Just count the number of connections between you and someone else in your city. Our connections are connected to other people who are connected to yet other people. Thanks to the internet and especially social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, now everyone can connect with virtually everyone else. Stay in the ecosystem long enough and you’ll connect with just the person you need to connect with to get that screenplay sold, take a risk on an unconventional concept for a pilot, or land a job working for your favorite director. The connected nature of Hollywood can be both a reassuring fact and an admonition against souring your relationships. The point to take away here is that everyone is only six degrees of separation away from you at all times. Brad Pitt was in The Usual Suspects with Kevin Spacey.

Kevin Bacon with with Brad Pitt in Sleepers. Let’s try it again, this time with Kevin Spacey. Tom Cruise was in Oblivion with Morgan Freeman. Kevin Bacon was in A Few Good Men with Tom Cruise. Let’s start with Kevin Bacon and Morgan Freeman. They key being you need to be able to do it in six moves or less. He’s been in so many films and television programs that it’s very easy to link him to another celebrity. It’s predicated on the fact that everyone is interconnected due to who they know. Inevitably, whenever this conversation arises the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game gets brought up which makes sense since it’s the perfect metaphor for how connections work in the real world of “The Biz.” You need to always be aware of who knows whom and how everyone is interconnected. If you want to keep working, you need to be making connections and building a solid reputation among the people you work with. Working in any creative industry is always a balancing act.

Six degrees of separation kevin bacon