# Why Kevin Bacon? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 22, 2005, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-kevin-bacon/313730 "2005-07-22T23:41:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![MadderMitch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8e7dd6/32.png) [@MadderMitch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MadderMitch)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2005, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-kevin-bacon/313730/1 "2005-07-22T23:41:08Z")
A group as biz-savvy as yourselves should have heard of the “Kevin Bacon” game. FTWDK, it’s basically _six degrees of seperation_ i.e. you can connect any actor/actress in Hollywood to K.Bacon in six moves or less. So let’s try Elvis Presley. The Big Cheese was married to Priscilla, who starred alongside a greying (heh heh ) L.Nielsen in _Naked Gun_. Nielsen starred opposite maestro L.Bridges in _Airplane!_, who was _Blown Away_ with Tommy Lee Jones. Who was, of course, in the movie _JFK_ starring the actor K.Bacon. You get the picture. My point is, why Kevin Bacon? I realize you may answer, “versatility”, however why not Meryl Streep or Tom Cruise or Tom Hanks? Why this particular guy? ---
**Author:** ![diku](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4af34b/32.png) [@diku](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/diku)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2005, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-kevin-bacon/313730/2 "2005-07-22T23:42:58Z")
I think it’s mainly that he’s been in many ensemble pictures, starting with Animal House. That way, he’s connected to many more people. That’s just a WAG though. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2005, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-kevin-bacon/313730/3 "2005-07-22T23:43:02Z")
Seperation/ Kevin Bacon I don’t think it’s anything more than a forced rhyme, although it wouldn’t have worked if Kevin hadn’t been in so many movies. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2005, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-kevin-bacon/313730/4 "2005-07-22T23:46:43Z")
What he said. It rhymes, and he is, or was, one of those “that guy” actors who seems to have been in every kind of movie with everybody. Advanced mathematics has proved that it ought to be “Six Degrees of Rod Steiger.” Since he’s alive and still going, I wonder if Christopher Lee (a close second) could catch him. ---
**Author:** ![Scruloose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e68b1a/32.png) [@Scruloose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scruloose)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2005, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-kevin-bacon/313730/5 "2005-07-22T23:49:49Z")
Elvis Presley was in Live a Little, Love a Little (1968) with John (I) Wheeler John (I) Wheeler was in Apollo 13 (1995) with Kevin Bacon Elvis has a [Bacon number of 2.](http://oracleofbacon.org/cgi-bin/oracle/movielinks?firstname=Bacon%2C+Kevin&game=1&secondname=elvis+presley) Why Kevin Bacon? I dunno, but I’d wager that the answer includes drunken college students. ---
**Author:** ![Scruloose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e68b1a/32.png) [@Scruloose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scruloose)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2005, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-kevin-bacon/313730/6 "2005-07-22T23:57:40Z")
I knew it! > [@](#): > > The idea that everyone in the world is connected to everyone else by six or less associations was developed in John Guare’s play Six Degrees of Separation1. In 1994, three college students - Craig Fass, Brian Turtle, and Mike Ginelli - at Albright College, Pennsylvania, noticed that ‘Kevin Bacon’ contains the same number of syllables as ‘Separation’, and this sign of Bacon’s cosmic significance (in the acting world, at least), led them to develop the game they called ‘Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon’. > > Why Kevin Bacon? What distinguishes Bacon from any other actor? Actually, nothing. The students’ point was that he is in many ways an ‘average’ actor - innocuous, moderately prolific, successful enough to be in a variety of films (significantly, often with ensemble casts) over a respectable amount of time. Kevin Bacon fans should not be offended by this. He is a talented actor who will always be remembered, especially by many women of a certain generation, for his good looks and dance moves in Footloose (1984). > **[h2g2 - Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon - Edited Entry](https://h2g2.com/edited_entry/A640171)** > > Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, from the edited h2g2, the Unconventional Guide to Life, the Universe and Everything