Trivia / Date with an Angel

• Box Office Bomb: Budget, $8 million. Box Office, $1,988,962.
• Creator Backlash: Although Tom McLoughlin didn’t mind the 80s songs themselves, he felt that they shouldn’t have been added in the film because they clashed with the film’s tone. See Executive Meddling for more details.
• Creator Cameo: Writer-Director Tom McLoughlin played the bespectacled churchgoer whose elbow accidentally catches on fire due to him being distracted by the angel’s powerful stare.
  • This only came about because Kevin Kline (who was dating Phoebe Cates at the time) was supposed to play the bespectacled churchgoer whose elbow accidentally catches on fire, but Kline had to drop out in order to film A Fish Called Wanda.
• Creator Killer: Date With An Angel sent Tom McLoughlin's cinematic writing and directing career to Hell. He didn't get another story credit on another theatrical film for a full decade, and never directed another theatrical film for the rest of the 20th century, sticking with mainly TV movies.
• Direct to Video: In the UK.
• DVD Commentary: Tom McLoughlin provided one on April 23, 2020 for the Blu-Ray release of the film.
• Executive Meddling: Originally, Tom wanted the film’s soundtrack to solely rely on Randy Kerber’s musical score, but the studio wanted the film’s soundtrack to also include popular 80s songs, such as “The Finer Things” by Steve Winwood and “You Are the Girl” by The Cars.
• Follow the Leader: The box office successes of Splash and Mannequin led to Dino De Laurentiis green-lighting Date With An Angel, which, like the former two films, was also about a mediocre guy who falls for a gorgeous non-human woman. This would lead to critics unfavorably comparing Date With An Angel to Splash, even going so far as to call the film “Splash with wings.”
  • Ironically, according to the DVD commentary, writer-director Tom McLoughlin first conceived of Date With An Angel back in the early 1970s (long before Splash, which was conceived back in 1977). Paradoxically, the commercial and critical success of Splash would save Date With An Angel from Development Hell, since the former led to a trend of Magical Girlfriend films released in the late 1980s such as Weird Science, Mannequin, High Spirits, and My Stepmother Is an Alien.

• Real-Life Relative: Tom McLoughlin’s then-wife Nancy appears as one of the red-headed executives of “Ethereal Beauty”. As mentioned in the DVD Commentary, Tom states that his wife Nancy was “very pregnant” during filming, although her stomach is clearly hidden by the table.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Tom McLoughlin originally wanted Jim Carrey to play Jim Sanders. Tom brought Jim in to meet with studio executive Dino DeLaurentiis, but Dino rejected Carrey because even though he found Jim to be very funny, Dino felt that Jim was not attractive enough to play the male lead, who was meant to be handsome. Instead, Michael E. Knight was cast because he was good-looking AND funny.
  • David Duchovny also auditioned for the role of Jim Sanders.
  • According to an earlier draft, Patty Winston had two catty female friends, Shana and Nadine.
• Write What You Know: Like Jim Sanders in the film, screenwriter Tom McLoughlin was also a musician who had a bunch of male friends (similarly named George, Don, and Rex) and who had constantly suffered from headaches in his youth.