Line #3 Film/HeavenCanWait1978


1	[[quoteright:314:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/1b7272cbfba76537fb89525460032504.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:314:''[[TagLine Joe Pendleton...the only guy who ever raised Hell about going to Heaven.]]'']]
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4	''Heaven Can Wait'' is a 1978 comedy-fantasy film directed by Creator/WarrenBeatty and Creator/BuckHenry, both of whom also star in it along with Creator/JamesMason, Creator/JulieChristie, Creator/JackWarden, Creator/CharlesGrodin, Creator/VincentGardenia, and Creator/DyanCannon.
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6	The screenplay (written by Beatty, Creator/ElaineMay, and an uncredited Creator/RobertTowne) was adapted from the 1938 stage play of the same name by Harry Segall, which had previously been filmed in 1941 as ''Film/HereComesMrJordan'', and would be remade again as ''Film/DownToEarth2001''.
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8	The story follows Joe Pendleton (Beatty), a backup quarterback for the Los Angeles Rams. His trainer Max Corkel (Warden) celebrates his birthday with him and then informs him that he will become starting quarterback in the next game. On his way by bicycle to the game he is involved in a collision with a van and a truck in a tunnel. An "escort" angel on his first assignment (Henry) plucks Joe out of his body the instant before he is actually hit by the truck, and Pendleton arrives at a "waystation" in the afterlife, waiting to board a plane to his "final destination". Joe thinks he's dreaming at first, but when Senior angel Mr. Jordan (Mason) convinces him otherwise he begins insisting that he shouldn't be there. Mr. Jordan orders a check of the schedule which reveals that Joe is not due to die until 2025 - if he had been left in his body he would have managed to avoid the collision with the truck. Mr. Jordan agrees that Joe needs to be immediately returned to his body, but Joe and his escort arrive back on Earth at his funeral only to discover that his body has been cremated. Mr. Jordan tells him that he can be put in the body of another man who has died as long as the man's death has not yet been discovered, and Joe can then live our the rest of his life in the replacement body. They view several about-to-die men that Joe finds unacceptable because they would not make good football players, and he intends to be the quarterback that leads the Rams to a Super Bowl Victory. While viewing Leo Farnsworth, a millionaire who has been drugged by his wife Julia (Cannon) and private secretary Tony Abbot (Grodin) and is about to drown in the bathtub, Joe sees Betty Logan (Christie) waiting to see Farnsworth, a woman from the small English town of Paggelsham who is here to protest the building of a refinery by Farnsworth's company which will displace the town's entire population.
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10	Joe is convinced by Mr. Jordan to accept Farnsworth as a "temporary" body in order to help Betty.
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12	''Heaven Can Wait'' earned nine UsefulNotes/AcademyAward nominations, winning for Best Art Direction. Beatty and Cannon won [[UsefulNotes/GoldenGlobeAward Golden Globes]] for their performances, and the film won a Golden Globe for Best Picture-Comedy or Musical. As noted above, it's a remake of ''Here Comes Mr. Jordan'', and thus has no connection with the 1943 Creator/ErnstLubitsch movie ''Film/{{Heaven Can Wait\|1943}}''.
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15	!!Tropes associated with this work:
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17	* AdaptationalJobChange: In the original play as well as ''Film/HereComesMrJordan'', Joe Pendleton is a professional boxer. Here, he's a professional football player.
18	* AfterlifeAntechamber: What looks at first like "Heaven" is only a waiting area for the final trip.
19	* AfterlifeExpress: The trip to Joe's "final destination" would have been taken aboard a Concorde SST.
20	* AlwaysSaveTheGirl: Joe obviously wants nothing to do with Farnsworth's body until he sees Betty.
21	* AttendingYourOwnFuneral: Joe sees his own funeral, and uses what he hears to help convince his trainer Max that it's him in Farnsworth's body.
22	* BatmanGambit: A failed one when Tony tries to get Farnsworth killed during the football scrimmage by trying to convince an imposing player that Farnsworth is a racist so he'll go after him harder.
23	-->'''Tony:''' Well, very very nice. Very very... impressive. I'm Tony Abbott, Mr. Farnsworth's personal private executive secretary. Very nice... very, very nice. Ah, don't let any of Mr. Farnsworth's racial statements offend you, for God's sake. Nice talking to you.
24	* BerserkButton: Do ''not'' try to shut Julia up.
25	-->'''Tony:''' Am I upsetting you? Have I offended you in some way?
26	-->'''Julia:''' Don't put your hand over my mouth again.
27	-->'''Tony Abbott:''' I'm sorry, darling. You used to like it.
28	* BittersweetEnding: Joe [[spoiler: takes over for the Ram's quarterback Tom Jarrett after he dies on the field after a hard hit, and wins the Super Bowl, but just after he confirms to Max that it's him in Jarrett's body Mr. Jordan informs him he has to loose the memories of his old life and become Tom Jarrett, meaning that he doesn't remember Betty when he meets her as Tom. She seems to recognize something in him, however, and the movie ends with the hopeful note that they'll fall in love again as they leave the stadium together.]] It's just plain bitter for poor Max, [[spoiler: who loses his best friend twice.]]
