Summertime Fun!

An offhand comment elsewhere about another topic altogether made me realize today that (provided I’m not lying on the cutting-room floor) now I, too, can claim connectedness with Kevin Bacon. But how many degrees separate us?

In my case the cutting-room floor outcome is pretty likely (I can imagine the dispute. “The scene’s timing is off; this part has to go.” “You can’t do that. We have to keep the guy looking at the thing.” “Scene’s too long. It’s an action movie. Gotta make it snappier.” “But the guy — the thing…” “Besides, look at him. The way he looks at the thing. Nobody’s even going to notice the action, they’ll all be watching him.” “Yeah, you’re right. Maybe I’ll do a documentary next, about people looking at things.”), so I thought it best not to wait for the movie before playing this little game.

Although, actually, I probably won’t be very good at it. I don’t watch that many movies, and even when I do I forget who was in the cast, so I’m pretty much out of luck here. I’m not even sure who’s in the cast of Casino Royale (for all I know Kevin bacon is in it).

I suppose, since I won’t be in the movie credits (those would be long credits before “1st guy looking at thing when the dude came down the stairs” was included), this is not in the spirit of the “real” game, but screw that. From Jerry Seeger in Casino Royale to Kevin Bacon in the fewest steps. Anyone want to take a shot?

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11 thoughts on “Summertime Fun!

  1. Last time we went to a movie (a month ago?) Coming Attractions included “Casino Royale”–due out in November. And we watched “The Constant Gardener” on DVD, and the credits went on and on and on including such things as the bank used. So it looks as if you may get a chance at a credit.

  2. Well, it would be too easy to just grab one of the stars, and it would be untrue also. You never met the stars.
    So i used the Czech Republic Transportation Coordinator (Jiri Husak) – who you may well have met or been in close contact with.
    Jiri also worked on ‘Shanghai Knights’ with Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson.
    Jackie Chan, was in ‘Around the World in 80 days’ with Owen Wilson’s brother, Luke.
    Luke Wilson was in ‘My Dog, Skip’ with Kevin Bacon.
    I’ve lost cound of the jumps though.

  3. Actually, although I did not technically meet the guy who played James Bond (name escapes me), I stood next to him for a long time. He seemed like a good guy to work with. Alas, I was in charge of my own transportation.

  4. As far as the credits go, they would have to go to some trouble even to figure out my name. They would have to pass my photo to all the different agencies that provided extras and ask if I was one of theirs. There were a lot of extras that day.

  5. There are plenty of listings on IMDB for uncredited people. Undoubtedly they have some procedure for making such additions.

  6. Lee worked with Susan Sarandon on Children of Dune. Sarandon’s husband is Tim Robbins, who co-starred with Kevin Bacon in Mystic River.

    Actually, this whole Bacon Factor thing reminds me of a government contact-tracking system that was working in the late 1980s at Los Alamos — I wasn’t part of the team that developed the software, but I was part of the team that worked on the user manual. It was pretty scary — it starts with one person, keeps track of that person’s regular contacts (business associates, club memberships, civic organizations, regular social companions, and so forth), and then expands to cover those contacts’ contacts, and so forth.

    A friend of mine was working as a computer technician for the local public library at the time. When the feds came to ask that the library release records of who checked out what books, he rewrote the software so it wouldn’t be possible to track that information.

    Funny … all the years we were growing up, everybody characterized this guy as “a real Boy Scout,” which was literally true, but which also implied that he would follow conventional authority when pressed. Instead, he went with at least a little bit of civil disobedience. He held up the First Amendment. But then, that’s probably what real Boy Scouts actually do, since real Boy Scouts are concerned about the well-being of this country.

  7. Yeah, I could write in to IMDB and say I played the guy looking at the thing in Casino Royale (“featured extra” would be the role, I suppose), and that might move them enough to add me, but if they reviewed it at all they would notice that there were hundreds of extras in that scene.

  8. Dang I wish there was a better way to track comments. That was very interesting what CA said and I almost missed it.

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