Biography

Bob Gale

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Bob Gale is an Oscar-nominated screenwriter-producer-director, best known as co-creator, co-writer and co-producer of Back to the Future (1985) and its sequels. Gale was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a B.A. in Cinema from the University of Southern California in 1973. He has written over 30 screenplays; his other film credits include 1941 (1979), I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978), Used Cars (1980), Trespass (1992) and Interstate 60 (2002), the last which he directed. In addition to writing movies and occasionally television, Gale has written comic books including Spider-Man, Batman and the IDW Back to the Future title, thus proving to his father that he did not waste hours and hours reading comics in his youth. He has also served as an expert witness in over 25 plagiarism cases, even though this has occasionally required him to wear a suit and tie (oh, the horror!). When he's not in production, writing, shooting off his mouth or wasting time on the internet, he actually does take out the trash even when his wife doesn't ask. Well, sometimes he does...
- IMDb mini biography by: Copernicus

Bob often makes obscure references to his hometown in his scripts.
He and Robert Zemeckis were known as "The Bobs" to Steven Spielberg and John Milius (and others) since they were always working and writing things together in and out of film school. Their writing structure as collaborators entailed both of them to be in the same room discussing things out loud and then one of them writing it down in longhand (as opposed to writing separately and then pooling it together afterward like some collaborators). Of all their scripts, Used Cars (1980) took the longest to write, from beginning to end, since they had to throw out an entire first draft.
Currently writing the Marvel comic book Daredevil.
One of his favorite movies is Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964).
Frequently works with director Robert Zemeckis on projects such as A Field of Honor (1973), the Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974) episode "Chopper", I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978), 1941 (1979), Used Cars (1980), Back to the Future (1985), the Amazing Stories (1985) episode "Go to the Head of the Class", Back to the Future Part II (1989), Back to the Future Part III (1990), Amazing Stories: Book II (1992), Trespass (1992), and Bordello of Blood (1996).

[ on 'Back to the Future'] I don't know that part one was necessarily hugely cutting-edge. It was a very good melding of mechanical effects, where you can't tell where one ends and the other begins. So we're proud of that. This was way before we had computers or anything digital to do this stuff.. It holds up really well, and is probably the best time-machine film ever made.
[explaining the most commonly complained 'plot hole' in the original 'Back to the Future' film] Bear in mind that George and Lorraine only knew Marty/Calvin for six days when they were 17, and they did not even see him every one of those six days. So, many years later, they still might remember that interesting kid who got them together on their first date. But I would ask anyone to think back on their own high school days and ask themselves how well they remember a kid who might have been at their school for even a semester. Or someone you went out with just one time. If you had no photo reference, after 25 years, you'd probably have just a hazy recollection. So Lorraine and George might think it funny that they once actually met someone named Calvin Klein, and even if they thought their son at age 16 or 17 had some resemblance to him, it wouldn't be a big deal. I'd bet most of us could look thru our high school yearbooks and find photos of our teen-aged classmates that bear some resemblance to our children.

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