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?

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.

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.

> "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.

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

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).

John Candy #2 in 1993! Makes his loss hit hard even after all these years.

I would not have guessed Willem Dafoe up there :o

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.

This is the dumbest and coolest shit ive ever seen.

I love it lmaoooo. great job

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.

Fascinating content, engaging visuals, painfully difficult navigation.

B+

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 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

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 does not work on iOS Safari, I get stuck in a loop. I haven’t installed the latest iOS update FWIW