THE AISLES of the Big Lots discount store at Foothill and Mountain in Upland would seem an unlikely place for creative inspiration to strike.

But it was there that the plot of the movie “Grosse Pointe Blank” came together in the head of a Big Lots employee.

Strange but true.

Tom Jankiewicz, who died Jan. 23 at age 49, lived in semi-anonymity in Upland for three decades despite writing the popular 1997 movie. A dark comedy about a hitman who attends his high school reunion, “Grosse Pointe” starred John Cusack, Minnie Driver, Alan Arkin and Dan Aykroyd.

The germ of the idea was autobiographical: Like Cusack’s character, Jankiewicz was stunned by an invitation to his 10th high school reunion, wondering where the time had gone and lamenting the gap between his dreams for himself and his reality.

(The letter is said to have been almost verbatim to the one Joan Cusack reads to John Cusack at the beginning of the movie.)

Jankiewicz was attending Cal State Fullerton, substitute teaching at Upland High School and working nights at Big Lots as a cashier while trying to break into Hollywood as a screenwriter.

“When the letter came, he wasn’t where he wanted to be yet. He was still working at Big Lots,” his brother Pat told me last week. “Give him credit: It freaked him out, but it made him productive. He sat down and got serious about `Grosse Pointe.”‘

A movie about a cashier attending his 10-year reunion wouldn’t have much potential. Jankiewicz, who loved crime fiction and Charles Bronson movies, came up with the hitman angle.

Others at the reunion would have a spouse, kids and job to brag about. A lone-wolf assassin, however, would have to lie about everything.

As Cusack’s Martin Blank frets aloud: “What am I gonna say? `I killed the president of Paraguay with a fork. How’ve you been?”‘

Jankiewicz grew up in Sterling Heights, Mich., a Detroit suburb, where he graduated from Bishop Foley Catholic High School in 1981. The family relocated to Upland that year after their father, an engineer, found work at General Dynamics in Pomona.

Rather than working-class Sterling Heights, the upscale Detroit suburb of Grosse Pointe was used for the movie due to the contrast.

Jankiewicz settled on “Grosse Pointe Blank” as a title one day at Upland High while substitute-teaching an English class, writing the phrase on the whiteboard and deciding it would look enticing on a marquee.

As Pat put it, “`Grosse Pointe Blank’ is a better title than `Sterling Heights Blank.”‘

The hitman doesn’t initially want to go to his reunion but, mixing business with pleasure, accepts an assassination assignment in Detroit that same weekend. That also gives him a chance to take care of unfinished business with his prom date.

Jankiewicz wrote the script during the summer of 1991 after getting his reunion letter. He did not, by the way, attend. Not even for material.

“The reunion of his imagination was much better than the one he would have attended. That was his theory anyway,” his brother said.

Many of the characters were named after old classmates of Jankiewicz’s, except for Joan Cusack’s character, Marcella. She was named for Jankiewicz’s manager at Big Lots.

Jankiewicz sent query letters to studio production companies and several expressed interest after hearing the concept. Kiefer Sutherland wanted to do it, but the mix of comedy and violence proved to be a tough sell. Then John Cusack picked up the script and got the movie made.

Cusack and two actor friends rewrote portions of the script. Jankiewicz received sole story credit and lead credit for the screenplay.

A movie fan since childhood, Jankiewicz had made his own Super 8 films as a teenager and had written compulsively since winning a school contest in fourth grade.

Sipping champagne at the “Grosse Pointe Blank” premiere party, Jankiewicz turned to his brother in wonder and said, “Did you ever think this could possibly happen?”

Jankiewicz never got his name in the Daily Bulletin – and not because we didn’t know how to spell it. (It’s pronounced “JANK-uh-witz,” by the way.)

Despite standing 6-foot-9, he kept a low profile. Evidently the only interview he did in conjunction with “Grosse Pointe” was with his hometown paper in Michigan, a weekly. I’m sure no one at the Daily Bulletin knew a hit movie was penned by an Uplander, and that must have been how he wanted it.

I got to know him later. First I met Pat through mutual friends. Befriend one Jankiewicz and soon you know them all, so I also became friends with brothers Steve, Don and Tom, all of whom lived in Upland. (There’s also a sister, Diane, in Seattle.)

The only time I approached him for an interview, maybe a decade ago, he declined politely.

Still, we were friends, even if only casually. He was quick-witted and kind. He could quote my work back to me – he had one of those steel-trap minds that retains almost everything – and got a kick out of a neighbor who was impressed that he knew “the” David Allen.

Taking the long view, I’d kept it in mind that by the time “Grosse Pointe’s” 20th anniversary rolled around, maybe he’d feel comfortable talking to me.

He probably would have, Pat told me.

“My brother was almost painfully shy,” Pat said. “He was very quiet and mild- mannered.”

He lived in the family home north of the 210 Freeway and wrote daily, usually long into the night.

After “Grosse Pointe,” he got an agent and sold a script to DreamWorks. Titled “Kung Fu Theater,” it was envisioned as an action comedy, set in the present day, about a man from Pomona who somehow becomes trapped inside a 1970s kung fu flick and has to fake his way through it.

Various actors were slated for the lead role, among them Jamie Foxx, Eddie Griffin and Marlon Wayans. Jankiewicz was hired back to retool the script each time a new comic signed on. David Carradine would have played himself. But the movie remains in limbo.

“He was frustrated that the biggest sale of his career never got made,” Pat said. “Some of it was rolled into `Kung Fu Panda’ because DreamWorks owns the script.”

Jankiewicz had steady work as a script doctor, punching up others’ work and adding better jokes.

Friends and neighbors knew how Jankiewicz made his living, and knew about “Grosse Pointe,” but not because of him.

“If someone brought it up, he was happy they liked it. But he would never volunteer the information,” Pat said. “He was touched when it became a cult movie.”

When a Cal State San Bernardino professor phoned Jan. 23 to say he’d be showing “Grosse Pointe” to his class that night, Jankiewicz’s brothers urged him to attend, and on a whim, he did, regaling the class with inside stories and writing advice.

He collapsed during the question period and died that night at the hospital. Services are Tuesday.

A bout with bronchitis three weeks earlier may have weakened his heart, according to Pat, but his family doesn’t know for sure. He had seemed in perfect health. And he was only 49.

For a fellow who tried to stay out of the newspaper, he went out in an uncharacteristically public way.

Last week I watched “Grosse Pointe Blank” on video for the first time, getting an extra dose of enjoyment from knowing that a friend was responsible.

A different reaction came during an exchange of dialogue between the two Cusacks.

It’s the night before the reunion and Cusack’s character is on the phone with his receptionist back in L.A. She panics when she learns he hasn’t killed his target, knowing his clients will turn on him instead.

“I have to go,” says Cusack, who doesn’t want to talk about it.

“We all have to go sometime, sir, but we can choose when!” the receptionist says desperately.

Cusack responds quietly, “No one chooses when.”

I had to put the movie on pause.

David Allen writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday, three blanks. Reach him at david.allen@inlandnewspapers.com or 909-483-9339, read his blog at dailybulletin.com/davidallenblog, check out facebook.com/davidallencolumnist and follow @davidallen909 on Twitter.