Robert Zemeckis
Story (1,2,3), Screenplay (1), Director (1,2,3)

REAL NAME:			Robert L. Zemeckis
BORN:			May 14, 1952, Chicago, Illinois
EDUCATION:			University of Film Awards sponsored by the Motion Picture Academy of Arts & Sciences. Attended Northern Illinois University, transferred to USC.
SPOUSE:			Mary Ellen Trainer
CHILDREN:			Alex

ROBERT ZEMECKIS was born and raised in the southside of Chicago, Illinois. He began making short films with his 8mm camera while still in high school. He attended Northern Illinois University before transferring to the University of Southern California.

This talented producer-writer-director of zesty Hollywood entertainment for film and TV may be the star graduate of the Spielberg School of Genre Filmmaking. After co-writing and directing several small projects for that pop phenomenon, Zemeckis proved he could also helm blockbusters.

"Back to the Future is such an entertaining movie because it's got a little bit of everything. It's like somebody brought a big dumpster full of good ideas and backed it up and poured them all through my window, with Bob Zemeckis behind the wheel of the truck." -- Steven Spielberg

The making of Back to the Future may not have put director Robert Zemeckis behind the wheel of a truck, but he did sit behind the wheel of a DeLorean. It was only for a minute though, for the filmmaker rarely finds the time to sit down at all.

Racing across the set, framing the next shot between his hands, joking with a crew member or motioning to an actor about his ideas for the next scene, Zemeckis appears to be in constant motion.

"I love working with Bob because he's possessed," says Michael J. Fox who portrays the films' lead character, Marty McFly. "He must wake up in the morning chanting 'The movie. The movie.' And when he gets to work, he's full of energy and very positive."

Following the tremendous box office success of the romantic adventure Romancing the Stone starring Michael Douglas & Kathleen Turner, Zemeckis emerged as one of the most talented young filmmakers working today.

A 1973 graduate of the USC film school, Zemeckis and his writing partner, Back to the Future producer Bob Gale, made an important contact while the two were still in school -- Steven Spielberg. Describing his first meeting with Spielberg, Zemeckis recalls, "They used to have a course at USC where those of us in the class would go to Universal once a week and spend the day in a different department to learn how the studio worked. The last day of the semester they said we were going to meet with a young director, Steven Spielberg. He had just finshed his first feature, The Sugarland Express, for what seemed like a huge budget: $2 million. We walked into his office, and the door opened and this kid walked in. After the class I hung back and said to him, 'I have this student film. Would you like to see it?'"

"When I first saw Bob Zemeckis' student film at USC, from which I hired him to direct I Wanna Hold Your Hand, he had done a highly stylized film," says Spielberg. "I feel that every film Zemeckis & Gale have made, and every film Zemeckis has directed, has been a high order of pop cultural art -- something that I don't think any other filmmakers are tapping into."

"Back to the Future is a comedy-adventure-science-speculation-coming-of-age-rock-and-roll-time travel-period film," laughs Zemeckis about combination of every film genre. He adds, "My feeling about making a time travel movie into a fun adventure is to take the audience back in time, because everyone who sees the movie knows past history."

Zemeckis & Gale chose 1955 as their destination on the time line, a year which they are too young to really remember but which they look back at fondly. "I guess the thing that happened in the '50s that makes it so nostalgic throughout the decades that followed was that it was the first time that the teenager started to rule -- and he's ruled ever since."

Teenagers were the stars of Zemeckis' feature film debut in 1978, I Wanna Hold Your Hand, a comically nostalgic story of the Beatles first trip to New York for an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.

His next film was from a screenplay co-written by Bob Gale, based on an idea by Spielberg and John Milius, titled Used Cars. Kurt Russell starred in the irreverent comedy that was applauded by both Pauline Kael and Vincent Canby. Additionally, Zemeckis & Gale shared the writing credit with John Milius on 1941, a World War II comedy directed by Spielberg.

"Bob Zemeckis is the real Doc Brown," says Michael J. Fox of his Back to the Future director. "He's manic, but that insanity is tempered by an incredible mastery of his craft as well as an amazing vision and incredible flair for storytelling. It's great just to watch Bob work. I feel like I'm Marty McFly both on screen, and in real life, but that's why Marty hangs out with Doc, because...things happen."

Zemeckis has in fact made things happen for millions of moviegoers worldwide. With Back to the Future Part II, Zemeckis staked a trip to a territory into which few filmmakers have ventured -- the cinematic future. "After watching many of those movies set in the future," says the director, "I learned that you can only predict the future based on what you know. A good example is Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' When I first saw the film, I, along with many others, thought it was a brilliant prediction of the future. If you watch the film now, there are certain aspects about it that have become dated. For instance, it's amazing how huge Hal the computer is. In 1989, we have computers that can do almost everything that Hal did, including talk, and you can carry them in your pocket. When Kubrick and his production team were trying to predict the future, they knew there were computers, but they didn't know about the existence of the microchip. So they were half right and half wrong. Watching these films helped to show us where we might go astray."

After the success of Back to the Future, he spent the next two years perfecting a process to effectively blend live action with animation, and received even greater acclaim as the director of 1988's Academy Award-winning Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. Returning to continue the saga of time traveler Marty McFly, Zemeckis fashioned a story which he claims is "much more difficult to describe than it is to watch. That's one of the things I love about this film. It's a story that can only be told correctly in the movie theatre."

