Background: the Oracle of Bacon declared Kevin Bacon to be the center of the Hollywood Universe. While browsing the site, I happened upon a mention of the Most Obscure Actor in Hollywood. Naturally, like who has the highest “Bacon Number”, the Oracle is keeping the identity of this person secret. Any ideas? It’s evidently not a certain Major General.
Maybe it is that certain major general. The page mentioning the “Most Obscure Actor” gives his Bacon statistics as of February 27, 2002, giving an average of 10.182. If you enter someone’s name into the Bacon Oracle, you get their statistics as of today. The statistics are based on the Internet Movie Database, which updates constantly. It stands to reason that the Bacon Oracle gives different statistics now than it did a few months ago.
In fact, I just entered the name of the likely suspect, and discovered that he has an average number of 10.188! So the statistics have definitely changed since February 27. It has to be him.
I don’t get the "certain major general’ reference - who is that?
However, Jeff Olsen’s link to the most obscure actor in Hollywood tells a lot about this person.
That actor only has one person at the 1-link level. That means the movie s/he was in only had one other person mentioned in the IMDB (small cast!), and only one person at the two link level!
That’s incredible - that means the person they were in the movie with was only in one other movie, with one other person.
That person was no non-slouch either, only appearing onscreen with three other people in the IMDB in their whole career.
The person must have been in some really obscure film that was probably not “Hollywood” at all.
Right on all counts, bup. The “major general” came up in a thread about the Bacon game on these boards many months ago; someone will probably come along to provide the link. The discussion was about the person with the highest Bacon number, whom I believe is also the “Most Obscure Actor” mentioned in the OP. We’ve avoided giving his name because searching for high Bacon numbers can be a fun challenge. So I’ll give the name only under the new spoiler tag.
William Rufus Shafter
Check out the IMDB listing. He was, in fact, only in super-obscure non-Hollywood movies.
I did the same and thought it improbable that his the individual breakdowns would have changed so much in just a couple of months.
Heh. I sure wish I could go back and fix that.
On the other hand, I think it would be impossible for two people to have counts that high, given that Kevin Bacon doesn’t have a count higher than ten for anybody.
Actually, that alone sounds fishy - how could this person have an average higher than ten, when s/he is at most ten links away from Kevin Bacon? I guess it’s possible.
But I really do think it’s impossible for two people two be that high.