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).
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.
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.
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, he was unforgettable in The Life Aquatic, Wild at Heart!
What an incredible career; I think he spends a lot of time in Italy when he's not filming now
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
I seem to recall that Mystic River was ridiculously highly connected in the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon database at about the time that that film came out in 2003.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
95 comments
[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 28.5 ms ] threadMarvel Movies, John Wick, Robert Eggers films, To Live and Die In LA, Streets of Fire, American Psycho, he was unforgettable in The Life Aquatic, Wild at Heart!
What an incredible career; I think he spends a lot of time in Italy when he's not filming now
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.
Would never have guessed Nicole Kidman for women, though.
Many Tarantino movies (including Kill Bill 2).
The Star Wars reboot trilogy.
The Marvel movies (Avengers, etc)
Goodfellas.
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?
Almost certainly Shah Rukh Khan.
Shah Ruh Khan is more like George Clooney or something.
* 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
Whatever you call the absolute top tier, that is Shah Ruh Khan.
> 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.
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.
Edit: come to think of it, it's Cradle Will Rock. (A ridiculously great film you should see).
I feel like A Few Good Men would do really well.
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.
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.
B+
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.
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
Well, yes, but his name also rhymes with "separation", and that's kind of important.
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.
I love it lmaoooo. great job
I know Grigori Perelman is far from Erdos, which is fun :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erd%C5%91s%E2%80%93Bacon_numbe...
aside from the first, the next few eigenvectors would be great.
anyone done this?