Kevin Bacon Makes Everything Better

Kevin Bacon Mosaic portrait made from 15 lbs. of bacon

Do you like bacon?

Bacon

Kevin Bacon, that is.

Kevin Bacon

In 1994, Premiere Magazine interviewed Kevin Bacon about the movie, The River Wild. In this interview Kevin Bacon said that he had either worked with everyone in Hollywood or worked with somebody who’s worked with them.


A few months later, there was an article that circulated via a newsgroup, titled: “Kevin Bacon is the Center of the Universe.”

Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon book

That same year, four students at Albright College came up with this game to connect any celebrity name to Kevin Bacon. They started this game after watching Footloose, and then The Air Up There. The Bacon-movie-marathon (or Bac-a-thon) inspired these bright young men to speculate on how many people Kevin Bacon had worked with. They published the book, Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.

In the summer of 2011, Kevin Bacon played Sebastian Shaw in the move X-men: First Class. When I found out he was in the movie, I thought, "This guy is in everything!"

Emma Frost (left) talking to Sebastian Shaw (right) in X-Men: First Class

Kevin Bacon actually started an organization called SixDegrees.org as a charity.

Which should not be confused with the Oracle of Bacon.

The Oracle of Bacon is a computer program that compares over 800,000 people from the Internet Movie Database, and assigns them a Bacon number. This website says that about 12% of all actors can't be linked to Kevin Bacon. What a shame.

If you happened to be watching the 83rd Academy Awards (2011), you would have seen James Franco make a reference to the Six Degrees of Bacon.

So what is my Bacon number, you ask?

My great uncle Fred Smith in Kentucky, was Diane Sawyer's uncle by marriage. Diane Sawyer was in a TV special Independence Day 2001 with actor Morgan Freeman, who was at the 17th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards (2011) with Kevin Bacon.

Using one relative connection and two TV connections (at the Oracle of Bacon), my Bacon number is: 4.

Kevin Bacon holding Golden Globe Award:

(photo credit: Casey Rodgers/AP Photo)

So we will just have to wait until the next big Kevin Bacon movie comes out in 2013 - titled: R.I.P.D. - an action comedy about undead police officers.

Sources:

Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon entry. Wikipedia.org.

Oracle of Bacon website