OCEANSIDE – Tom and Billie Nunan were watching the Academy Awards on television with a few friends when they heard the news.
“Crash” won the Best Picture Oscar.
Their son, Tom Nunan III, was an executive producer of the movie.
The award brought back a flood of memories for the Oceanside couple. Among them, a movie their son produced while still in film school at the University of California Los Angeles.
Nunan filmed it in his parents' home, which was then in Mission Viejo.
“People were going in and out all weekend, and I did all the cooking, but it was exciting to be part of it,” Billie Nunan said.
It was an 11-minute movie and took 44 hours to film, she said.
The movie, “Peccary,” centered around a dinner party and was filmed in the early 1980s.
Billie recalled some of the hazards of the project. The food she made for the set started to spoil.
“With all the hot lights, the mashed potatoes got to stinking because the milk soured,” she said.
But it remains a proud memory, in the same league as a book their son created in second grade.
The book, though a little tattered, is still on their shelf.
“He always liked to write and was thirsty for knowledge,” Billie said.
He was not as much into acting as writing and producing, she recalled.
The couple remembered young Tom's early years in Fallbrook, sometimes reading the books they had checked out of the library in the car on the way home.
“Tom always had a goal and he'd achieve it. He's very focused and hard working,” she said.
The couple recalled how he had two summer jobs in college, and when his boss during one internship suggested he read four scripts, he read five.
“He told me he wanted to go into the movie business because he wanted to express himself and make some money,” said his father, who retired this year as a business consultant in the energy industry.
Tom Nunan III was president of UPN and served on the board of the Hollywood Radio and Television Society. He held several high-profile positions, including running NBC's prime time production and leading Fox network's prime time and late night productions.
His goal was to become president of a network and start his own production company, his mother said. And he has.
He is co-founder and partner in Bull's Eye Entertainment, an independent television and film production company that produced “Crash.”
The company, founded in 2002, is a partnership between Nunan and Cathy Schulman, who produced “Crash.”
The company has produced several other films, including “Employee of the Month,” “Thumbsucker” and “The Illusionist,” along with a comedy pilot for CBS. It also has a number of network and cable projects in development.
Nunan is now working on a series called “Angela's Eyes,” slated to premiere this summer on Lifetime Television.
