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?
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.
RIP Tom Skerritt, #589
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.
He's Megatron, amount others.
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.
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.
John Candy #2 in 1993! Makes his loss hit hard even after all these years.
It's weird that James Hong is so far down the list. The man has been in 470 movies.
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.
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
I immediately thought, "Nicolas Cage". Turns out he's only seventh, but still a lot closer than Kevin Bacon.
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).
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).
I would not have guessed Willem Dafoe up there :o
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!
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
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.
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.
> "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.
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...
I'm not sure this presentation is complete if they don't even mention Eric Roberts: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000616/
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.
I don't think you clicked far enough. There's an entire section about the temporal element, replete with time-axis charts.
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 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
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?
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?
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.
Fascinating content, engaging visuals, painfully difficult navigation.
B+
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.
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 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.
Tap the right side of screen to advance to next slide.
Took me a while to figure out.
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 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.
I saw 19 screens of content.
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.
> Also, who's the Kevin Bacon of Bollywood?
Almost certainly Shah Rukh Khan.
I would say that the logical drop-in replacement is Aamir Khan.
It was probably Amitabh Bachchan at one point, right?
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: