He and
Robert Zemeckis were known as "The Bobs" to
Steven Spielberg and
John Milius (and others) since they were always working and writing things together in and out of film school. Their writing structure as collaborators entailed both of them to be in the same room discussing things out loud and then one of them writing it down in longhand (as opposed to writing separately and then pooling it together afterward like some collaborators). Of all their scripts,
Used Cars (1980) took the longest to write, from beginning to end, since they had to throw out an entire first draft.