They’re Company Men and Women

When writer-director David Mamet (“The Winslow Boy,” the upcoming “State and Main”) sets out to do a new film, he turns to a select group of actors whom he’s frequently used before--his stock company. “It’s like working in a quartet,” explains Mamet. “You like playing music with the same people.”

In using a stock company of actors, Mamet is actually carrying on a tradition as old as cinema itself, one used by such legendary directors as D.W. Griffith, Preston Sturges and Orson Welles. Passed on to such distinctive directors as John Cassavetes, Robert Altman and Ingmar Bergman, the tradition has been embraced by contemporary filmmakers such as Paul Thomas Anderson, Kevin Smith and the Coen brothers.

Joel and Ethan Coen (“Blood Simple,” “Fargo”) find that working with the same actors clarifies the writing process. “For whatever reason, once you know an actor, it makes it easier to write [a character] somehow,” says Ethan Coen. “I don’t quite know why, because it’s not as if the parts we’re writing are like the [actors] themselves, but somehow it makes it easier to write characters when you know who you are writing for.”

The Coen brothers’ latest film, the Depression-era comedy “O Brother, Where Art Thou?,” opening Dec. 22, features such familiar faces as John Goodman (“Raising Arizona,” “Barton Fink,” “The Hudsucker Proxy,” “The Big Lebowski”), Holly Hunter (“Raising Arizona”), John Turturro (“Barton Fink,” “Miller’s Crossing” and “The Big Lebowski”) and Charles Durning (“The Hudsucker Proxy”). Other Coen faves include Frances McDormand (“Blood Simple,” “Fargo,” “Raising Arizona” and “Miller’s Crossing”--she’s married to Joel Coen) and Steve Buscemi (“Barton Fink,” “Fargo,” “The Big Lebowski”).

Goodman, who plays a one-eyed con-man Klan member in “O Brother,” enjoys working with the Coens because “you don’t have to skip around and look for a way to communicate. It’s just right there. With these guys, we are on the same wavelength. Since they write these roles with me in mind, there are not a lot of questions. We know each other and what we are there for.”

The actors also are eager to work repeatedly with these directors because they are willing to cast them in challenging, diverse roles. Goodman has played everything from a murderer to a bowler for the Coens.

“What’s interesting about it is that you get to know these people and who they are as actors,” says Joel Coen. “It’s frequently the case when you do realize they are capable of doing a lot more different kinds of parts than they usually are given credit for in terms of how they are conventionally cast. That becomes what’s interesting . . . to keep it as different as possible from movie to movie.”

Besides casting the same actors, the Coens also hire the same technical crew. “We have worked with the same [director of photography] the last six movies and the same designer on five. We have a lot of standing collaborations with lots of people. It’s just a working methodology that kind of evolved.”

*

In the comedy “State and Main,” also scheduled to open Dec. 22, Mamet pays tribute to such Sturges small-town comedies of the 1940s as “Hail the Conquering Hero” and “The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek.” Set in a quaint Vermont village, “State and Main” deals with what happens when a movie company arrives to shoot a film. The comedy is peppered with such Mamet veterans as William H. Macy, Patti LuPone, Ricky Jay, Rebecca Pidgeon (Mamet’s wife) and Clark Gregg.

“It’s great fun being on a set with those people,” Mamet says from the set of his latest film, “Heist,” which also features Pidgeon, Jay and LuPone. “It’s like film camp.”

To Mamet, Sturges--who almost exclusively used a stock company of actors, including William Demarest, Joel McCrea and Franklin Pangborn--was the master “in terms of the direction, in terms of the script,” he says.

Both Macy and LuPone have a long history with Mamet--nearly 30 years for Macy and 24 for LuPone.

Macy, who has appeared onstage in Mamet’s plays and in such films as “Homicide” and “Oleanna,” says that for an actor, the benefits of working with the same director are “legion, and the downside is very minor. The benefits are you cover your bases a little bit more if you work with the same person.”

“I work with several people over and over again [including Paul Thomas Anderson in ‘Boogie Nights’ and ‘Magnolia’], and if one of those guys gets a job, dollars to doughnuts I’m going to get a job too. So you can see your work coming.”

As directors’ fortunes rise, he adds, “so rises your fortunes. A lovely experience is when you have been on someone’s coattails for a while and suddenly you find yourself able to pay back a little bit.”

Like Mamet, Macy finds working with his friends akin to a big party. “Everyone is gung ho to go out,” says Macy, who plays a harried film director in “State and Main.”

“[In] a normal movie it’s, like, the third week before you can drag people out of their hotel rooms,” Macy explains from the set of “Jurassic Park III.” “Friendships bud off-screen also. A lot of the guys I work with all the time I see at other times.”

