The game of giving
Kevin Bacon has a confession.
That silly Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game, where you try to connect any famous person to him within six steps?
The truth is, he’s no good at it.
“It’s confusing,” he admits. “I can’t remember all the movies I’ve been in, so I surely can’t recall someone else’s films.”
Finally, after a decade of living with the Six Degrees curse (“I always thought it would just go away, along with the Pet Rock”), Bacon has discovered a way to make the phenomenon rise above being an annoying gimmick.
A year ago, he bought the domain name SixDegrees.org. And today, the actor will be at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, to officially launch SixDegrees.org, an online charitable-giving site that is inspired by his namesake game and driven by today’s obsession with celebrities.
A roster of A-listers – including Nicole Kidman, Will Ferrell, Tyra Banks, Jessica Simpson and Kanye West – has signed on to be included in the online network, where users can find out about a favorite celebrity’s charitable work and make online donations to that cause.
Users can collect celebrity “badges” and attach the interactive icon to their outgoing e-mail, Web page or blog, thus creating the connections with potential to grow exponentially.
Also, site visitors can create their own badges, which will link to their favorite charity. Bacon says he personally will match the donations (up to $10,000) of the first six users to create a badge.
“People pick up celebrity magazines to see how people dress, which handbags are hot, which cars to buy,” he says. “Why not look at what (celebrities) care about?”
Bacon says he started his recruiting journey with his agent and celebrities he knew personally. Wife Kyra Sedgwick naturally signed on first. Kidman and Jane Kaczmarek were among early players, and, in the past week, West and the band Incubus jumped on board.
“My rock ‘n’ roll connections are a little slower,” says Bacon, “but the musicians are stepping up now.”
And because Bacon has been on the celeb side of giving, he says he “wanted it to be as simple as possible” for stars to join: “I would like it to become the type of thing where (celebrities) say (to each other), ‘How come you’re not on there?’ “
To create his social network, Bacon teamed up with the nonprofit group Network for Good, AOL and Sundance sponsor Entertainment Weekly. But long before the corporate players stepped in, Bacon says he was inspired by Paul Newman’s salad dressing.
Newman “took this simple idea – he likes to cook – and hundreds of millions of dollars later, he has this fantastic thing,” Bacon says of the legendary actor’s charitable line of foods.
So Bacon says he asked himself, ” ‘What do I have that’s not salad dressing?’ The thing that I am most connected to is this game.”
Just for the record: Who’s the most interesting person he has been linked to in Six Degrees?
John Wilkes Booth, he says. But don’t ask him to make the connections.