Made in Heaven #Afterlife #movie

"How in Heaven did they meet? How on Earth will they find each other?"

The 1987 film release of Made in Heaven is about two people, Mike and Annie (Timothy Hutton and Kelly McGillis), who fall in love in heaven, have a wedding ceremony (even though it isn’t required), but are abruptly torn apart when heaven-born, Annie has to leave for Earth.

This is how I remember the cover release on Beta and VHS.

Mike Shea was a man on his way to California back in the 1940s. He is a good man who knows he will miss his parents, but must try and make it on his own. Along his route he comes across a car plunged into a lake. He jumps in to save a mom and her children, only to lose his own life.
 
He finds himself naked in a strange place. Disoriented, he is greeted by his Aunt Lisa (Maureen Stapleton) who introduces him to some of the ways of heaven. She tells him, all he has to do is think of a place or person and he will go there.

Maureen Stapleton as Aunt Lisa with Timothy Hutton as Mike.

As he is practicing this teleportation technique, he finds himself in a stranger’s living room. There he meets Annie who tells him she is a guide for new souls and offers to help him.
 
Mike and Annie only need to think their thoughts to each other, and no matter where they are in heaven, they can hear one another. They soon fall deeply in love.
 
But Annie is a new soul, born in heaven. She still needs to do her time on earth. 

Timothy Hutton and Kellie McGillis

There were no good images of Emmett on the internet.

​The man in charge is a creepy little guy named Emmett. Strange thing about the actor who plays Emmett. He is billed in the cast credits as simply: Emmett as himself. But in truth he was played by Debra Winger who was Timothy Hutton’s real wife at the time. Winger is non-credited in the film. I saw this movie dozens of times over the years, but only learned this fact recently.
 
Mike gets Emmett to allow him to go back to earth and be reborn. He tells him he has thirty years to find her. Otherwise they would be lost to each other for good.

---

Mike is reborn as Elmo, who by the time he turns 29, is pretty much a lost soul. He ends up meeting his original parents while hitchhiking. They are kind to him and even purchase him a trumpet. This starts Elmo's musical career and he ends up writing a hit song that he was actually working on in Heaven. The song was We Never Danced, a very ‘80s sounding song and one of the last words Annie spoke to Mike in heaven.
 
Annie: You know what we've never done. We've never... danced. I'm going aren’t I?
Mike: Yes.
Annie: Don't be sad. Don't get sad, Mike.
Mike: Why does it have to be you?
Annie: It's not sad. I'm going to be somebody's baby.

The film also has cameos by rockers, Tom Petty and Neil Young.

OPINION: Besides the reincarnation aspect, I believe this film had things more theologically correct than the previous afterlife films I covered in my blog. At one point Annie tells Mike that there cannot be bad thoughts in heaven. He tells Aunt Lisa he thought heaven would be all clouds and angels. She tells him, “We have them.” Marriage was a concept of earth, not heaven. Mike asks Annie if she is God. The conversation went something like this:
 
Mike: Are you God?
Annie: No!
Mike: Is Emmett God?
Annie: No, he just runs things.
Mike: Is there a God?
Annie: (pauses) Of course there is.

---

SPOILER ALERT: But no surprise, Elmo ends up finding her on the street in the last moments of the film. It’s touching and heart lifting when their eyes lock on one another.

---

---

​Pennies From Across the Veil. 
A love story about death and the afterlife.

CLICK HERE