In Good Company

(Photo [L-R]: Scarlet Johannson with director Paul Weitz, Topher Grace [as Carter] and Dennis Qaid [as Dan])

Synergy. That was the original title of writer/director Paul Weitz’s comedy about corporate ethics and family values. But the name didn’t stick. “Most people thought it was a science-fiction term,” he explains. So, the filmmaker settled instead for In Good Company. “I feel like I’m pretty good with titles,” he admits. The film—which opened to high praise last December but was lost in the noise of Oscar hype—may finally reach a larger audience on DVD.

“Synergy” is a buzzword employed by up-and-coming suit Carter Duryea (That ’70s Shows’ Topher Grace) to describe his vision for the future of the marketing employees under his supervision. Duryea works for a corporate giant called Globecom that has just commandeered a sports magazine and dethroned its beloved veteran supervisor Dan Foreman (Dennis Quaid). Foreman, a 50-year-old veteran of the business, must grit his teeth and take orders from this twentysomething punk, even as he patiently tries to teach the boy a thing or two. To further complicate matters, he soon discovers Carter is dating his daughter Alex (Scarlett Johansson).

Carter may look confident in front of the office, but his ambition is costing him his integrity and self-respect. It’s no coincidence that he spends a lot of time on a treadmill. Weitz wanted viewers to remember Dustin Hoffman’s character in The Graduate, a young man who was always running, and then to see Carter as the guy who has gone a step farther. “He’s gotten into plastics,” he says, “and now he’s running in place and he’s not getting anywhere. Carter is into the surface aspect of things because that is all that he can see. He didn’t grow up in a happy family situation.”

“Carter’s parents were both absent,” Grace adds. “Once he goes to [Foreman’s] house, he starts to see something that he really wants but doesn’t know how to get. He would trade it all in just to be the fifth member of the family.”

Foreman’s a big-screen rarity: a traditional family man portrayed as admirable and respectable instead of buffoonish and tyrannical. He has two daughters, but something’s still missing … a son. “What happens in the relationship between [Dan and Carter] … I think it’s by design,” says Quaid.

So perhaps the rat race isn’t so bad after all, if it can help us distinguish between what we want and what we need. “That’s what’s of interest to me,” says Weitz. “In this situation, are these characters going to react with any grace and dignity? Are they going to become humanized?”