Double Entendres

Tim Blake Nelson and Edward Norton delighted a packed Alamo Drafthouse South Friday with the U.S. premiere of Leaves of Grass, which Nelson wrote and directed and which Norton co-produced and stars in. As twins.

Norton plays genetically identical but otherwise divergent brothers in the movie, a ruminative, dark comedy set in mostly in rural Oklahoma, Nelson's home state – in the film a land of ridiculously strong weed, poetry, vigilante justice, an affinity for crossbows, and a good ol' boy Jewish drug kingpin played by Richard Dreyfuss. Ain't It Cool News' Harry Knowles presided over the Q&A, where Nelson held forth on his dread of Mack Brown paraphernalia and his use of a twin expert who also worked on Adaptation and Youth in Revolt. Norton, meanwhile, spoke to how he thought of the different roles, basing Bill, the prodigal one, loosely on Nelson ("a Jew from Tusla who was a philosophy major at Brown") and the rooted stoner, Brady, partly on Tom Petty's hairstyle in the late 1970s.