The Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon

Author(s): Ryan / AJ / Hugo / Douglas Reese
Location: N/A / TN / Spain / MI

"Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon"

Directed by:

Martin Campbell (Segment: The Last and First Time I Met Her Parts I and II)
Richard LaGravenese (Segment: Reves et Memoires)
Neil Jordan (Segment: The Life and Times of Simon Shirley)
Lasse Hallstrom (Segment: Dogs Playing Poker)
Sean Penn (Segment: Ladies and Gentlemen)
Lucky McGee (Segment: The Daughter)

Written by:

James Vanderbilt (Segment: The Last and First Time I Met Her Parts I and II)
Richard LaGravenese (Segment: Reves et Memoires)
Neil Jordan (Segment: The Life and Times of Simon Shirley)
John Sayles (Segment: Dogs Playing Poker)
Sean Penn (Segment: Ladies and Gentlemen)
Lucky McGee (Segment: The Daughter)

Main Cast

Kevin Bacon is:

John (segment: The Last and First Time I Met Her Parts I and II)
Henry McAllister (segment: Reves et Memoires)
Simon Shirley (segment: The Life and Times of Simon Shirley)
Luke Armen/Narrator (segment: Dogs Playing Poker)
The Man in the Blue Suit (segment: Ladies and Gentlemen)
The Father (segment: The Daughter)

Supporting Cast:

Eva Green ... The Woman (segment: The Last and First Time I Met Her Parts I and II)
Laura Linney ... Felicity (segment: Reves et Memories)
Kate Winslet ... Shirley Simon/Narrator (segment: The Life and Times of Simon Shirley)
Jude Law ... Coffee Shop Employee (segment: The Life and Times of Simon Shirley)
Dennis Quaid ... George Breslin (segment: Dogs Playing Poker)
Kyle MacLachlan ... Kurt Uselman (segment: Dogs Playing Poker)
Forest Whitaker ... Murray “Aces” Stanwix (segment: Dogs Playing Poker)
Hugh Dancy ... Alan Ryder (segment: Dogs Playing Poker)
Mary Louise-Parker ... Marnie Armen (segment: Dogs Playing Poker)
Jodelle Ferland ... Jenny Armen (segment: Dogs Playing Poker)
Evan Rachel Wood ... The Daughter (segment: The Daughter)

Tagline: "Kevin Bacon is…"

Synopsis:

SEGMENT: The Last and First Time I Met Her, Part I

Synopsis: John (Kevin Bacon) has a unique gift of being able to see his life backwards to see the outcome of his future. Using his skills to hustle his way into fortunes, John is ecstatic, just pulling his biggest heist yet of stealing a million dollar diamond. John is confident as can be and stunned when he sees a woman in the bar he is celebrating at. However, when he nears her, he can’t see the future, the first time this has ever happened. “Hello,” she says as John walks up to her, smiling a toothy grin.

John doesn’t know what to say, he can’t run the scenarios through his mind anymore. This is the first time John is unsure of his future and can’t think of anything worse.

She slips a gun out of what seems nowhere, and shoots John in the head, stealing the diamond out of his pocket.

SEGMENT: Reves et Memoires

Synopsis: Henry (Kevin Bacon) came back home after a long day of work. He left his briefcase in the floor, he hung his coat and he laid in the couch.

He listened to the silence quietly, he hadn’t listened to anything else for a long time. Little by little he had been losing his friends, now he had none. He had been so obsessive with his work that he may had forgotten everything else. He only cared about working his way up. He’d already done that, now what?

He fell asleep. Soon he started picturing images in his mind. He dreamt about Felicity (Laura Linney), It was a long time ago since he dreamt with her, he dreamt about the day they broke up. Henry had forgotten their anniversary. Felicity had made him a special dinner, but he just had to work. Felicity ended fed up and she left him.

He woke up suddenly, took his briefcase, took out some forms and started working.

SEGMENT: The Life and Times of Simon Shirley

Synopsis: I (Kate Winslet) was born a man (Kevin Bacon). But I was a woman (Kate Winslet) inside. I didn’t understand these conflicting emotions until my 9th birthday party when I fell in love with my neighbor as he was handing me my present. I asked him to come and look at something in my room. That’s where I gave him his present.

I could never understand why the world could never understand me. It was as if all the people pretended to, “get it” but no one fully, “got it”. My parents never understood either. They say that they did, but if my father had, would he have felt the need to hang himself in my bedroom? But that is beside the point. My depressing stories of youth are to be saved for another time, my darling. I met a man once. A very sweet, gentle faced man. He was working at the Starbucks on 375th street (Jude Law). I do not know whether he is of my kind yet, but none of it will matter once I have the operation.