29	* BlackComedy: Probably the biggest departure from ''Film/HereComesMrJordan'' is how this film plays Tony and Julia's attempts to kill Leo [[PlayedForLaughs For Laughs]].
30	* BodySurf: While waiting for a suitable body, Joe is parked in the body of a millionaire industrialist. [[spoiler:at the end of the movie he moves again, to Tom Jarrett's body.]]
31	* CallBack: After finding out that he's probably going to have to leave the body of Farnsworth behind, Joe embraces Betty and says "There's nothing to be afraid of." At the end of the movie, [[spoiler:when the lights are turned off in the Coliseum, Joe-as-Tom-Jarrett takes her hand and says the same words, which strikes Betty as something very familiar.]]
32	* TheCameo: Several real-life former Rams players appear, most notably Hall of Famer Deacon Jones.
33	* ChekhovsGun:
34	** Chekhov's Cannon. The cannon at Farnsworth's mansion that gets fired after flags are raised and lowered each morning and evening seems like an OverusedRunningGag when it keeps getting shown in the film, but [[spoiler:Tony ends up using the cannon blast as a cover for the fatal gunshot he aims at Joe in Leo's body]].
35	** Joe has a soprano saxophone which he takes with him into the afterlife and somehow still has as Leo Farnsworth. [[spoiler:When he becomes Tom Jarrett and looses his memory of Joe Penleton he leaves it in locker room as a sign that Joe has now become Tom Jarrett and doesn't remember anything about his past lives]].
36	* TheComicallySerious: The butlers and maids at Farnsworth's house, as they deal with his eccentricities, though Farnsworth seems to have been fairly eccentric before he was murdered.
37	* CorruptCorporateExecutive: The real Farnsworth and his board of directors have plenty of dangerous and environmentally unsound stuff going on, which Joe points out during their board meeting.
38	* DeadlyBath: Leo Farnsworth is murdered when his private secretary gives him a nose spray that his wife drugged just before his bath, so that he loses consciousness and drowns in the tub. Then Joe steps in...
39	* DivorceRequiresDeath: California is a community proper state, so it would seem that Julia could just divorce Farnsworth and get half. But she mentions having signed an unfavorable pre-nup.
40	* DreadfulMusician: Whenever he wants to think Joe plays the same song (the chorus of "Ciribiribin") on a soprano saxophone over and over again throughout the movie, badly.
41	** The fact that Leo Farnsworth plays the same song so badly in the same way is one of the things that convinces Max that Leo Farnsworth really is Joe.
42	** Julia and Tony feel the same way about Joe's music skills.
43	-->'''Julia:''' He's toying with us. Do you think he's really playing that saxophone? There's a little tape recorder inside. That's why we keep hearing the same song over and over again. It's like those idiot costumes of his.
44	* EccentricMillionaire: Leo Farnsworth was one already, judging from his wardrobe, but Joe makes him eccentric in different ways.
45	-->'''Bentley:''' I noticed there are two cups.
46	-->'''Everett:''' Well, Sisk felt that since Mr. Farnsworth was pretending to talk to someone, he might want to pretend to give him cocoa, too.
47	* EekAMouse: Tony claims this was the reason that Julia screamed when she saw Fansworth still alive.
48	-->'''Tony:''' Sorry to disturb you, Mr. Farnsworth. Mrs. Farnsworth saw a mouse.
49	-->'''Betty:''' She just saw a mouse?
50	-->'''Tony:''' No. Before. Outside. But she relives it.
51	* EyesAreMental: Joe makes a reference to how maybe, if Betty sees him again, she'll see something in his eyes and recognize him. [[spoiler:At the end she seems to do just that, when she takes a good look at Joe in Tom Jarrett's body.]]
52	* GuardianAngel: Mr. Jordan acts as one to Joe when his "escort" angel makes a mistake.
53	* TheGhost: The real Leo Farnsworth never appears on screen. When Joe steps into his body we still see him as Joe, still played by Warren Beatty. [[spoiler:The original Tom Jarrett is mentioned several times but never appears either before he's played by Beatty as Joe in Jarrett's body.]]
54	* InvisibleToNormals: Mr. Jordan and the escort are all invisible to someone who hasn't died yet. Joe is invisible too while he's not wearing anyone's body.
55	-->'''Joe:''' Mr. Jordan!
56	-->'''Max:''' Someone there?
57	-->'''Joe:''' That's Mr. Jordan. He's right there! You can't see him Max, you're still alive.
58	* ItIsNotYourTime: The Escort plucks Joe out of his body in the moment before the truck was going to hit him, because he was trying to spare him some pain. But Joe wasn't scheduled to die until 2025 and the Escort wound up cheating him out of 47 years of mortal life. So Mr. Jordan has to find Joe another body.
