Paul Weitz, who directed and wrote “In Good Company,” had wanted to be a playwright growing up.
“I was kind of a failure at it. I was lucky enough to get my plays produced but then unlucky enough to get some of the worst reviews I read in my life from The New York Times at the age of, like, 21 and 22.”
That wasn’t the case for “In Good Company” ($29.90), which stars Dennis Quaid as Dan, a 50-ish ad salesman for a sports magazine who is demoted when the publication is sold to a media conglomerate. His new boss is Carter (Topher Grace), a mid-20s hotshot who made his mark selling cellphones to children but has an emptiness in his life. He eventually and secretly falls for and starts sleeping with Dan’s college-age daughter, Alex (Scarlett Johansson).
“I would get bored really quickly if the younger guy was a shark throughout the entire thing,” says Weitz, who, with his brother, Chris, scored a mega-success with “American Pie.” “In Good Company,” which has a similar blend of the comedic and dramatic as Weitz’s previous film, “About a Boy,” was first inspired by the book “Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism Are Reshaping the World,” by Benjamin Barber, which for the director raised the question, “Can you equate capitalism with democracy?”
But Weitz was looking at the issue from a more personal angle and needed actors who understood. Grace, though a regular on “That ’70s Show,” was an unknown commodity to the director, and he made the actor test some six times for the role. Still, he kept coming back to him.
Weitz remembers talking to another hot young Hollywood actor about the role and the actor told him, “‘The funny thing about this movie was how these people are so concerned with such meaningless things – the stupid jobs that they have is all such (bull).’ And I thought, ‘This person doesn’t understand this movie in the least.’ Topher came in and, conversely, understood the world of it and really cared about it.”
Grace proved an inspired choice, showing us the scared kid inside the man’s suit. He pairs well with Quaid, who exudes the comfortable machismo of a man who has succeeded in the corporate jungle and in his personal life but who faces a changing (younger) world.
“In Good Company” is very much about fathers and sons, as is Weitz’s current play in New York, “Privilege,” a dark comedy starring Bob Saget about 12- and 16-year-old brothers whose mega-rich father is indicted for insider trading in the ’80s.
The play has received mixed reviews, but Weitz says those pans from early in his career were like “an inoculation.”
“In retrospect it was great because no bad review is ever going to hurt anywhere near as much.” Not that he doesn’t worry, though. “I’m always terrified by what’s on the DVD because I think it reveals my flaws more than anything else,” he says, mentioning a deleted scene on the disc with Quaid and hair dye. “There are a lot a things I thought were pretty good which I’m embarrassed to look back on and think I shot and cut.”
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