The Real Kevin Bacon | Hacker News Reader

The Real Kevin Bacon

pudding.cool

376 pointsxnx96 comments

Sure, but what's the Basis Set movie? If you only had one actor in a movie, and you wanted to have the most connectedness in it, you'd choose Sam Jackson right now. (The one from Pulp Fiction, not the one from Ted.)

But what if you could have TWO actors in a movie? Would Sam Jackson (again, the one from Jurassic Park, not the lawyer) still be one of them? Or is it possible that in aggregate, there are two actors who would achieve a better connectedness than Sam Jackson (the one from The Long Kiss Goodnight, not the one who was in Veronica Mars) plus one of those actors?

What if you could have THREE actors in a movie?

Or what about, who is the perfect sidekick for Sam Jackson (stop asking, yes, of course I mean the one with the purple lightsaber, not the one from In Time)? Who, if you add them to a Sam Jackson (the director of S.H.I.E.L.D., not the Mean Girl) movie, gives them the most aggregate connectedness?

Enquiring minds want to know!

Also, who's the Kevin Bacon of Bollywood?

> Also, who's the Kevin Bacon of Bollywood?

Almost certainly Shah Rukh Khan.

It was probably Amitabh Bachchan at one point, right?

I would say that the logical drop-in replacement is Aamir Khan.

The thing about Kevin Bacon is he's b list yet still highly connected.

Shah Ruh Khan is more like George Clooney or something.

Kevin Bacon is objectively an A-list actor.

I mean. Footloose. But his list of stinkers is so epic it overshadows his peak movies. His career is an iceberg, with only the tiniest but showing above the popularity line.

Couldn't you say the same about Nick Cage? Granted, Cage's iceberg is quite a bit bigger than Bacon's.

I mean... He's been directed by absolute A-list directors, opposite absolute-A++-list actors... Yeah, I'd definitely call him A-list.

* Footloose - How many movie-featured songs get played at MORE weddings?

* Apollo 13 - directed by Ron Howard

* Mystic River - directed by Clint Eastwood

* Sleepers

* X-Men: First Class

* A Few Good Men - directed by Rob Reiner

* JFK - Oliver Stone

* Murder in the First

* She's Having A Baby - directed by John Hughes

* Planes, Trains and Automobiles - directed by John Hughes

* Animal House

* Balto

Sure, if you want to invent new tiers like A++ then I guess we can agree Kevin Bacon is third tier and just call it different things.

Whatever you call the absolute top tier, that is Shah Ruh Khan.

Most he ever made for a film was $6M and vast majority of films were $1M or less.

> B-List: Highly successful, dependable actors who frequently star in popular television series or play vital supporting/co-leading roles in major films, but rarely headline a massive blockbuster entirely on their own. Examples: Cult favorites, popular TV leads, or emerging block-buster stars.

I'll concede he's not at the same level as George Clooney, but as the lead in Footloose and co-leads/part of ensemble leads in Wild Things, Flatliners, The River Wild, and Hollow Man, I would have thought that put him above someone like Bill Pullman, who I think of as a B-list actor. But you don't always have to be the lead to be an A-lister. Just look at Gary Oldman.

Just because there's some lower on the B-list than actor A, that doesn't mean A is off the B-list.

Equally, just because someone is lower on the A-list than actor B doesn't mean that B is off the A-list...

> co-leads/part of ensemble leads in Wild Things, Flatliners, The River Wild, and Hollow Man,

Kinda surprised you left Apollo 13 out of that list, as it was definitely an ensemble cast of the 90s but he still IMO nailed the role.

Margin Call is a pretty good candidate, considering how tight its cast is.

Edit: come to think of it, if you want a big cast of the most highly-connected actors, you'd probably pick Cradle Will Rock from back in 1999.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cradle_Will_Rock

A ridiculously great film you should see, about everything that matters, all in one modestly history-distorting bonkers movie, with some songs and some cracking dialogue:

  Marc: I am faithful to the ideals of the party.
  Orson Welles: I am faithful to the party of ideas.
  John Houseman: You are faithful to the idea of a party.
  
  John Houseman: As the producer, I can fire anybody I want, and I am fucking fired!

I'm putting my money on either Scott Pilgrim or The Big Short.

If you count the random cut-ins, maybe.

I feel like A Few Good Men would do really well.

I seem to recall that Mystic River was ridiculously highly connected in the Oracle of Bacon database at about the time that that film came out in 2003.

