Cheating at Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon

You're all familiar with the parlour game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, right?  Of course you are.

I remember playing that game with a few guys back at a game shop in Saint Louis quite a few years ago; it's a nice way to test how many movies you've watched and how well you remember who starred in them.  But until very recently, I had no idea that Google has included a "Bacon Number" feature for quite some time now.

Try it.  Go to Google Search and type in the name of any movie star, director...whatever, followed by "Bacon Number".  Hit Enter and Google will tell you that celebrity's Bacon Number, or many degrees of separation there are between that celebrity and Kevin Bacon.


And before you try it:



Really, what did you think was going to happen if you checked Kevin Bacon's Bacon Number?  He can't be separated from himself!  




Neve Campbell has a Bacon Number of 1, seeing as she acted with him directly.  She was also pretty sexy in Wild Things, but I could have done without the bit with her ripping out her own teeth with a pair of pliers.  

What has Neve Campbell been doing lately, anyway?




Huh.  The Governator's closer to Kevin Bacon than I thought.  Rest in Peace, Bill Paxton.

If we want to beat the game by finding someone who's more than six jumps away from Kevin Bacon, we'll probably have to invoke some very obscure, very old or very foreign person...like the Italian actress Assumpta Serna.




Okay, to be honest, I wasn't expecting her Bacon Number to be very high.  Along with a bunch of roles in a bunch of European films, Assumpta Serna was also the witch/bookstore owner in The Craft, which also starred Neve Campbell, who acted with Kevin Bacon in Wild Things.

Hey, the game only asks for the shortest path between your celebrity and Kevin Bacon.  It doesn't say that there can't be more than one shortest path.  More on that later!  

Now let's try the "old actor" route.




Huh.  I've never watched Chaplin, but seeing as Charlie Chaplin was dead well before this movie was released, I'm going to guess that he only appears in the movie by way of archive footage.  Does that even count?  




Yeesh!  Shows what I know.  How old is Jack Nicholson again?  o_O

Okay, let's go back to foreign actors.  How about Bruno Ganz, the Swiss actor who played Adolf Hitler in the internet-renowned German movie, Der Untergang (or Downfall on our side of the Atlantic)?




Holy Zeus.  Is there no end to Kevin Bacon's proliferating madness?!?  

Okay, let's try Antonella Costa, an Italian actress who seems to get naked a lot (for sexy time in Don't Look Down and for not-so-sexy torture time in Garage Olimpo):




Aha!  I hit three degrees that time!  

Still, it's not a win.  Ooh, here's an obscure one:




Well, I think I broke it.  

(This is one incident where human beats machine, though.  Laura Borlein was a nine-year-old girl who played one of Joseph and Magda Goebbels' children in Der Untergang, which I believe gives her a Bacon Number of 3 (Laura Borlein -> Bruno Ganz (Der Untergang) ->Michael Fassbender (The Counselor) -> Kevin Bacon (X-Men: First Class).  HA!  Take that, Google!  

I ran a bunch more actors through Google, then a director or two, and even a musician.  So far, here's what I've come up with.  And alas, I haven't beaten the game yet.  


Bacon Number 0
Kevin Bacon

Bacon Number 1
Neve Campbell
R. Lee Ermey (everyone's favorite Gunnery Sergeant)
Martin Scorsese  (What?  Kevin Bacon was in that Oliver Stone movie too?!?)
Emilia Clarke (Wait a minute.  Comic Con counts too?!?)
Kelly Hu (And now I learn that the demon chick from Farmhouse shared a set with Kevin Bacon too.)
Steven Weber (So did the demon dude from Farmhouse.  Kevin Bacon must be stopped!)

Bacon Number 2
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Charlie Chaplin
Boris Karloff
Bruno Ganz
Will Smith
Kenny Loggins (Huh.  You would think that music composition would count; he performed two songs for Footloose, starring Kevin Bacon.  I guess it's just appearances only.)
Mitch Cohen  (Okay, the Toxic Avenger really shouldn't stand so close to Kevin Bacon.  Because reasons.)
Stanley Kubrick  (Yep.  Ermey's the link, all right.)
Quentin Tarantino  (Damn you, Michael Fassbender, go away already!)
Dieter Laser (from those godawful Human Centipede movies.)
Monika Malacova (a Czech actress best known for getting naked with Heather Matarazzo and slashing her up with a scythe.  Apparently Malacova gets around more than I thought.)
Peter Mayhew (Oh, crap.  It's through one of the prequel Star Wars movies!)
Riki Lindhome (Oddly enough, it's not through the Last House on the Left remake.  Also, I'm subscribed to her on YouTube, she sings well and she has gorgeous tits.)
Henry Rollins
Erica Leerhsen (Same number as Henry Rollins, different paths.  Both worked together in Wrong Way 2.)
Mark Gibbon (Yes, it's by way of Joy Ride 2.)
"Rowdy" Roddy Piper (taken from us too soon.)
André the Giant (also taken from us too soon.)
Judith Barsi (taken from us far too soon.)
Madonna (...who can kiss my ass in the wake of her antics during that Women's March on Washington after Donald Trump got elected.)
Miley Cyrus (Yes, it's through the Hannah Montana movie. I miss the good Miley Cyrus.)
Hilary Duff
Lynda Carter
Cynthia Rothrock
Gina Carano (Because I was on a roll after Googling Rothrock.)
Dyanne Thorne (How did a softcore porn actress like Thorne rate high enough to share the screen with John Ritter, anyway?)
John Holmes (Yes, that porn star.  Now I've seen everything!)

Bacon Number 3
Antonella Costa
Laura Borlein
Toby Froud (the baby in Labyrinth)
Phil Caracas (the title character in Jesus Christ: Vampire Hunter)
Maisie Williams
Jemma Dallender (Yes, I've watched all of the I Spit on Your Grave movies.  ALL of them.  So what?)
Nick Orefice (the go-to man for a few crappy horror flicks.)
Pedro Pascal  (Wait a minute.  There was a Wonder Woman TV pilot in 2011?)
Amy Shiels
Claudia Jennings (the blonde babe whose clothes had a habit of mysteriously vanishing every time she got tortured in Deathsport. Also, she doesn't link to Bacon through Deathsport.)

Bacon Number 4

Bacon Number 5

Bacon Number 6

Bacon Number 7+ (You Beat the Game!)


Okay, I give up for now.  Can you succeed where I have thus far failed?