Greg Southern sounded jubilant when he called yesterday to announce that his talented wife Gwynyth had just given birth to a perfect baby girl. What 's her name? Sunny. Why? Because, according to the doting dad, "She's got a smile that lights up a room!"A few days later, they took me home to my room at the house in the Hills of Beverly. This was the view of our backyard from my nursery window...
Yeah, yeah... I was one of those ridiculously spoiled kids. But then,
one day, just like in that Bette Middler-Nick Nolte picture, we came across
a homeless person going through our garbage. Ewwwww, was I ever grossed
out. But my mother explained to me that one person's garbage could
be another person's salvation. Or even, sometimes, the stuff of history.
My mother was incredibly pedantic about it all, but then my father took over (it's not for nothing he's called the Nolan Ryan of Hollywood) and pitched
it to me... "Sunny, think of it as a movie-- Kinda Raiders of the
Lost Ark crossed with The Terminator with a little Planet
of the Apes thrown in. And, though only Andrew Sarris would ever notice
it, a bit of It's a Wonderful Life... Can you dig it?" I dug
it. I mean I really dug it. From that day on, I knew I wanted to
be a cultural archæologist. And Daddy, who's been making a fortune
out of trash for 25 years, turned it into the #1 Box Office smash of 1986:
Arnold and Bruce starring in Time Garbage.