Daily Dialogue — December 25, 2019

“The likelihood of one individual being right increases in direct proportion to the intensity with which others are trying to prove him wrong.”

— Heaven Can Wait (1978), screenplay by Elaine May and Warren Beatty, based on a play by Harry Segall

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Angel.

Trivia: The film was originally pitched to Warner Bros., but studio production chief David Geffen (one of Dreamworks’ founders) ditched the idea for another film. After Geffen was fired, the project ended up in the hands of Barry Diller, who green-lit the go-ahead for the project. It was Warren Beatty’s associate Richard Sylbert, also a studio executive, who recommended pitching the project to the Paramount Pictures studio. Beatty would later use the film’s commercial and critical success as the leverage for financing his next film Reds (1981) which was also made with Paramount.

Dialogue On Dialogue: Buck Henry plays an Escort Angel in Heaven Can Wait and on this his first assignment, he screws up.