http://oracleofbacon.org/cgi-bin/oracle/movielinks?firstname=Kevin+Bacon&game=1&secondname=tom+chick

Oh my god.

Now there's a resume builder Tom.

-Andrew

Actually I didn't mean that to sound sarcastic. I had a girlfriend back in college who just loved that "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" game, because of her I got really good at it.

I never knew I'd one day know somebody that I could name drop as high as #2 on that list. Hmmm, what was her number again?

-Andrew

But... who doesn't have a Bacon number of 2 or less these days?

I do.

I was in Spring Awakening in Poughkeepsie with David Strathairn. (It's a play.)

David Strathairn was in The River Wild with Kevin Bacon.

What?
Plays count? Ok, I have a Bacon factor of 3 then. I was in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" with Mathew Lillard (of Wing Commander, Scream, and Shaggy in Scooby Doo fame) and he has a factor of 2.

-Andrew

Ok... I have a Bacon Index of 3:

I was an extra for like 2 seconds in Firebirds with Nicholas Cage and Sean Young. (Damn she's hot in person) ehem, anyway... Cage has a 2. That makes me a 3.

Shit, is nobody immune?

I was flipping through Saturday cable channel hell this afternoon and came across a mediocrity known as PCU. The scene I happened upon contained a single laugh, a guy who was writing his thesis that "At any time of day, any day of the week you can find a film containing either Gene Hackman or Michael Caine on TV."

He called it "The Hackman/Caine Factor."

One could easily add Bacon to that list. Lee Johnson is right, since 1994 Bacon had simply made the "game" easier and easier as he makes movies.

Oddly, given the cast list of Chick's "Frank and Jessie", Six Degree's of Tom Chick isn't so difficult a game either. I tracked him within 2 of De Niro and Brando just now.

-Andrew

Yes, but the Aszurom factor is harder to come by... because you only can use Tommy Lee Jones, Nic Cage, and Sean Young as anchorpoints.

It's been VERY hard to spot a Michael Cain movie lately. Heck, I can't even remember one that I've seen since "The Hand".

How the heck did Tom get cast in Frank'n'Jess anyway? From waiter to Dr. in one casting call... Impressive.

Ha! The whole Frank and Jesse thing is a goofy story, but it basically comes down to me moving to Los Angeles to act and then, lo and behold, they're shooting a movie back in Arkansas. I remember when I auditioned for it in LA, there were two casting directors. One is reading lines with me and the other is watching me and, I dunno, taking notes or something. While I'm reading, the phone rings, the guy watching and taking notes answers it! The person reading lines tells me to just keep going. Dude's on the phone and I'm supposed to be auditioning for him!

I don't here anything for a few months, then the casting director calls me from Arkansas, where they've already started shooting, and re-auditions me over the phone. She's having me do stuff like Boston accents. "Can you sound like you're from the East," she says over the phone while I'm reading lines from a faxed script, "You know, maybe like the Kennedys?" It was absurd. I must have sounded as convincing as Costner in Thirteen Days. But they were having to do a whole lot of last minute casting and I somehow ended up getting it. Whatever.

So I get the part and have to go back to Arkansas to do my scenes, get my SAG card, qualify for health insurance, suddenly be eligible for TV spots, etc., etc. My scenes with Rob Lowe consisted of me talking to a stick for my eyeline, since Mr. Lowe was cold and wanted to go back to his trailer. But after years of doing community theatre, believe me, I had no trouble acting opposite a stick.

The funny thing is, many folks in the cast would talk about how they were going to try to get Frank and Jesse in at Sundance that year. Little did I know, saying you're going to try to get into Sundance is pretty much de rigeur when you're working on a movie. "Yeah, we're going to be taking this to Sundance," is a common refrain on any low-budget feature.

Anyway, that was a long time ago and most of the time, I hardly miss it.

-Tom

But... do you own the DVD?

I can honestly say that I DON'T own any copy of my 15 seconds of fame. You see approximately 50x more footage of my helicopter than you do of me... which is probably good, since it's a movie about helicopters and not crewchiefs. Dammit. Why do the pilots always get the babes, and the guys who make the birds fly are stuck stuffing Washingtons down some dancer's G-string with a watered down beer in their other hand?

Sean Young, in a tight-in-back flightsuit so closely approximates my vision of what the afterlife should be like.

So Tom... Basically it was F'n'J that made the whole Frasier thing possible?

Yeah, I got "Taft/Hartleyed" when I did Frank and Jesse, which is what it's called when you get drafted into the Screen Actors Guild, which is basically a prerequisite to do any paying acting gigs in LA. It's a real Catch 22 for a lot of actors here: you have to be in the union to get work, and to be in the union, you have to get work. I was lucky to get around the grind a lot of actors go through: they build up credits by working as an extra, which is a fate maybe not worse than death, but probably on par with it.

Once I was in SAG, I was lucky enough to get the support of a few casting directors and managed to get some middling TV gigs. I was by no means a "successful actor", but I was able to make enough money that I could do theatre in my spare time instead of having to wait tables to pay the rent.

-Tom

"It's a real Catch 22 for a lot of actors here: you have to be in the union to get work, and to be in the union, you have to get work."

Similar catch in publishing.
An Agent makes it MUCH easier to sell a book. But Agents sniff derisively at non-published authors. And no... magazine publishing doesn't move them much (unless it's fiction publishing).

Wheee!

-Andrew

My Bacon Factor is 2. I am not making this up.