59	* LieToTheBeholder: To the viewer, Joe still appears as Warren Beatty. But everyone who looks at him sees Farnsworth.
60	* LoveAtFirstSight: Both Joe and Betty begin to fall in love at first sight, even while she was furious at Leo Farnsworth, the body Joe was wearing at the time. [[spoiler: The ending shows that it happens to them twice.]]
61	* MayDecemberRomance: Maybe; Joe's around Betty's age, but Farnsworth's age is never specified. He might be quite a bit older.
62	* AMillionIsAStatistic: Joe is saddened when [[spoiler:The second new body he gets is his teammate Jarrett, as he had wished the man well in spite of his desire to have a new body as an athlete and their competition to be the Rams quarterback]].
63	* MurderTheHypotenuse: Julia and Tony's plans to murder Leo, though they're PlayedForLaughs [[spoiler:until they succeed]].
64	* NewscasterCameo: Sportscasters Dick Enberg, Bryant Gumbel, Curt Gowdy and Al [=DeRogatis=] all turn up.
65	* OhCrap: Joe Pendleton and the escort have a subdued version of this as they watch the former's ashes being scattered in the cemetery garden, because they realize at that moment he no longer has a body to be returned to.
66	-->'''The Escort:''' Oh, dear.
67	* OffIntoTheDistanceEnding: Ends with Joe, who has now [[spoiler:become Tom Jarrett and forgotten his old life, walking off with Betty into a MaybeEverAfter future.]]
68	* PoliceAreUseless: The detective assigned to [[spoiler:Farnsworth's disappearance]] seems to largely ignore Max and Betty's claims that Leo Farnsworth told them his wife and private secretary had already tried to murder him once. Instead he is obsessed with Farnsworth's decision not to wear hats anymore and questions the house staff about Farnsworth's hats over and over again. [[spoiler:In fact he was waiting for what he felt was the right moment to have Max tell Julia and Tony that he knows details about their first attempt to murder Farnsworth. When confronted with the details of their first attempt and Farnsworth's jacket found by a gardener in the well, they quickly turn on each other, both loudly shouting that the other did it.]]
69	* RasputinianDeath: How Tony and Julia view their inability to kill Leo Farnsworth, unaware that they actually succeeded with the first attempt.
70	* TheRemake: Both is a remake and has a remake. The story was also a play before it was a movie.
71	* RousingSpeech: Joe gives a quarterback-style speech to the Exo Gray board meeting. Some of the board members actually seem impressed. Others not so much.
72	-->'''Joe Pendleton:''' Let's be the team that makes the rules! Let us be the team that plays fair, gets the best contract. Let's be the popular players. We're just going to have to forget about all these nuclear power plants until we find out if they're safe. And that refinery in Pagglesham, we're just going to have to relocate it. Sure, it'll cost us $35 million, but we don't care, because we're going to come out ahead in the long run. And whatever it is that stuff we're making containers of, that plastic, we'll have to stop until we find out what it is. We're not in here for just one game, are we fellas? We're in here to go all the way. Now, lets get to the Super Bowl guys! And when we get there, let's already have won! Okay?
73	* ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney: In order to get a tryout for quarterback, Joe as Farnsworth simply buys the Rams. For about three times what they were worth.
74	-->'''Former owner:''' He got my team. The son of a bitch got my team.
75	-->'''Advisor to former owner:''' What kind of pressure did he use, Milt?
76	-->'''Former owner:''' Well, I asked for sixty-seven million, and he said "okay."
77	-->'''Advisor to former owner:''' Ruthless bastard.
78	* ATragedyOfImpulsiveness: The whole plot starts from an escort angel snatching out Joe's soul for his body early right before the pile-up due to wanting to spare him some pain, when it turns out he wouldn't have actually died.
79	* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: The question of whether Joe's board meeting appearance as Leo Farnsworth was enough to prevent the refinery from ever being built in Paggelsham is left unanswered in the film.
80	* ThatWasNotADream: Joe initially thinks he's dreaming. Mr. Jordan convinces him otherwise.
81	-->'''Mr. Jordan:''' Life has a certain quality all its own, a certain feeling, and so do dreams. You know that this is not life. And you know now that this is not a dream. This is a place that comes after life and after dreams.
82	* UnconventionalSmoothie: It seems that a "liver and whey" shake is part of Joe's training regimen. He also throws in some alfalfa and bean curd. Farnsworth's butlers are quickly taught the recipe.
83	* UnlimitedWardrobe: Leo Farnsworth apparently really liked wearing a different costume every day, most of them variations of fake naval uniforms, though he also has at least one polo outfit (though he doesn't play polo). Mrs. Farnsworth wears a different elaborate evening gown at every dinner as well.
84	-->'''Joe as Farnsworth:''' Why have I got so many of these sailor outfits?
85	-->'''Sisk:''' Well sir, you have always fancied the sea.
86	-->'''Joe as Farnsworth:''' Uh-huh. Do I...sail?
87	-->'''Sisk:''' Not really, sir.

Context Film / HeavenCanWait1978