Anyway, the man was standing there behind the counter before I walked in. He was not looking very interested in anything. That is, until I stepped through the door. He tried to be sly about it, but since when are men ever actually sly? So yeah, I noticed, but didn’t let him notice that I’d noticed. He made small talk; I giggled at his jokes, and ordered my coffee to go. He said something along the lines of; “You should really drink it inside today, it’s awfully nippy out there” but I disregarded it. I already knew I had him. But I decided to just let it go, because what would I do with him for only a few days? That would just be cruel. So I left a large tip, winked at him, and headed back to the hospital. I crawled back into my bed there, and slowly fell asleep. Not long after that the virus became fully operational. I had about 3 days to live. I decided to go to the Starbucks to see if he was still there. It was January, and freezing, but I went anyway. As I stood outside the coffee store, staring into the window with my iced breathe fogging up the glass, I saw the man in there. I had seen what I wanted to see. But then I saw something I didn’t want to see. I saw a woman come up next to him, and kiss him on the cheek. If there was any warmth left in my body on that cold January day, it had left for good. I went home and crawled into bed. And in my bed, I shriveled up, cold and heartbroken, and I gently passed away.

SEGMENT: Dogs Playing Poker

Synopsis: Addicted to gambling, five men join in an underground poker table to feed their hunger, each with something to lose. George Breslin (Dennis Quaid) is a senator, who uses office money for underdeveloped programs as his source to bet. Kurt Uselman (Kyle MacLachlan) is a plastic surgeon whose recent botched surgery has his firm under fire with thousands in legal bills. Prepared to be fired, Kurt is using his remaining paychecks in hopes to make money to support his gold-digger wife.

Murray “Aces” Stanwix (Forest Whitaker) is a big shot stock-broker and the most frequent player, when he isn’t at work or on exotic vacations. Usually lucky in a luck-driven profession, tonight’s the night he is willing to go all in.

Alan Ryder (Hugh Dancy), a playboy millionaire who gets his money from being the heir to his father’s billions, is always high-game. But, after his father has a heart-attack, worried about his dad’s will and therefore his future income, Alan is betting low, but it could be his new technique.

Broke out of luck, Luke Armen (Kevin Bacon), needs money quick to save his house and keep his family off the streets, after gambling money away. Feeling gambling is the only way to gain the money that he lost; Luke’s heart skips a beat when he was three kings in hand. Now he must decide to put up, his daughter, Jenny’s (Jodelle Ferland), college fund into the pot; all that he has left.

Luke narrates as the story intertwines the game with the days events with his wife Marnie (Mary Louise-Parker) and daughter, all leading up to the final deal among the other “dogs” gambling away all that they value. With Luke and Murray “Aces” Stanwix, the only two left standing, Luke can only hope that tonight, he doesn’t live up to his nickname.

SEGMENT: Ladies and Gentlemen

Synopsis: A man in a classy blue suit (Kevin Bacon) sits in a dressing room on a large leather loveseat. His cigarette burning through the fog of smoke that fills the room. The setting is black and white, and the room is relatively dark, excluding the light coming from the window to the west. The man turns his head ever so slightly towards the window, watching the sun set, through a light snow falling on the other side. He begins to narrate. "When you stare out into the world and all you can see is the disease, and death, and decay. The once beautiful buildings now crumbling into history due to the faults of mankind. The people, who were once brilliant minds, are now bumbling fools lying in a gutter somewhere, begging for change to go buy another bottle of booze to soak their miseries in. When you look out and see all of these things, and never once notice the beauty in the world, you begin to think that there is none. You seem to forget that beautiful things happen everyday." The man puts out his cigarette and leaves the room. He walks down a hallway that is empty, except for the light at the end. He walks in slow motion, as the narration begins again. "All you have to do is peek out a window, look down a hallway, and you'll find it. All you need to do is know where to look." He reaches the end of the hallway, and the light consumes him. The next thing we see is him sitting at a desk on a television set. He looks directly at us and says,

"Ladies and Gentlemen, breaking news. The president of the United States has been shot."