BRB, rewatching The Red Violin with Sam Jackson

Prior art here is the much older Oracle of Bacon project (which I'm hoping the author didn't know about). It uses the full IMDb data set (not just the top 10,000 films) and gets different results, with Eric Roberts in first place and Samuel L. Jackson in fifth: https://oracleofbacon.org/center_list.php

I'm sure I saw a version of this that had Rod Steiger at #1, via a very long career as a mostly supporting actor.

It looks like it's very sensitive to the choice of dataset, so I guess there's no one "correct" answer.

Both this new one and the Oracle of Bacon seem a little suspiciously weighted towards living actors, which makes me think their data is skewed towards modern movies. But Hollywood has been around for a long time, so if there were a correct answer I would have thought it would be likely to be somebody very old or dead.

I don't think that's a problem with the Oracle of Bacon data; I think there actually are more newer movies than older ones, because Hollywood has figured out ways to ramp up its production over time.

I don't think the site mentions it, but it seems to stop counting actors after they retire. There's no way anyone is within 4 movies of every single actor in history.

Why not? Plenty of actors working today got started in the 80s or 90s, and they'll have worked with actors who got started in the 40s or 50s.

RIP Tom Skerritt, #589

Yeah I was disappointed that Eric Roberts wasn't on the list of allowed actors. He was my first choice

I hope Kevin bacon takes this as a personal attack and manages to get small roles in every upcoming film that has actors he hasn’t worked with yet.

Somehow it's a fun fact that you can reach any other actor in four moves, but a much less fun fact that you can probably-reach any other actor in 2.6 moves. "Connectedness", huh. Though it was interesting to see that Frank Welker used to be in fourth place. Never heard of him. Or I've only heard of him, he's a voice actor. He does cartoon animals, often without lines, lots of miaowing.

Yeah, I think an argument can be made that frank welkers presence at the top indicates voice acting should be treated as an optional variant.

He's Megatron, amount others.

He's done so much more than that. While he is likely many animals you've heard, he's also Megatron and Soundwave from Transformers, Fred and Scooby-Doo, Apu from Aladdin (ok, this is another animal, but he got significant screentime), and Ralph the guard in Animaniacs.

Chloë Grace Moretz was huge as a child star but she is basically retired now, the likelihood that she continues to appear in any major movies is very slim. Her career's early start was beneficial to this ranking but is not representative. The likelihood that she ever overtakes Samuel L Jackson is... nothing, nada, because Samuel L Jackson is more active than her.

> "The conventional wisdom is that Kevin Bacon is the all-encompassing center of Hollywood..."

Well, yes, but his name also rhymes with "separation", and that's kind of important.

Not quite sure why you are getting downvotes since it’s clearly a play on six degrees of separation and the rhyming substitution at least plays some part in why people have continued to discuss it.

I’ve seen other analyses going back at least a couple decades showing Kevin Bacon was not the center of Hollywood, although none as thorough as this.

John Candy #2 in 1993! Makes his loss hit hard even after all these years.

This is great but surely the point of choosing Kevin Bacon in the first place was because he is surprisingly well-connected. If someone said ‘6 degrees of Samuel L Jackson’ most of us would not be surprised at how well-connected he is.

The point of choosing Kevin Bacon in the first place was that "Kevin Bacon" sounds roughly like "separation," so the reference works. AFAIK there was no additional criterion.

I had never actually realised that until now! Thank you

This isn't true. Here's the guys who invented the game appearing on Jon Stewart in March, 1994:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMn3B4LAP48

They don't mention it on the Stewart performance, but they had just seen Bacon in two films on TV back to back:

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/the-exact-history-o...

Now, maybe they named the game "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" because it sorta rhymes with "separation", but they didn't pick him to rhyme with the phrase.

Being in a Marvel movie greatly increases your connectedness.

Samuel L. Jackson and Robert Downey Jr. are central to a lot of plotlines in the first 10 years of Marvel movies. With either them or characters connected to them appearing in other movies.

Then you have other franchise connections. If you've been in a Kevin Smith film, you're at most three steps from Samuel L. Jackson by way of Kevin Smith -> Bruce Willis -> Samuel L Jackson. And even if you're not in a film in the "View Askewniverse" like "Zac and Miri Make a Porno", that movie has Justin Long, who was in a movie with Willis.

Every actor in the Fast and Furious franchise is connected through Vin Diesel.

Every actor in the OT and sequel trilogy of Star Wars is connected through Harrison Ford. The prequel trilogy connects through Natalie Portman.

