After seven long yet fruitful years as a professional filmmaker, Zemeckis finally had the mega-hit he needed to catapult his career into the stratosphere, and it came in the form of the universally beloved, yet hilariously perverse BACK TO THE FUTURE. What started off as a rocky production, quickly found its footing as Michael J. Fox took on the role of the iconic Marty McFly, a guitar-noodling slacker who must witness the mindless excess of the 1980’s slow his family members down to a crawl with vodka, fast food, heavy make-up, and stale peanut brittle. No one reading this is a stranger to this movie, and yet it cannot go without stating this is one of the most air-tight, perfectly written screenplays in the history of cinema, one where all the elements coalesced just right to create a timeless classic. The plot mechanics alone are mind-boggling, and yet it is executed with the ease and purpose of the most professional of filmmakers,  as the young McFly journeys back in time in one of the worst junk-heaps ever created by a fanatical cocaine addict, repurposed into a time-traveling hunk of cheap metal by a crazed plutonium-stealing scientist. Gale and Zemeckis’ screenplay avoids many of the often saccharine facets of a story like this, as they spend most of their screenplay having their main character square off against their super-horny mom and their super-meek father, as well as casually stealing black music away from Chuck Berry, revealing shades of a forthcoming do-gooder with a penchant for unwittingly stealing success off the backs of others, a slow-witted holy fool by the name of Forrest Gump.