SEGMENT: The Daughter

Synopsis: After supper, he heard the sounds while passing by the bathroom door, it closed and locked with Helena inside. What his daughter (Evan Rachel Wood) was doing behind that door was obvious, the noise just a further indication. The father (Kevin Bacon) didn’t know what to make of it. Why has she been doing this and what made her want to? Is it because of her peers? Because of her own thoughts on how she is? Because her mother isn’t here to help her stop? A father would never think that their baby girl suffers from something so fatal. What he decides to do is stand right outside of the door, and wait. The toilet flushes, the light under the door disappears, and Helena steps out of the bathroom. Seeing her father, she is intensely draped in a blanket of guilt. “I’m not okay with it,” the father says, hoping to make it clear to his one and only daughter that its not what he wants from her. “Expect to face the consequences. It’s not healthy.”

He walks down to the kitchen where he begins to do the dishes. It is not long before Helena enters to talk. “Daddy…” she whispers. Her father sits a plate in the dishwasher, he doesn’t say a word. Helena sits down at the table, becoming closer to her father. “I’ll stop eventually, daddy. I promise you. When it comes to the right time, I’ll stop.” He finishes up a pan, starts the dishwasher and then takes a seat across from his daughter. “Is it because your mother’s gone?” Helena glares at her father: “I don’t think about her very much.” It’s cringing for him to hear. “If not at all,” she finishes. He begins to feel a shadow of hollowness. He lets out a long sigh before looking back up to her. “I think about her all the time.” Helena sees the pain. To help him cope, she does what any daughter would do to help an emotionally unstable father. “Do you miss making love?” The father holds his face in his hands. “Yes, Helena . I do. I very much do”. She walks over to her father and sits on his lap. “Pretend I’m mom.” They kiss, her passionately, him not at all. “With her gone, this doesn’t feel right anymore.” Helena is at first in a puddle of heartbreak, but in a next thought, she becomes aware. She stands up, holds out her hand to her father and says: “Come on.”

The father and daughter slowly walk up the stairs, step by step, each tread another pull closer to what was all sadness, dreadful, and with pain. His hand is warm. Hers an unpleasant cold. She guides him into the bathroom. The light is off. The light is on. The cold hand leaves his warm hand. The father bends over the tub and brushes his hand on her ghostly white cheek while he turns on the shower to moisten her body. His pants are down, she is already unclothed and underneath him. It didn’t bother him that his clothes were getting wet. What was bothering him was the mental unstableness of his daughter. Why does she do what she does? When did she start? When will the right time come so that she will finally stop? “I love you daddy,” Helena says. The father turns his face toward his daughter to see she is standing by the door and has taken off her clothes. “I love you daddy,” she repeats. The father realizes for the first time in his life that she is not well. And looking back at his wife below, he realizes that it must run in the family.

SEGMENT: The Last and First I Met Her, Part II

Synopsis: John has a unique gift of being able to see his life backwards to see the outcome of his future. Using his skills to hustle his way into fortunes John is ecstatic, by not stealing a million dollar diamond, knowing that if he does, the owner will kill him.

What the Press would say:

What do you get when you cross six talented directors with six different stories on one great film? The answer: 6x the talent, 6x the greatness, and 6x the amazement. SIX DEGREES OF KEVIN BACON is one of the most brilliant examples of cinematic excellence to come around in quite a while! Sporting one clever actor to portray six very different characters, the first segment that opens and closes the film is by director Martin Campbell (director of "Casino Royale") and is the quirky fantasy "The Last and First Time I Met Her" focusing on the unexpected in one man's special power. The second segment is Richard LaGravenese (director of "Freedom Writers")'s "Reves et Memoires" is a hypnotic study of a man's obsession with his job. The third segment is "The Life and Times of Simon Shirley" with director Neil Jordan (director of "The Crying Game") tackling the issues of sexual discovery within a man who believes himself to be a woman. Segment number four is Lasse Hallstrom (director of "Chocolat")'s electric study of a few men's obsession with gambling, "Dogs Playing Poker". The fifth segment is "Ladies and Gentlemen", a haunting morality tale by "Into the Wild" director Sean Penn. And finally, the sixth segment is the disturbing drama directed by Lucky McGee (director of "May"), "The Daughter", the study of the worries a father has over his daughter's disturbing condition. What the viewer discovers watching SIX DEGREES OF KEVIN BACON is the many different styles, moods, and emotion brought to different director's craft and how different and unique every film is. Like Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times raves: "SIX DEGREES OF KEVIN BACON is effective stylized filmmaking in the highest order!"

For Your Consideration:

Best Picture
Best Actor: Kevin Bacon