Performance analysis is naturally complicated by ambiguity regarding who (actor, director, screenwriter, editor) determines various elements of the final product. Nonetheless, attempts to single out who is responsible for various performed components are important to dialogue studies since, as Jack Shadoian (1981: 91) notes in his early consideration of the topic, ‘[b]oth the effect and function of dialogue is dependent on its delivery’. This chapter considers the relationship between the cinematic verbalists’ dialogue and its embodiment, including a certain emphasis on the expressiveness of the mouth, and their casting of actors such as Chris Eigeman and Greta Gerwig who have distinctive verbal and/or vocal styles. Although these writer-directors’ favoured performance style cannot be reduced to a single set of characteristics, they share certain tendencies in relation to casting choices and the rehearsal process. Consultation with screenplays and interviews reveals how a great deal of their influence on the delivery occurs in written script directions and during rehearsals. At the same time, by working closely with actors in pre-production these independent filmmakers relinquish elements of control when they incorporate the performers’ words or ideas into the formal script. Creating the impression of character interiority and performer improvisation appear to be significant aims of their dialogue's embodiment. This leads to speech that changes direction, and to actors performing dialogue as though thinking ‘out loud’ as when they ‘talk’ with their hands.

In addition to Chris Eigeman and Greta Gerwig recurring in the films of Stillman and Baumbach, there are various other overlaps in the performers fea tured in the cinematic verbalists’ work. Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton and Cate Blanchett appear in Jarmusch's and Anderson's films (the first two recurrently) while Parker Posey appears in many of Hartley's and Linklater's films, and one of Baumbach’s. Ben Stiller is featured by Anderson and Baumbach, while Julie Delpy is in four of Linklater's films and was cast by Jarmusch in Broken Flowers. More recently, Adam Driver's performances in two of Baumbach's films and Jarmusch's Paterson has confirmed his presence as a talented performer who is in demand by both independent filmmakers and Hollywood. For Paterson, Jarmusch also cast Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward as a pair of articulate teenagers, ones who previously played an articulate child couple in Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom. Each writer-director also has a set of actors with whom they work consistently and who are largely specific to them.