Mamet and Macy’s joking friendship comes through in separate phone interviews. “Macy fascinates me,” Mamet slyly says. “I have known him for 30 years, and I have no idea what he’s talking about! I understand it’s English. I try to keep up with the body language.”

“Mamet is doing a movie right now, and I’m not in it,” says Macy. “If you talk to him, would you ask him about that?”

“It’s because he’s doing ‘Jurassic 12’ or something,” Mamet replies. “He would have been in my movie, but he preferred to make trillions of dollars standing in front of a blue screen saying, ‘Look at that lizard.’ ”

When a Mamet or Anderson offer him a movie, Macy says, he always says yes even before he sees the part. “Just as actors don’t have to prove themselves at these heinous auditions all the time, director don’t have to prove themselves to the actors too.”

Macy believes that from a commercial point of view, it’s wise for directors to enlist a stock company. “Bergman is a great example,” says Macy. “I love seeing Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann in the various roles [in his films]. That’s one of the reasons why I want to see Bergman’s movies--to see [those actors] in a different role.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

I’VE SEEN THAT FACE BEFORE

Here’s a look at some past and present directors using stock companies, their most popular movies, and actors who appeared in them.

Director: D.W. Griffith.

Stock players: Carol Dempster, Lionel Barrymore, Donald Crisp, Richard Barthelmess, Lillian Gish, Dorothy Gish, Mae Marsh, Kate Bruce.

Films they appeared in: “Birth of a Nation,” “Intolerance,” “Broken Blossoms,” “Way Down East,” “Orphans of the Storm.”

*

Director: John Ford.

Stock players: John Wayne, Maureen O’Hara, Ward Bond, Ben Johnson, Harry Carey, Harry Carey Jr., Barry Fitzgerald, Victor McLaglen, Arthur Shields, Mildred Natwick, Lee Marvin, Jimmy Stewart, Henry Fonda.

Films they appeared in: “The Iron Horse,” “The Informer,” “Stagecoach,” “The Grapes of Wrath,” “How Green Was My Valley,” “Fort Apache,” “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon,” “Rio Grande,” “The Quiet Man,” “The Searchers,” “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.”

*

Director: Billy Wilder

Stock players: Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Fred MacMurray, Shirley MacLaine, William Holden, Audrey Hepburn.

Films they appeared in: “Double Indemnity,” “The Lost Weekend,” “Sunset Boulevard,” “Stalag 17,” “Sabrina,” “Some Like It Hot,” “Love in the Afternoon,” “The Apartment,” “The Fortune Cookie.”

*

Director: Orson Welles.

Stock players: Everett Sloane, Joseph Cotten, Ray Collins, Agnes Moorehead, Paul Stewart, Erskine Sanford.

Films they appeared in: “Citizen Kane,” “The Magnificent Ambersons,” “The Lady From Shanghai,” “Touch of Evil.”

*

Director: Preston Sturges.

Stock players: Joel McCrea, William Demarest, Eddie Bracken, Brian Donlevy, Akim Tamiroff, Rudy Vallee, Franklin Pangborn, Al Bridges, Porter Hall.

Films they appeared in: “The Great McGinty,” “Christmas in July,” “Sullivan’s Travels,” “The Lady Eve,” “The Palm Beach Story,” “Hail the Conquering Hero,” “The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek.”

*

Director: Ingmar Bergman.

Stock players: Liv Ullmann, Max von Sydow, Gunnar Bjornstrand, Erland Josephson, Harriet Andersson, Ingrid Thulin, Ulf Johansson, Bibi Andersson.

Films they appeared in: “Smiles of a Summer Night,” “Wild Strawberries,” “Cries and Whispers, “Fanny and Alexander,” “Through a Glass Darkly,” “The Seventh Seal,” “Autumn Sonata.”

*

Director: Robert Altman

Stock players: Elliott Gould, Geraldine Chaplin, Shelley Duvall, Keith Carradine, Robert Duvall, Lili Taylor, Kim Basinger, Julianne Moore, Liv Tyler, Lyle Lovett, Paul Dooley, Jeff Goldblum, Gwen Welles, Bud Cort, Michael Murphy, Bert Remsen, Sally Kellerman.

Films they appeared in: “MASH,” “McCabe & Mrs. Miller,” “Thieves Like Us,” “Nashville,” “The Player,” “Cookie’s Fortune.”

*

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Stock players: William H. Macy, Philip Baker Hall, John C. Reilly, Ricky Jay, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Julianne Moore, Melora Walters, Alfred Molina, Thomas Jane.

Films they appeared in: “Hard Eight,” “Boogie Nights,” “Magnolia.”

*

Director: Kevin Smith

Stock players: Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Jason Lee, Jason Mewes, Joey Lauren Adams, Scott Mosier, Brian O’Halloran, Jeff Anderson, Marilyn Ghigliotti.

Films they appeared in: “Clerks,” “Mallrats,” “Chasing Amy,” “Dogma.’