OK, here is something to try if you’re bored and happen to be in front of a browser. I was clicking around on the Netflix site and I was looking at the Jim Carrey page, and I thought to myself, gee, I would like to get to the John Cleese page, I wonder if I can get there just by clicking links?
Here’s what I came up with on the first try (without using the Back button at all):
Jim Carrey, Batman Forever, Nicole Kidman, Eyes Wide Shut, Tom Cruise, Mission Impossible, Ving Rhames, Lilo and Stitch, David Ogden Stiers, Spirited Away, Hayao Miyazaki, Princess Mononoke, Billy Crudup, Big Fish, Danny DeVito, Get Shorty, Gene Hackman, Antz, Danny Akroyd, Trading Places, Jamie Lee Curtis, A Fish Called Wanda, and finally John Cleese. That’s 11 degrees of separation, so that means I kind of suck at this. I probably would have done better if I had allowed myself to use the Back button, but c’est la vie.
Here’s the second try:
Jim Carrey, The Mask, Cameron Diaz, Shrek II, John Cleese. 2 degrees of separation, much better.
I bet this would work a lot better with IMDB, but at least with Netflix I can rate a bunch of movies as I go…
I would have thought Hayao Miyazaki would have been a dead end. I’m impressed.
The few films that have been picked up by Disney have a lot of famous US voice actors, and some of them don’t do much voice acting. (I never listen to the English soundtrack if I can help it, though)