Maybe this could be an ongoing series

Kevin Bacon was in The Firm with Wilford Brimley; Wilford Brimley was in Cocoon with Maureen Stapleton; Maureen Stapleton played Emma Goldman in Reds.

Extra points if you link via Erdos…

I think I have an Erdos-Bacon route

Bacon was in New York, I Love You with Natalie Portman

Natalie Portman (using her birthname Herschlag) can be linked to Paul Erdos through a paper with Abigail Beard, who published with MS Gazzininga, who published with JD Victor, who published with J Gillis who published with Erdos

Erdos can be linked to Danica McKellar in 4 steps (D. Preiss, R. Kotecky, L. Chayes)

Danica McKellar was in The Wonder Years with Olivia D’Abo

Olivia D’Abo was in The Last Good Time with Maureen Stapleton

Maureen Stapleton played Emma Goldman

The challenge, I think, would be to link to Emma Goldman herself.

Alix Kates Shulman edited a collection of Goldman speeches (Red Emma Speaks) – that, arguably, gets you into contemporary academia. If someone can come up with a good co-authorship path from Shulman to a film-friendly academic (Marshall McLuhan, say?) then we’re in business.

Actually, I think I prefer Emma Goldman – Emmanuel Goldstein – Winston Smith – John Hurt – Alien – Underground Goddam Monsters – Kevin Bacon.

Ayatollah Ali Khameni says more or less directly that if you want to dance, you can’t be part of their revolution…

Oh, Christ, I smell another Dirty Dancing sequel…

This should really start with Bacon’s turn in Footloose, in which John Lithgow played the Baptist ayatollah. Lithgow was a Harvard ’67 who lived on the same hall as Al Gore. And if you need even one extra link to go from Gore’s environazism to Goldman’s free-love fascism, then clearly you haven’t read your Jonah Goldberg.

Ha! Nice one roac. But I think that for a Bacon number you actually have to appear in the film, not just know someone – was Goldman ever on film? She must have been. Newsreels and so on.

What about this total cheat: Steven Fischler and Joel Sucher directed a documentary in 1983 called Anarchism in America, in which a clip of Goldman speaking is used (here). Nine years later they also direct another documentary on the life of Oliver Stone that includes a clip of Kevin Bacon. So, just two illegal moves. Simples.

There is a documentary called Anarchism in America which is said to include a clip, but it sounds like the same one.

Well, you don’t have to be in the same shot as someone for it to count, just in the same film. So it’s:

Emma Goldman
was in “Anarchism in America” with
Jello Biafra
who was in “Tapeheads” with
Xander Berkeley
who was in “A Few Good Men” with
Kevin Bacon.

So Emma Goldman has a Bacon number of 3. Same as mine.

Roac, the alternative explanation is that both Norton and Bacon are from a pretty small elite background.

Wikiquote gives the context:

At the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha, a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. It was undignified for one who was on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement. My frivolity would only hurt the Cause.

I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business. I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. “I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody’s right to beautiful, radiant things.” Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world — prisons, persecution, everything. Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own closest comrades I would live my beautiful ideal.

Ayatollah Ali Khameni appears as himself in “A Decade Under the Influence” along with Warren Beatty

I bet the post-wrap party was fabulous.

I don’t suppose Khamenei is opposed to “chanting prayers,” is he? That’s one Persian custom that would be called “music” in the US. On the other hand, it doesn’t normally involve dancing.