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The
Oracle Of Bacon...
In
1996, during the explosion of the internet, long before any
of the huge, dominant .com companies encircled the web in
their vice-like grip, two students, Brett Tjaden and Glenn
Wasson, both who were working toward their graduate degrees
in computer science at the University of Virginia, created
a site, The Oracle of Bacon based on a concept that places
star actor Kevin Bacon at the centre of the Hollywood world
and, at the time, was the cause of may lost hours of work
in companies and college campuses.
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Find
The Bacon # Of Your Favourite Actor... |
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Enter
the name of an actor or actress: e.g. Elvis
Presley or Robert De Niro or Sarah
Jessica Parker
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Meg
Ryan is a 2. And astonishingly, Rudolph Valentino is a 3.
For a growing number of people, it's not about looks or charm
anymore. It's all about Bacon...
Kevin
Bacon
The prolific character actor and star of the [classic 80's]
film Footloose is the linchpin of a game in which all other
actors are calculated by the number of movies it takes to
link them to him.
Ryan's a 2, for example, because she was in Sleepless in Seattle
with Tom Hanks, who was in Apollo 13 with Bacon.
Valentino was in Monsieur Beauclaire with John Davidson, who
was in Thunder in the East with Bruce Payne, who was in the
1991 bomb Pyrates with Kevin Bacon. Three connections give
Valentino a 3rd degree of Kevin Bacon separation.
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.
Is
Kevin Bacon The Centre Of The Universe?
If you play The Kevin Bacon Game here, you'll know that
he must be!
Here's how it works. All
you have to do is type in the name of any actor, living
or dead.
It's got to be someone who's been in at least one American
movie -- It's not fair choosing an actor who made one
movie with Sergei Eisenstein and got exiled to Siberia
the year after.)
Within seconds, the computer will give you the path leading
from the name you chose to Kevin Bacon. And get this:
the creators claim it will hardly ever take more than
four jumps to get to Kevin Bacon.
Some people, like those who play The Bacon Game on the
phone during work hours (the newest threat to Hollywood
productivity), claim that the computer takes all the fun
out of playing the game.
But for the rest of us the joke is the same and you don't
have to tax your brain. |
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.)
When Bacon was a guest on the show a year later, the show's
producers invited the three back to join him on stage. "At
first I think he thought we were stalkers or freaks," Turtle
said. "But he began to have fun with it. "He even threw out
a name." The name? Larry Storch, known best for his role as
Cpl. Randolph Again in F Troop. The number? Two. Storch was
in The Great Race with Jack Lemmon, who was in JFK with Kevin
Bacon.
The TV appearances spawned a phenomenon. People who had heard
of the game, but had not seen the show speculated it was related
to the "Six Degrees of Separation" theory that all in the
world are no more than six interpersonal relationships apart.
So they started calling the game "Six Degrees to Kevin Bacon."
They created World Wide Web pages devoted to the Baconiocentric
universe. They were amazed at Bacon's seemingly limitless
connections.
Was there no end? Enter the great minds of science. Another
snowstorm, another college, another mission. Brett Tjaden
and Glenn Wasson, computer science doctoral candidates at
the University of Virginia, had a moderate interest in the
game and too much free time over winter break. Their obsession
was to prove the theory that Bacon could be connected in four
links or less to any actor in American movies made in the
past 15 years. The result was The
Oracle of Bacon at Virginia website, which is automatically
calculates an actor's Bacon number.
"Four or less turns out to be true for anyone in American
Movies," Wasson said. "I find that it's actually difficult
to come up with someone as far away as a four." The Bacon
gap with some actors could come closer to closing now Bacon
has picked up the directorial megaphone. "Losing Chase," Bacon's
first film as director, makes it's debut on Showtime Aug.
18.
Directors are not usually considered fair linkage in the Bacon
game (the Oracle also does not count television roles). But
because Bacon is the film's director, Ginelli said, the game's
inventors will probably count the new links. The guys have
hired an attorney and hope to release a computer or board
game version of what one Interneter has dubbed "Makin' Bacon,"
so one would think they would have the final say. Actually,
the actor has the final say. And though the trivia trio's
lawyer has called to get Bacon's permission to develop and
market the Bacon name game, he can't get through. The line
is tied up while Bacon's off filming Picture Perfect and making
new connections. "Friends" star Jennifer Aniston, for example,
will now be a 1.
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How
About Any Two Actors? |
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In
a new twist, the two programmers have now devised a system
that will tell you how many seperations exist between any
two actors, not just Kevin Bacon.
Try it out using the form above, but remember... try not to
waste the whole day...
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