The Oracle of Bacon

December 11, 2001 10:07 PM

The Oracle of Bacon is prehaps the greatest waste of time ever. Go from Akira Kurasowa to Kevin Bacon in just three degrees of seperation.
posted by SweetJesus (23 comments total)

Jeesh, I can't find a Bacon number higher than three...
posted by machaus at 10:37 PM on December 11, 2001

Benito Mussolino has a Bacon rating of 4.

Hitler is only 3.

I managed to get a number of 5s... but I was getting really off track in the IMDB, getting into 1930s Indian movies...
posted by mkn at 11:16 PM on December 11, 2001

wow, we've actually managed to avoid posting this link to mefi for almost 3 years? pretty good, i'd say.

looks like it was only referenced 12,000+ threads ago.
posted by mmanning at 11:26 PM on December 11, 2001

I actually referenced it a couple weeks ago. Not that I thought it was anything new, but it was appropriate at the time.
posted by girlhacker at 11:51 PM on December 11, 2001

Oracle No. Infinity.

Wacko!
posted by Neale at 12:06 AM on December 12, 2001

I got a score of three. Should this disturb me?
posted by Poagao at 12:29 AM on December 12, 2001

Dunno. Were you actually in Mahjong?
posted by salmacis at 12:41 AM on December 12, 2001

Neale: Wacky.
It had occurred to me to try porn stars and the like, but they all had pretty low numbers due to Asia Carerra being in The Big Lebowski in the IMDB.
posted by adamv at 1:20 AM on December 12, 2001

Yeah, I was, but at the time I had no idea I was so close to the Bacon.

*shivers*
posted by Poagao at 1:59 AM on December 12, 2001

Floella Benjamin has a three (this will only be amazing to Brits of a certain age)!
posted by davehat at 2:18 AM on December 12, 2001

About 12% of all actors have Bacon numbers of infinity, either because they have appeared only in TV features that the Oracle doesn't count, or because they have not appeared in any features with actors from the Hollywood mainstream.
posted by Berend at 2:26 AM on December 12, 2001

Asia Carerra being in The Big Lebowski

Wha?

Now that actually sparks an interesting train of thought for me. If there were a way to create an anonymous-enough degrees-of-separation site where folks could list who they'd slept with, and if enough people jumped on the bandwagon...

You could say, for example, 'I have three degrees of sexual separation from Stephen Hawking' (not sure why I picked that name...just popped out, honest).

What fun!

Alright, never mind.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 3:04 AM on December 12, 2001

There used to be sixdegrees.com which was fun to play with. Get to know your friend's friend's friends and so forth. But they shuttered last year, and no one bought the site out.
posted by benjh at 4:38 AM on December 12, 2001

floella benjamin!

you space cadet!
posted by Frasermoo at 4:50 AM on December 12, 2001

Stavros: I imagine your degree of sexual seperation will most likely be odd for females and even for males. (At least I always assumed you were male.)

Davehat: Whatever made you try Floella Benjamin!?
posted by salmacis at 5:01 AM on December 12, 2001

I did a search for this last night on MiFi, and nothing came up. This is probably because the search feature sucks here, but I figured I'd post it anyway.
posted by SweetJesus at 5:15 AM on December 12, 2001

Poagao: I, too, have a Bacon number of three, and I'm a little surprised it's not lower. I was an extra (uncredited, natch) in a movie with many "big name" stars (Michael Douglas, Robert Downey Jr., etc.), and none of them have been in a movie with Kevin Bacon. Interesting.
posted by arco at 6:47 AM on December 12, 2001

salmacis: Erm, I sort of got lost on a tangent because I was looking at this site around the same time.
posted by davehat at 6:48 AM on December 12, 2001

How can someone possibly find an 8, 9, or 10?!?
posted by padjet1 at 12:32 PM on December 12, 2001

Ultimate Bacon: The Giant Component of a Complex Network: 8 8s.
posted by Carol Anne at 3:10 PM on December 12, 2001

Impressive.
I get a score of 2 with an old schoolmate, Dylan Tighe.
posted by tomcosgrave at 3:19 PM on December 12, 2001

Hitler is only 3 [degrees of separation away from Bacon]

Hitler has about 150 film and television credits, but not all of them are legitimate. He is listed as "Worst Boy" for the Airplane! movies, for instance. (I discovered this a few weeks ago... stumbled into it through the cast list for Contact.)

What I find most interesting about Carol Anne's link is that it is the first article I've seen to credit someone specific (Jon Stewart) with the idea of "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon." Can anyone confirm this?
posted by kindall at 4:38 PM on December 12, 2001

kindall, see Louisville Magazine: "Three years ago a trio of Pennsylvania college boys with too much time on their hands and a bottle of Southern Comfort came up with the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. Craig Fass, Brian Turtle and Mike Ginelli wrote a letter to then TV talk-show host Jon Stewart, who invited them on his show to demonstrate the game. From these humble beginnings, a Web site arose, a book was published and a nationwide cult-fad was born."
posted by Carol Anne at 4:40 AM on December 13, 2001