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?

Chloë Grace Moretz was huge as a child star but she is basically retired now, the likelihood that she continues to appear in any major movies is very slim. Her career's early start was beneficial to this ranking but is not representative. The likelihood that she ever overtakes Samuel L Jackson is... nothing, nada, because Samuel L Jackson is more active than her.

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

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.

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.

Maybe I missed it, but the introduction doesn't explain the point that "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" is just a play on "Six Degrees of Separation".

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 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.

Side note: I feel old. As soon as it started mentioning the set of younger actors, I didn't recognize a single name. I feel like I'm watching new-ish movies, I just don't know who the actors are and it seems like they're all kind of interchangeable "undifferentiated young good looking people".

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).

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.

I immediately thought, "Nicolas Cage". Turns out he's only seventh, but still a lot closer than Kevin Bacon.

I would not have guessed Willem Dafoe up there :o

Kevin Bacon was not really chosen for any reason other than his name and its name recognition.

Certainly not chosen for centrality.

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.

I'm not sure this presentation is complete if they don't even mention Eric Roberts: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000616/

I have not heard of any of the Gen Z candidates. I guess I am old.

It's weird that James Hong is so far down the list. The man has been in 470 movies.

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 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?

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.

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.

woot M. Emmet Walsh!

Tap the right side of screen to advance to next slide.

Took me a while to figure out.

Why is Kevin Bacon such a legend? He seems like a good actor but why does he have a cult like following?

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.

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

[flagged]

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.

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.