Back To The Future, the highest grossing movie of 1985, will always be one of my favorite films because in 1985, I was just a couple of years younger than Marty McFly, Michael J. Fox’s character. My dad took my sister and me to see the movie and this was what was so weirdly meta about the experience. Here I was — a teenager in 1985 watching a movie set in 1985 with my father (who was a teenager in the 1950s) in which the character goes back to find his father as a teenager in 1955.

The film, directed by Robert Zemeckis and written by Zemeckis and Bob Gale, developed from a concept Gale imagined after finding his father's high school yearbook in his parents’ basement. Looking through the yearbook, Gale discovered his father had been the president of his graduating class. Gale wondered whether he and his father would have been friends if they had attended school together.

Believe me, after this movie, my father and I had that very same conversation (and I imagine millions of people did as well.) If you went back to the future and met your parents in high school, would you have been friends?

Thirty years later, fans are still going bonkers over this film, particularly because this is the week people have been waiting for, when in Back to the Future Part II, Marty McFly travels forward in time to a small town in California on Oct. 21, 2015, at 4:29 p.m. The future is now.

Internationally, movie theaters will be screening movies from the Back To The Future trilogy on Wednesday, Oct. 21, as well as several Maine theaters, including The Strand Theatre (Rockland), Smitty’s Cinema (Sanford), Railroad Square Cinema (Waterville) and Regal Cinema (Brunswick).

In 1985, I had no idea where I’d be in life or what 2015 would look like. As far into the future as it seemed back then, it seemed entirely plausible that there would be hoverboards and video phone calls, such as Skype and FaceTime. And given that the 1980s had hideous fashion (I didn’t see that changing much), the Yoko Ono visors and self-lacing Nikes seemed about right for 2015. But flying cars? That, I doubted even at age 16. As it turns out, Business Insider has a list of 21 Things 'Back To The Future 2' Got Wrong About 2015

For fans, this website shows in real time the countdown to how many days, hours and minutes we are from hitting the exact time circuit in Back To The Future II.

Stay tuned as we join other moviegoers at The Strand Theatre at 7 p.m. to watch that iconic movie all over again. I’m going to have to FaceTime Dad while I’m there.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com