Rocket Science, a film about a verbally challenged kid, premiered in Manhattan last night (and opens in New York, L.A., San Francisco, and Seattle August 10). Not since Mel Tillis slayed audiences in Cannonball Run has stuttering played so prominently on the silver screen. But how are real stutterers taking it?

"I just got a lovely e-mail today from the head of a stuttering group in New York who brought his kids to see a special screening last night, and they loved it," writer/director Jeffrey Blitz told Radar. "Most stutterers don't ever find a movie that portrays their own experience well, so I have a feeling the stuttering community is going to be very supportive."

The film's star, Reece Daniel Thompson, who's fluent (doesn't stutter) says he practiced his own stutter so much it became, well, natural. "After a while, I got so used to doing it, that I couldn't turn it off in real life," he said. "I'd be trying to order a meal and couldn't say it."

Blitz (nominated for an Oscar for Spellbound) said he auditioned several real stutterers for the role but none matched the specific speech he had in mind. And there just aren't that many young stuttering actors—"They tend to be a little bit older," the director said, dropping a few names of famous actors who've grown out of stammers. "James Earl Jones is a stutterer, Bruce Willis is a stutterer ... but it's hard to find really young actors."

So, is writing a movie about a kid with a disability a ploy for another Oscar nod? Is Rocket Science this year's I Am Sam? "No," Blitz says. "In fact, I have to say, like, I hate movies about people with disabilities, and I hope Rocket Science is not viewed in that way. To me, rather than revel in what's wrong, this is a movie that tries to treat it with a sense of humor, and tries to treat it honestly, so it doesn't try to make stuttering something purely to laugh at or something that's particularly noble, it just tries to treat it like a real-life thing that a lot of people have."

Thompson had a different take: "Well, it is now, now that you put it in my head. Now, I'm screwed!"