From theguardian:
Google builds Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon into its Search System
It is the party game beloved of cinephiles everywhere, one which rewards detailed knowledge of the career of one of the finest actors never to receive an Oscar nomination. And now it is even easier to play: Google has built Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon into its search system.
Devised in January 1994 by a trio of students at Pennsylvania's Albright college, the original game was based on the idea that it is always possible to connect every movie actor in the world back to the Footloose star in no more than six associations. A website, board game and book later emerged and an initially reluctant Bacon eventually embraced the phenomenon by launching his own site, SixDegrees.org, to foster charitable donations.
To use Google's system, the user simply types in the words "Bacon number" followed by the name of the actor. By way of example, typing "Bacon number Simon Pegg" reveals that Bacon and the British actor are linked by Tom Cruise, because the latter appeared in 1992's A Few Good Men with Bacon and in 2006's Mission: Impossible III with Pegg. Pegg therefore has a Bacon number of two, indicating two degrees of separation.
[DCD - I've spent the last twenty minutes typing actors and actresses names into google. Almost every single one has been either a 1 or a 2 degree separation. We found one actress that was a 3. It's pretty wild. And I have to laugh thinking about the people who got assigned this job at google.]
You can read the entire article here
8 comments:
Fun indeed! I found 3's with Bela Lugosi and Paul Stanley.
I remember us playing this game when we worked at Showcase. I connected Bacon to Bogart in 2 moves.
i haven't gotten above 3, but i'm starting to think that it just quits after that. i'm getting a lot of actors with no score.
wish i didn't know about this new and irresistable timewaster....
Man, even Rudolph Valentino only scored a 3!
Hmm, just saw 50's comment. I tried Robyn Paris, a friend of Julie's who's in the neo cult classic The Room, notable for its horribleness. It didn't work, but I thought I'd entered her name wrong.
The only one that came up empty for me was Chris Evans. Which I was somewhat surprised about, thought I had spelled it wrong too.
Went with foreign classics and I found a 4! Satyajit Ray used a basically amateur cast for his 1940s classic Panther Panchali. But still the lead kid gets you to January Jones in a couple moves...what a strange world.
Kanu Banerjee's Bacon number is 4
Kanu Banerjee and Karuna Banerjee appeared in Aparajito.
Karuna Banerjee and Erick Avari appeared in Kanchenjungha.
Erick Avari and January Jones appeared in The Glass House.
January Jones and Kevin Bacon appeared in X-Men: First Class.
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