It was a third-act plot twist straight out of some aspiring hack's wildest reverie -- novice screenwriter meets celebrated script specialist in an Internet chat room, the two collaborate on a script via e-mail and go on to sell their romantic thriller to box office rainmaker Jerry Bruckheimer for $5 million.
But the true story of "Deja Vu" is stranger than screenwriting fiction.
The project took nearly a decade to come together, but within months of its sale last year, Bill Marsilii and Terry Rossio's spec script (written without any guarantee it would be produced, let alone bought) reeled in some of Hollywood's biggest fish. Action blockbuster expert Tony Scott ("Top Gun") signed on to direct the romantic thriller about an FBI agent who travels back in time to solve a woman's murder. And Denzel Washington committed to star, rounding out a full complement of marquee names.
Since most of Marsilli's previous projects have been consigned to development hell, the sale represented the culmination of an odyssey of false starts and near-misses, eureka moments and strange kismet.
For L.A.-based Rossio, the Oscar-nominated co-writer of "Shrek" and "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl," the "Deja Vu" payoff was all in a day's work. But if not for a chance pit stop on the information superhighway, their collaboration might never have been.
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An affinity
Bill and Terry's Excellent Screenwriting Adventure began in an Internet chat room -- specifically, on an America Online bulletin board in 1992.
Marsilii, then a temp office drone at the New Yorker by day and an improv comedian by night, was sending his first screenplay, "The Invisible Choir" -- a thriller about a Vatican intelligence agent -- to literary agents from the magazine's mailroom (and with cover letters written on New Yorker letterhead).
The initial response was enthusiastic, and he soon had offers for representation from several agents. Uncertain about how to proceed, he turned to the nascent AOL Writers' Room, a screenwriters' advice forum, where he encountered postings from Rossio."He was cool about answering dumb questions and was doing his best to be helpful," Marsilii remembered.
Asked why he befriended Marsilii, 43, out of the faceless chat room crowd, Rossio, 44, maintains the choice was not only obvious but practical: "On a board like that, you get noted by how well you write, so with Bill, it was perceiving a shared sensibility."
