10/22/2025
The Day I Asked the Creator of Back to the Future Why He Invented… Hill Valley
Tonight, I had the incredible honor of meeting Bob Gale, the screenwriter of Back to the Future and the man who imagined the town that changed pop culture: Hill Valley.
I asked him one question I’ve been waiting years to ask:
“Why did you call it Hill Valley?”
He smiled and said: “It’s a joke that nobody understood! How can you be a hill and a valley at the same time!”
For me, that fictional town is more than just a name, it is a vision.
I named my company Hill Valley in tribute to this film because Back to the Future didn’t just entertain me, it shaped my imagination, my career, and my belief in the power of cinema to build worlds.
And as someone who builds brand partnerships in storytelling, Back to the Future remains one of the greatest examples of product placement as narrative destiny:
• The future wouldn’t exist without Marty McFly’s Nike shoes
• Time travel wouldn’t taste the same without Delorean
• And Calvin Klein wouldn’t just be a brand, it became a character
Those brands didn’t just appear in the film.
They became part of its mythology.
Today, standing next to the creator of that universe, I was reminded of why I do what I do:
to help brands become part of culture, not just background decoration, but story itself.
Hill Valley wasn’t just the town in the movie. It became the world I wanted to build in real life.
