Reston Changes Name to Hill Valley

Great Scott, Reston! In honor of Back to the Future’s 30th anniversary and the Washington West International Film Festival, the DC suburb will rename itself “Hill Valley,” after the movie’s fictional town. The name change will be in effect for five days beginning on October 21, 2015–the exact date that main characters Marty McFly and Doc Brown visited in the movie’s sequel.

That isn’t all Reston is doing to fête the film. Now in its fifth year, the Washington West Film Festival will show all three films at Reston Town Center’s Bowtie Cinemas on October 21. Then, on October 25, Christopher Lloyd, who played Doc, will attend a red carpet screening of the film and a Q&A afterward. Joining him on the red carpet will be Bob Gale, who cowrote all three films, and Claudia Wells, who played Marty’s girlfriend, Jennifer, in the first movie. All proceeds from the red carpet event will be donated to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.

The Washington West Film Festival thought that its presence in the middle of the Dulles tech corridor made it the perfect partner to honor such an iconic film. “Back to the Future represents the idea of dreaming what could be, and the potential personal impact every individual can have on the future,” said Washington West Founder and President Brad Russell in a statement.

While the movie’s sequel makes some pretty outlandish predictions for 2015–hoverboards, flying cars, self-lacing shoes and the dominance of fax machines–there are plenty of things it got right. There’s Hollywood’s obsession with sequels (Jaws 19, anyone?), video calls (think FaceTime or Skype) and video glasses (Google Glass isn’t dead yet!). There was one prediction, however, that is still yet to be judged. In the movie, the Chicago Cubs win the 2015 World Series. As of this writing, that is still a possibility.

Matt Blitz