And… > [@](#): > > What began as a desperate round of movie trivia among three fraternity brothers is now arguably as widespread on the Internet as anti-government newsgroups. > > Craig Fass, 22, Brian Turtle, 22, and Mike Ginelli, 23, devised the game while attending Pennsylvania’s Albright College in January 1994. > > “The snow was so bad, the only things open were the beer distributor and the hospital,” says Fass, who graduated in May with a degree in history and is now a cook. “We would just go out and buy a keg of beer and watch television.” > > Ginelli, who is now in law school, said they had seen Bacon’s 1984 movie Footloose on TV on afternoon and later saw a commercial for Bacon’s then most-recent release, The Air Up There. > > Impressed with the actor’s productivity, the trio of movie-buffs speculated that Bacon had been in a movie with just about everyone in Hollywood. > > Or that everyone in Hollywood had been in a movie with Kevin Bacon. > > "That’s when we found our divine inspiration, that Kevin Bacon was the center of the acting Universe. > > On a whim, Fass called MTV’s ill-fated late-night program, “The Jon Stewart Show,” and made the pitch that the guys and the game would make good television. > > Jon Stewart agreed. The Kevin Bacon game made its national debut two weeks later when the guys played a round on the air. > > (Incidentally, Stewart’s Bacon number is 2: he was in Mixed Nuts with Steve Martin, who was in Planes, Trains & Automobiles with Kevin Bacon.) [http://www.cs.virginia.edu/misc/news-bacon.html](http://www.cs.virginia.edu/misc/news-bacon.html) ---
**Author:** ![SmackFu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/53a042/32.png) [@SmackFu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmackFu)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2005, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-kevin-bacon/313730/7 "2005-07-23T00:03:05Z")
Here’s five of his movies which make him quite a good hub for the game: 1996 Sleepers (DeNiro, Minnie Driver, Dustin Hoffman, Brad Pitt) 1996 Murder in the First (Christian Slater, Gary Oldman, William Macy) 1995 Apollo 13 (Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton, Gary Sinise, Ed Harris) 1994 The River Wild (Meryl Streep) 1990 Flatliners (Kiefer Sullivan, Julia Roberts, Billy Baldwin But not “The Best”, as [this page](http://www.cs.virginia.edu/oracle/center.html) shows. The actual best center is Rod Steiger. ---
**Author:** ![MadderMitch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8e7dd6/32.png) [@MadderMitch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MadderMitch)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2005, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-kevin-bacon/313730/8 "2005-07-23T00:11:24Z")
Hey Udo Kier is lucky 26!!! ---
**Author:** ![Dignan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f07891/32.png) [@Dignan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dignan)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2005, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-kevin-bacon/313730/9 "2005-07-23T00:20:52Z")
In his book The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell touches on Kevin Bacon’s level of “connectedness.” Kevin Bacon is young, but he has acted in several movies with different genres. Gladwell points out that John Wayne made more movies, but most of were Westerns, so Wayne ended up acting with most of the same people. Bacon has been in a wide range of movies making him a good actor to use as a “connector.” However, he isn’t the best. The most connected actor (as of the book’s printing) is Rod Steiger. ---
**Author:** ![Cliffy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/59ef9b/32.png) [@Cliffy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cliffy)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2005, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-kevin-bacon/313730/10 "2005-07-23T00:26:52Z")
The other thing is that when the game was invented, it was somewhat more interesting to play – before Apollo 13, before Sleepers, before Wild Things, and before Mystic River, all of which all had ensemble casts and lots of actors that were themselves prolific character actors. So the game was harder than it is now. By the way, in the 1992-93 timeframe my friend Alec was locally famous for being able to do this with any two actors. –Cliffy ---
**Author:** ![middleman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9a140/32.png) [@middleman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/middleman)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2005, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-kevin-bacon/313730/11 "2005-07-23T00:29:15Z")
The short answer to the origin of this game: _marijuana._ ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2005, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-kevin-bacon/313730/12 "2005-07-23T02:54:40Z")
