Gale was born to a Jewish family in University City, Missouri, the son of Maxine, née Kippel, (died 2010), an art dealer and violinist, and Mark R. Gale (1922–2018), an attorney, World War II veteran, and later a University City councilman. He has two younger brothers, Charlie, who wrote the screenplay for Ernest Scared Stupid, and Randy. Gale received a B.A. in Cinema in 1973 from the University of Southern California, where he wrote fanzine reviews for classmate Mike Glyer's fanzine, and met classmate Zemeckis.[citation needed]
As a child, Gale dreamed he would one day "go to Hollywood and work for Walt Disney", who was his hero. As a teen, he created his own comic book, The Green Vomit, using spirit duplication, and co-founded a popular comic book club in St. Louis. Later, he and his brother Charlie made their own amateur three-film series parody of the Republic Pictures Commando Cody serials, using the character name "Commando Cus".[citation needed] The last two of these were made in collaboration with Richard Rosenberg.[who?] (Rosenberg had taken over the series with the third, 1973's Commando Cus vs. Kung Fu Killers, in which Gale made a cameo appearance as the title character without his face-covering helmet, and was working on a fourth at the time of his death.)[citation needed]
As screenwriters, Gale and Zemeckis have collaborated on a number of films including 1941, I Wanna Hold Your Hand, Used Cars, and Trespass, the last set in East St. Louis, Illinois, near Gale's home town. Gale and Zemeckis were nominated for an Academy Award for their screenplay for Back to the Future. In 2002, Gale debuted as a feature-film director with Interstate 60: Episodes of the Road. He had previously directed and written the 20-minute theatrical release Mr. Payback: An Interactive Movie. Gale's other work includes the novelization for his movie 1941 and helped develop the arcade game Tattoo Assassins.[citation needed]

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