‘Bomb’ star Arquette fuses films and family

“Time Bomb” is ticking along, breaking all the traditions for movies from CBS – or for anything from David Arquette.

CBS movies tend to be leisurely character dramas. Arquette’s projects tend to be fun.

“Time Bomb,” airing tonight at 9, is neither. A bomb has been hidden in the stadium of a big football game and federal agents rush to find it.

“It’s definitely pretty taxing,” Arquette says. “To a certain extent, you’re playing cops and robbers all the time.”

Except that these cops are Homeland Security agents and there are thousands of lives at stake.

Arquette stars with Richard T. Jones (“Judging Amy”) as a bomb expert. Angela Bassett plays an official supervising them.

A friend pointed Arquette toward a real Homeland Security agent.

“I got to pick his brain a little,” the actor says.

Then it was on to Montreal, where the filming was quick and intense. Stephen Gyllenhaal, father of “Brokeback Mountain” star Jake Gyllenhaal, directed “Time Bomb” at a fast pace.

“I would hop on a plane and get home every weekend,” Arquette says.

Waiting were his wife, Courteney Cox Arquette, and their 1-year-old daughter, Coco.

TV viewers get the idea if they saw the Coke commercial featuring Arquette playing an arcade game, while talking distractedly to his wife.

“A friend of ours shot the commercial and made it look a lot like our house,” he says. “We have one room that has a lot of games.”

That sense of fun fits many of the things Arquette does. Think of it as one of the privileges of the last-born child in a big family.

The late Lewis and Mardi Arquette raised five children, all of whom became actors. Their grandfather was Cliff Arquette, best known for his popular “Charlie Weaver” character on TV.

“I grew up in a really loving home,” says Rosanna Arquette, 46, the oldest of the five. “My mother took us to a lot of sit-ins and love-ins. … I grew up in a time when there was so much hope.”

David, the youngest at 34, grew up in an era that was less hectic. “By the time I came around, they’d made a lot of their mistakes,” he says.

Arquette attended the Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies, “an arts magnet school within the regular high school. … It was cool that I could still go to school with my friends.”

He followed that with light projects, including “Never Been Kissed” and two Muppet specials.

Arquette appeared in the three “Scream” films along with Cox, and they’ve linked on projects ever since. They’re currently working on “Dirt,” her upcoming cable show about the world of entertainment publicity, and he’s directing his own horror film, “The Tripper.”

His serious side showed in such independent movies as the holocaust film “The Grey Zone.” He played a male prostitute in “Johns” and a suicidal voyeur in “Dreams With the Fishes.”

And now he has an entire stadium of people to rescue.

The birthday bunch

Actor Patrick McGoohan is 78. Actress Ursula Andress is 70. Actress Glenn Close is 59. Actor Bruce Willis is 51. Actor Craig Lamar Traylor (“Malcolm in the Middle”) is 17.