> [@Cliffy](#): > > The other thing is that when the game was invented, it was somewhat more interesting to play – before Apollo 13, before Sleepers, before Wild Things, and before Mystic River, all of which all had ensemble casts and lots of actors that were themselves prolific character actors. So the game was harder than it is now. Common sense would seem to indicate that the curve of easyness vs. time would asymptotically approach zero (maximum easiness) as the number of movies produced in history increases. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2005, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-kevin-bacon/313730/13 "2005-07-23T04:41:39Z")
Challenge: get Kathy Lee Crosby in three. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2005, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-kevin-bacon/313730/14 "2005-07-23T04:43:12Z")
Err, Cathy. ---
**Author:** ![ZipperJJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zipperjj/32/211_2.png) [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2005, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-kevin-bacon/313730/15 "2005-07-23T04:57:12Z")
Wohoo!! I figured out that through a friend of mine (a semi-famous ex-rock-star) I am only FOUR degrees from Kevin Bacon!! The Oracle Of Bacon is sweet 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Indyellen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/indyellen/32/4176_2.png) [@Indyellen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indyellen)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2005, 5:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-kevin-bacon/313730/16 "2005-07-23T05:48:40Z")
> [@ZipperJJ](#): > > Wohoo!! I figured out that through a friend of mine (a semi-famous ex-rock-star) I am only FOUR degrees from Kevin Bacon!! > > The Oracle Of Bacon is sweet 😃 Ha! Thanks to the greatness that is IMDb, I have discovered I am THREE degrees from Kevin Bacon. A friend I went to school with (and used to act with in school plays) was in _Sex and the City_ (a guest shot) with Sarah Jessica Parker, who was in _Footloose_ with Kevin Bacon. Of course, through said friend, I’m also 2 degrees from Tim Curry, who IMHO is _much_ cooler than Kevin Bacon. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Indyellen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/indyellen/32/4176_2.png) [@Indyellen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indyellen)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2005, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-kevin-bacon/313730/17 "2005-07-23T06:01:49Z")
> [@Bryan Ekers](#): > > Challenge: get Kathy Lee Crosby in three. OK, **Brian** , I think I’ve done it. Kevin was in several movies with Keifer Sutherland. Kiefer stars in _“24”_, with William Devane, who was in _The Dark_ with Cathy Lee Crosby. That work? What did I win? 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2005, 6:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-kevin-bacon/313730/18 "2005-07-23T06:20:36Z")
> [@Indyellen](#): > > OK, **Brian** , I think I’ve done it. > > Kevin was in several movies with Keifer Sutherland. Kiefer stars in _“24”_, with William Devane, who was in _The Dark_ with Cathy Lee Crosby. > > That work? What did I win? 😉 My respect, though I outgeek you by far becuase my path involves sci-fi and fantasy movies: Bacon - Bibi Besch in _Tremors_ Besch - Ricardo Montalban in _Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan_ Montalban - Crosby in _Wonder Woman_, the 1974 TV movie that (more or less) served as pilot for the Lynda Carter series. ---
**Author:** ![Tracy\_Lord](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ec9cab/32.png) [@Tracy\_Lord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tracy_Lord)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2005, 7:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-kevin-bacon/313730/19 "2005-07-23T07:02:34Z")
Wow, I didn’t know Jon Stewart was the guy to introduce the game to the national airwaves! Cool! 🙂 FTR, my Bacon Number is two. ---
**Author:** ![Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2005, 7:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-kevin-bacon/313730/20 "2005-07-23T07:04:07Z")
> [@Bryan Ekers](#): > > Montalban - Crosby in _Wonder Woman_, the 1974 TV movie that (more or less) served as pilot for the Lynda Carter series. Not to hijack, but the horrid Crosby version had nothing to do with the Lynda Carter version. In fact the producers of the Lynda Carter version sought to distance themselves as much as possible, which is why the actual Lynda Carter pilot was titled “The New, Original Wonder Woman.” [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-kevin-bacon/313730.md?page=2)