My high-school marching band was the band that Nick Nolte shoves his way through in the parade in Cape Fear. To punch out Robert De Niro. And he was in Sleepers with Bacon.

And I'm even on screen. In the take that they used (we must have faux-marched, pretending to be playing, 30 times) Nolte goes RIGHT behind me. I'm shot from the back, of course, but I'm the oddly tall one on the left.

My face (a considerably younger version of the current model) is one of those in the crowd in "The Fortune Cookie." As for the Bacon Factor, I don't know, was Bacon ever in a movie with Lemmon or Mathau?

What's Richard Simmons' Bacon number? I was next to him on a plane to LA once. And one of the voice actors from the Simpson's on the return flight. The one who does the twin girls, and some of the other minor characters. I didn't catch her name though. She was really annoying. Her normal speaking voice was so high pitched I kept hoping that it'd shatter the window and I'd get sucked out of the plane.

Okay, I just figured out that that link is to a Bacon database. My Bacon number is 3.

By Aszurom on Sunday, July 22, 2001 - 09:56 pm:
It's been VERY hard to spot a Michael Cain movie lately. Heck, I can't even remember one that I've seen since "The Hand".
--------------------------------------------------
I just saw a flick last night with Micheal Cain. Some Zulu movie... Might have been Zulu Dawn. Not sure. Quite a dapper man in his youth I must say.

BTW, Chick, that stick comment had me crackin' up for minutes on end. Thanks. ;)

Jeff

"I just saw a flick last night with Micheal Cain. Some Zulu movie... Might have been Zulu Dawn. Not sure. Quite a dapper man in his youth I must say."

The title was simply "Zulu." And, yeah, that goes back a ways. Pre-"Alfie" I think.

(Note: this post written without referring to IMDB!)

Michael Caine recently got an Oscar for Cider House Rules. He was also in Quills and the horrible Get Carter remake. He's still kicking around plenty.

And Kevin Bacon was in JFK with Walter Matthau.

-Tom

"And Kevin Bacon was in JFK with Walter Matthau."

Cool. Now let's see. Walter Matthau wasn't actually in the scene where they used the crowd I was in (it was the scene at the football game where Jack Lemmon gets injured) nor was he on the set that day, but Lemmon, of course, was. What does this make my Bacon factor?

BobM - sitting on a plane doesn't count. You have to be in a movie.

BobM,

Question about Richard Simmons. Does he always look like "Richard Simmons" or when he's off camera is he out of character and just a normal dude?

I saw him once in a 3-piece suit with his hair parted. I couldn't believe it was the same guy.

Michael Caine was also recently in "Miss Congeniality." That movie, mercifully, was not nearly as bad as I'd feared. I actually kinda liked it, and Sandra Bullock remains beautiful and funny in a quirky way.

I dunno. I'm still bitter about him in "Jaws: The Revenge." (Don't ask.). Years of enmity over that one...

(Geek identifier inbound!) So, how does this Bacon thing work? I thought you just had to draw a line through people you'd met to Kevin Bacon. It seems from the above that it involves acting, though. Is that right?

"BobM - sitting on a plane doesn't count. You have to be in a movie."

Well, shucks. That's not fair. I live in Michigan, I'm more likely to be struck by lightning than be in a movie.

"Question about Richard Simmons: Does he always look like "Richard Simmons" or when he's off camera is he out of character and just a normal dude?"

On the plane he looked and acted like Richard Simmons. It was quite frightening. And all the old women wouldn't leave him alone at the airport.

"Michael Caine was also recently in "Miss Congeniality."

I was forced to watch that film on a flight from Europe. I was also pleased that it wasn't as bad as I had feared it would be, and Michael Caine was mostly responsible. He was hilarious. It also wasn't as bad as another film I was forced to watch on the flight, The Family Man. Oof.

You should also see him in the film A Shock to the System. He's great in that. And in the original Get Carter.

I think my favorite of his performances may be his work in Hannah and Her Sisters, though that may be too tough a call to make, considering all the great stuff he's done.

Come to think of it, I need to see Sleuth again.

Do I have to say something about Kevin Bacon to post here?

Amanpour

If we're going to list favorite Michael Caine movies, I have to put in a vote for The Man Who Would Be King.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels had its moments, too.

I have no trouble saying the finest thing Michael Caine has ever done (IMO) is Get Carter. What a phenomenal movie.

The next most amazing thing he's ever done is The Swarm, which freaked me out as a kid because killer bees sting to death a ten-year-old boy's parents and force the boy to run to the family car...which he has to start up and drive away!

I remember thinking, "Holy Moly, how does a kid my age know how to drive a car! I better learn in case my Mom is ever killed by killer bees and I have to escape." Thank you, Michael Caine, for impressing upon me the importance of knowing how to drive a car at an early age.

-Tom

Chick: "I have no trouble saying the finest thing Michael Caine has ever done (IMO) is Get Carter. What a phenomenal movie. "

Followed by The Italian Job. Also great, and the key to understanding about 90% of Eddie Izzard's jokes.

I tried to watch the remake of Get Carter, just for some sort of masochistic history lesson. Or something. But I only made it about 10 minutes in.

There's another Michael Caine/Mike Hodges film called Pulp. It's no Get Carter, but it has some good moments.

Eddie Izzard strikes me as exactly what Ozzy Ozborne would be like if he'd been a crossdressing comedian instead of a bat chomper.

I never saw the original Get Carter. Is it available on video?

There's a pretty good DVD of the original "Get Carter" out there.

Amanpour

Thanks for the tip!