- Actor thought ‘Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon’ game was making fun of him
- Bacon: “I was horrified. I thought it was a giant joke at my expense’
- Game asks players to link other celebs to Bacon by movies they have in common
- Founded by three college buddies, game is now 20 years old
Austin, Texas (CNN) — Almost two decades ago, a parlor game called “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” became an unlikely grass-roots phenomenon among movie buffs and foretold today’s social web of online connections.
Maybe the only one who was not amused by the game was Kevin Bacon himself.
“I was horrified by it. I thought it was a giant joke at my expense,” said the prolific actor Saturday during a talk at the South by Southwest Interactive festival here. “I appreciate it now. But I was very resistant to it (at first).”
The game, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, requires players to link celebrities to Bacon, in as few steps as possible, via the movies they have in common. The more odd or random the celebrity, the better. For example, O.J. Simpson was in “The Naked Gun 33⅓” with Olympia Dukakis, who was in “Picture Perfect” with Kevin Bacon.
Inspired by “six degrees of separation,” the theory that nobody is more than six relationships away from any other person in the world, the game was dreamed up in 1994 by Brian Turtle and two classmates at Albright College in Reading, Pennsylvania. They were watching “Footloose” on TV when it was followed by another Kevin Bacon movie, and then another.
“It was just one of those lightbulb moments,” said Turtle, who joined Bacon onstage at SXSW. “It was like, ‘This guy is everywhere! He’s the center of the entertainment universe.’ “
After it spread among their friends, Turtle and his co-creators, Craig Fass and Mike Ginelli, managed to get booked on Jon Stewart’s then-MTV show to explain the game.
Meanwhile, Bacon was becoming aware of it, too.
“I started to kind of hear about it in strange ways,” said the actor, still boyish at 55. “People would come up to me and touch me and say, ‘I’m one degree!’ I didn’t really know what was going on.”
Bacon thought the game would be a fad. But it endured, and he eventually embraced it.
“I don’t think it’s a great testament to my ability (as an actor),” he said. “My movies just happen to be on a lot.”
In 2007 Bacon launched SixDegrees.org, a charitable organization that connects celebrities with good causes for fundraising purposes.
The “Six Degrees” game has also inspired a website,
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