Edward Norton met and consulted many members of the Tourette's Association of America to prepare for the role. The film has received approval from the organization as well.
Norton's grandfather James Rouse was a progressive urban planner, whose ideas about cities were in sharp opposition with Moses's. "My granddad met Moses in the sixties," Norton said. "He told my uncle that he was the most dangerous man in America."
[Newyorker, 2019/10/28]
According to writer, director and actor Edward Norton, the principal major stars all worked for free on this, his second directorial outing.
Although Jonathan Lethem's novel is set in 1999, the year it was published, Edward Norton wrote the screenplay to be set in 1957, believing the novel's characters and dialogue were better suited to a noir film, and because he'd always wanted to make a period film.
Edward Norton said it took 45 days to shoot the entire movie.