While Zemeckis believes that no one can accurately predict the future, he asserts that this is precisely the message he wished to convey in Back to the Future Part II. "The DeLorean time machine is simply a movie device, and by using that device, we're able to alter and shape the course of our characters' lives in two years. Real life takes a little longer. One's future," he states, "is not written in stone. it's in the hands of each individual to make whatever they want it to be, good or bad."

"As Bob Gale and I were outlining the story for Back to the Future Part II, we realized that to complete the story of Marty and Doc, we needed more than one chapter. It had to be a trilogy." When first approached to do a sequel to Back to the Future, Zemeckis, Bob Gale and Neil Canton all agreed they wouldn't come back unless they could find a way to preserve the quality and originality of the first film. "The biggest obstacle one faces when making a sequel," says Zemeckis, "is that you are enslaved by the first movie. What we strived to do with the trilogy, was to take the concept of the sequel, which is generally looked down upon as crassly commercial and in many circumstances merely a rehash of the original film, and redefine that concept. "We were able to do that in Back to the Future Part II by actually going back into the first movie from a different perspective. In Back to the Future Part III, we continued to explore and ultimately resolve the emotional complexities of the characters and their dilemmas. we've also structured each chapter so they work as one completely interwoven saga, from the original film through the end of Part III."

One of the reasons that Zemeckis wanted to do two sequels was to give audiences more of an insight into the character of Marty McFly. We don't really know all that much about Marty from his adventures in the first film, except that if he doesn't repair the damage he's caused in the past, he'll cease to exist. To continue with the series, a new dimension of the character had to be revealed, explored and resolved. That's a lot to do in the course of one film.

"We didn't have the luxury of the cinematic 'shorthand' that you use in a normal movie, where you can start the film with the character in crisis. The first movie had already put Marty's predicament to rest. It took all of Part II to put the character into a new crisis, which is caused by the additional information we've now learned about him. Although Part II clears up the problems caused by Biff stealing the sports almanac, we still have Marty's character flaws to deal with and the new problems of Doc Brown in danger from "Mad Dog" Tannen, as well as falling in love with Clara. There is a natural growth process of the characters which causes Marty and Doc to exchange roles. Marty is forced into being the voice of reason, as Doc's love interest blinds him to the laws of the space-time continuum."

By splitting the continuation of his story into two parts, Zemeckis was also able to embellish the final chapter. "If the western chapter of the story was relegated to being part of just one sequel instead of two, it would had to have been streamlined to a point where it would have been merely a brief episode within the story. The luxury of having Part III allowed us to give the film more texture and make the story richer."

Zemeckis grew up watching westerns and allows that his predilection for the genre helped in both the writing and direction of Back to the Future Part III. Yet he maintains that although there are acknowledgments and references to past works of the legendary western stars and directors, he had not used his film as an 'homage' to his childhood heroes.

"Invariably, because these other films and similar images exist, if you put a character in a cowboy hat and have him ride through an open range, somebody will insist you're doing a 'homage' to the western. In actuality, the only true 'homage' I ever intended to put in any of the films was in Part II, where I took a cue from Stanley Kubrick, who showcased the actual products like Hilton hotels and Howard Johnson restaurants in 2001: A Space Odyssey. That's why we used real products in our future, as opposed to fictitious or generic brands."

In its completed form, Zemeckis is "incredibly satisfied with the overall effect of the trilogy. I think we have succeeded in our original goal, which was to enhance the quality and maintain the integrity of Back to the Future. I'm very proud of all three films." Choosing not to continue the adventures of Marty and Doc, Zemeckis offers an oft used, but nonetheless valid line of explanation for that decision. Says the director, "All good things must come to an end."

Zemeckis followed the Back to the Future trilogy with a dark comedy, mixed with dazzling special effects called Death Becomes Her. The film starred Goldie Hawn, Merryl Streep and Bruce Willis, and was a modest hit for the talented director.

It's quite easy to see that what he was able to accomplish in Death Becomes Her set the stage of what was soon to become his biggest success yet, 1994's Forrest Gump. Forrest Gump turned Zemeckis and its star Tom Hanks into huge bankable Hollywood icons. The film earned Zemeckis his first Oscar as Best Director, along with nabbing an Oscar for Best Picture. Tom Hanks became only the second actor in history to win two consecutive Best Actor awards by the Academy. Forrest Gump went on to gross more than $310 million at the box office domestically, becoming the third most financially successful films of all time, topped only by E.T. - The Extra Terrestrial and Jurassic Park, both directed by Zemeckis' mentor, Steven Spielberg. In 1997, Gump got bumped a notch to fourth place in the wake of the re-release of Star Wars.

Zemeckis has also branched out into producing for network TV (Johnny Bago) and feature films (The Public Eye). He and Gale also provided a surprisingly hardboiled action script for Walter Hill's riveting Trespass.

Zemeckis' next directorial project is said to be Boss, starring Bruce Willis, whom Zemeckis directed in the 1992 dark comedy Death Becomes Her.

Robert Zemeckis is married to actress Mary Ellen Trainor, and the couple, along with their son Alex, make their home in Santa Barbara, California.