Just between those, it's not too hard to reach everyone.

I have not heard of any of the Gen Z candidates. I guess I am old.

I wonder if IMDb notices a spike from names present in TFA in today's stats

No, it's not that you're old. It's that the movie industry took a big shit in the late 2000s.

Even the takeaways from the last few slides strongly support this. The Gen Z actors are nowhere near as prolific nor have starred in as memorable roles. Previous generations had their actors passing the baton to the next one by co-starring. None of this happened for Gen Z which is why you don't know their names. To me, that's the biggest sign of all that Hollywood didn't even try to make a future for these actors. This is a calculated decline.

The final conclusion even had to jam in a progressive factoid for good measure about it being a woman. It's planting the seed for another round of 2010s-style manufactured outrage in the 2030s when nobody cares except the most righteous "true fans". It's not even misogyny. That's just the cover story. It's the greedy race to the bottom.

Timothy chalamet or Jennifer Lawrence were famous in their 20s and seems to be doing ok (not DiCaprio level, but still), so they have for sure better opportunity to improve their remoteness score than Moretz, maybe Tom Holland stand a chance as well

I knew only Moretz from Kickass movies, but that's it and honestly it's not surprising

even the now famous actors were hardly famous in their 20's, from recent actors Jennifer Lawrence, Timothy chalamet or DiCaprio, from older James dean or marlon Brando, so it's actually very rare to see actor who is famous at young age and remains famous even later, only very few can pull that, they are either famous as young or as old, almost nobody transition successfully from being famous as child or at young age to latter years

This is cool! I liked the time machine the best, and was surprised to see names I didn't recognize at the top (although I did recognize a couple faces once I looked them up).

Side note: I feel old. As soon as it started mentioning the set of younger actors, I didn't recognize a single name. I feel like I'm watching new-ish movies, I just don't know who the actors are and it seems like they're all kind of interchangeable "undifferentiated young good looking people".

That's because Hollywood moved away from stars to franchises. People no longer watch a movie because an actor they know is in it, they watch it because it is connected to a franchise they know.

Ha! I correctly guessed Samuel Jackson. Over a decade ago I read he was the number 1 actor for gross receipts of all the movies any actor had made (don't know if it's still true). I somehow felt that stat would be connected to this one.

Would never have guessed Nicole Kidman for women, though.

I'd never heard that stat about Samuel L. Jackson and find it interesting because I don't think of him as a particularly versatile or prolific actor, though good in his roles and typically well cast. The stat is believable (apart from verifying it) given the massive franchises and singular hits he's landed.

Think of some of the movies he's been in (even if only for a small role).

Many Tarantino movies (including Kill Bill 2).

The Star Wars reboot trilogy.

The Marvel movies (Avengers, etc)

Goodfellas.

I'm two degrees from Kevin Bacon. Friend of mine wrote the script to "He Said, She Said". So there.

My son has been good at the game since he was 13. He's been a professional actor since he was nine. I don't think he's ever been tripped up.

I would not have guessed Willem Dafoe up there :o

Why not? He's been hugely active over a wide range of genres. He's the exact kind of actor I'd expect to be high up.

I was surprised too, then I started thinking about his filmography

Marvel Movies, John Wick, Robert Eggers films, To Live and Die In LA, Streets of Fire, American Psycho, The Last Temptation of Christ, he was unforgettable in The Life Aquatic, and Wild at Heart!

The directors he's worked with: Robert Eggers, Wes Anderson, David Lynch, Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone, John Waters, William Friedkin, David Cronenberg, Sam Raimi... who am i forgetting?

edit: Yorgos Lanthimos!

What an incredible career; I think he spends a lot of time in Italy when he's not filming now

You forgot Lars von Trier

He's my favourite actor, so I know: he's in a very eclectic range of films in loads of genres with all kinds of actors.

I think that your range as an actor helps you here. For example, Seth Rogan, while he's in loads of films, he is extremely typecast into stoner comedies. So he is more separated from actors in other genres.

Willem Dafoe and Gary Oldman are two of my favorites -- for being underappreciated, and quite eclectic!

Fascinating content, engaging visuals, painfully difficult navigation.

B+

I immediately thought, "Nicolas Cage". Turns out he's only seventh, but still a lot closer than Kevin Bacon.

Same! It was more of a guess, since I’m not a movie buff, but was cool to see him in the top 10.

Kevin Bacon was not really chosen for any reason other than his name and its name recognition.

Certainly not chosen for centrality.

