder ignites the whodunit plot. “Bruce has such a fantastic crinkle in the eye, and even the smallest smile from Bruce, or the merest affectionate teasing, makes you understand that he loves Lionel, and why Lionel would feel so bonded with him,” Norton says.

Willis also has the capacity to convey the deepest imaginable sadness, crucial to the spirit of film noir. “Motherless Brooklyn is a tragic gumshoe story in the 1950s, but it's hard-edged, not a nostalgia piece,” Norton says. “People of a certain age remember the ‘50s — it wasn't all bobby socks and Buddy Holly. It's in the vein of L.A. Confidential or Chinatown, which didn't treat the period with sentiment."

Norton's villain, a suspect in the murder, is Moses Randolph, a character inspired by titanic developer Robert Moses, who built countless bridges, roads and parks in New York, and almost bulldozed Greenwich Village. The role was perfect for the gifts of Alec Baldwin, 61.

"Alec has an incredible combination of capacity to intimidate and capacity to charm. His Moses is very brilliant and very compelling and very persuasive, really. But then, down underneath, he's a terrible bully. Like Lee J. Cobb in On the Waterfront, Alec has that ability you can't fake — that big, powerful gravitas, like a great Shakespearean actor. He's got an incredible command of language that's absolutely beautiful."

Still more intriguing is Moses’ mysterious associate Paul, a character based on Norton's famous grandpa Jim Rouse, who worked with Eisenhower, Reagan and Bush, got the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Bill Clinton, championed free enterprise and philanthropy, popularized the American shopping mall, and personally founded Norton's hometown of Columbia, Maryland.