Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon - History

History

In a January 1994 Premiere magazine interview about the film The River Wild, Kevin Bacon commented that he had worked with everybody in Hollywood or someone who's worked with them. On April 7, 1994, a lengthy newsgroup thread headed "Kevin Bacon is the Center of the Universe" appeared.

Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon first surfaced at about the same time. The game was created in early 1994 by three Albright College students, Craig Fass, Brian Turtle, and Mike Ginelli. According to an interview with the three in the spring 1999 issue of the college's magazine, The Albright Reporter, they were watching Footloose during a heavy snowstorm. When the film was followed by The Air Up There, they began to speculate on how many movies Bacon had been in and the number of people he had worked with. In the interview, Brian Turtle said, "It became one of our stupid party tricks, I guess. People would throw names at us, and we'd connect them to Kevin Bacon."

Despite these explanations, the reason Kevin Bacon's name was chosen was that it mostly rhymed and had the cadence of "Six Degrees of Separation." See, "separation" is "Kevin Bacon." This is the first place on the Internet that explains the reason why "Who? Kevin Bacon," considering the fact that you could find relationships to almost anyone in the world in six steps.

The quartet wrote talk show host Jon Stewart a letter telling him that "Kevin Bacon was the center of the entertainment universe" and explaining the game. They appeared on The Jon Stewart Show and The Howard Stern Show with Bacon to explain the game. Bacon admitted that he initially disliked the game because he believed it was ridiculing him, but he eventually came to enjoy it. The three inventors released a book, Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon (ISBN 9780452278448), with an introduction written by Bacon. A board game based on the concept was released by Endless Games.

Bacon also appeared in a commercial for the Visa check card that parodied the game. In the commercial, Bacon wants to write a check to buy a book, but the clerk asks for his ID, which he does not have. He leaves and returns with a group of people, then says to the clerk, "Okay, I was in a movie with an extra, Eunice, whose hairdresser, Wayne, attended Sunday school with Father O'Neill, who plays racquetball with Dr. Sanjay, who recently removed the appendix of Kim, who dumped you sophomore year. So you see, we're practically brothers."

The concept was also presented in an episode of the TV show Mad About You dated November 19, 1996 in which a character expressed the opinion that every actor is only three degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon. Bacon spoofed the concept himself in a cameo he performed for the independent film, We Married Margo. Playing himself in a 2003 episode of Will and Grace, Bacon connects himself to Val Kilmer through Tom Cruise and jokes "Hey, that was a short one!".

The October 30, 2002 headline of The Onion, a satirical newspaper, is "Kevin Bacon Linked To Al-Qaeda".

Bacon provides the voice-over commentary for the NY Skyride attraction in the Empire State Building in New York City. At several points throughout the commentary, Bacon alludes to his connections to Hollywood stars via other actors with whom he has worked.

In 2009, Bacon narrated a National Geographic Channel show 'The Human Family Tree' – a program charting the work of the Genographic Project and their work on the genetic interconnectedness of all humans.

In 2011, James Franco made reference to Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon while hosting the 83rd Academy Awards.

In the summer of 2012, Google began to offer the ability to find an actor's Bacon number on their main page, by searching for the actors name preceded by the phrase, "bacon number".

Everything Everywhere began a UK television advertising campaign on November 03, 2012, based on the Six Degrees concept, where Kevin Bacon illustrates his connections and draws attention to how the EE 4G network allows similar connectivity.