It was always tongue-in-cheek. People liked the idea that he was the center of Hollywood in the 90s even though he wasn't the most famous. It was an amusing observation that he was always in supporting roles in every movie. It feels plausible even if it wasn't true. His name adds to the memetic quality.

I'm not sure this presentation is complete if they don't even mention Eric Roberts: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000616/

Interesting metric. 20 years ago, if I had to guess who was the center of Hollywood, I would have guessed Eric Roberts. He was in every movie from the bettween the 80`s and 2000`s. Including also all B and strait to DVD movies.

He acted in 46 movies in 2024 according to his Wikipedia (not a single that I recognize, incidentally).

The data TFA uses excludes many B and DTV movies since it limits to the top 10k films. A more catholic approach indeed puts Roberts at the top: https://oracleofbacon.org/center_list.php

Maybe I missed it, but the introduction doesn't explain the point that "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" is just a play on "Six Degrees of Separation".

The premise is wrong. Kevin Bacon was never meant to be unique in this way, just an illustration of a point in a small-worlds network.

I guess this is mainly about alive actors? Because for instance I'd expect Christopher Lee to be up there but he's not even in the list.

Is nice, but incomplete, as is seems to ignore the connections between two Hollywood actors appearing in Non-Hollywood films and punish also actors that take risks in indie films. Also is not clear who deserves to be named a Hollywood actor.

I miss Will Smith, Emma Thompson or Elijah Wood in that list.

Elijah Wood has worked with Bruce Willis, Vin Diesel, Kevin Costner, Morgan Freeman, Mel Gibson, Robert Duvall (The Goodfather), Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd (Connects him with Bob Hoskins, Anjelica Houston and Kathleen Turner). Also with John Stewart (connects him in a small cameo with Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Wes Craven, Will Ferrell, Mat Damon, Ben Affleck and Chris Rock).

Emma Thompson has made only a few films in America, but those included Swarzenegger, Dany DeVito, Travolta, Tommy Lee Jones, Will Smith, Josh Brolin, Anthony Hopkins, Banderas, Robert Downey Jr, Rami Malek, Tom Holland, Chris Hemsworth or Jemaine Clement (voice actor in Avatar, Despicable Me, Moana and A Minecraft Movie, also the bad guy in MIB III).

Makes me want to browse the same for maths researchers with Erdos number.

I know Grigori Perelman is far from Erdos, which is fun :)

I thought the same thing. You would like this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erd%C5%91s%E2%80%93Bacon_numbe...

It's called "Back to Bacon" and Howard is the one who popularized it.

It's weird that James Hong is so far down the list. The man has been in 470 movies.

Tap the right side of screen to advance to next slide.

Took me a while to figure out.

i would rather see the eigenvector centrality of the adjacency matrix than just estimated distance.

aside from the first, the next few eigenvectors would be great.

anyone done this?

Only has 2 text blobs and a few actors? Not really worth a "tap to continue" a. If the continue doesn't have any value

I saw 19 screens of content.

I liked the presentation, and thought it was worth it.

You have to keep tapping . . . I agree that it was not obvious.

It seemed buggy for me and kept looping around. Never got past the one that said Kevin Bacon wasn't the center. Maybe it's broken in Firefox?

Tapping right side goes forwards, tapping left side goes back. Really not obvious and frustrating to find out.

Imagine focusing on a distant people to people connection. Who did what?! They did that? A thing they did? I must focus on it and devote time to this.

woot M. Emmet Walsh!

Why is Kevin Bacon such a legend? He seems like a good actor but why does he have a cult like following?

This does not work on iOS Safari, I get stuck in a loop. I haven’t installed the latest iOS update FWIW

This is the dumbest and coolest shit ive ever seen.

I love it lmaoooo. great job

Listen I get it right the vibecoding is fun but please for gods sake ask claude "Can u make it faster pls" before shipping my GOD dude.

To be fair, pudding.cool has been putting out this same format of content from well before LLMs were a thing. They are all about interactive data stories.

Ah sure that's my bad then. It just runs incredibly poorly on my end, so I guess my default was to assume it was an LLM issue.

This is missing the fact that there's a temporal element to this. Over time, the corpus grows larger and larger meaning younger actors and actresses find connections easier through common ancestors.

Is it missing that fact? It would be a pretty glaring flaw in the co-star trajectory modeling.

It is not, it's basically the last 1/3 of the thing

I don't think you clicked far enough. There's an entire section about the temporal element, replete with time-axis charts.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com