Six Degrees of Separation

While waiting in line to board my flight from Paris to Frankfurt, a mother explained to her child that, unlike their trip out to Europe, in their trip back to the States they would do the short flight first and the long flight second.

“Oh,” her daughter thought about it for a moment. “So it’s like the same thing, but backwards,” she concluded.

“Yes. The same thing, but backwards,” her mother affirmed.

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On my last day in Paris, my sister and I went to Sunday Brunch at the Charbon. We had been to the restaurant once before for dinner at the beginning of my trip and I had liked it. If the city of Berkeley was ever personified, it might travel to Paris and eat here.

At one point, my enjoyment of croissants and confiture was interrupted by my sister, who asked, “Dude, is that dude from Amelie?”

“Which dude? I asked. She pointed towards the sidewalk. I looked and recognized him immediately.

The dude in question was Dominique Pinon: the actor who plays the jealous ex-boyfriend of the waitress who works with Amelie at Le Deux Moulin. As soon as I caught sight of him, I realized how stupid I must have seemed to my sister for having to ask for clarification after she pointed him out to me. Because the thing about Dominique Pinon, is that he looks like only one person and that person is himself. That is to say, no one else looks like him and so the question “Is that the dude from Amelie” is actually rhetorical, for the answer is undeniably yes. Spotting him in a restaurant setting helped confirm his identity to us, as he looked exactly as he does seated at the café in the film.

My sister and I share a mutual appreciation for the actor Alan Rickman. Thus, our natural response to the celebrity sighting was to try to connect Pinon to Rickman. This task was particularly difficult because we were moving from a French actor to a British one.
We tried to venture forth from Pinon through Jean Reno, a famous French actor who has done some crossover films with American actors such as the recent Pink Panther remake. This path would open up the plethora of connections offered by Steve Martin and Kevin Kline.
“Kevin Kline was in Dave with Sigourney Weaver, who was in the fourth Alien movie with…!” exclaimed Emily, cutting herself off when she realized that the trail was leading back to Pinon.

The disappointment that followed was matched by our discouraging discovery that we could actually only name about four movies starring Steve Martin. Though Father of the Bride would figure prominently in our connection of Beyonce and Janeane Garofalo, it was not going to help us reach our current goal.

We made a few more circles back to Pinon before Audrey Tatou showed us a way out. Tatou was in The Da Vinci Code with Tom Hanks—finally, justification for the making of the movie. Tom Hanks was in Forrest Gump with Sally Fields, who was in Ms. Doubtfire with Robin Williams. Robin Williams was in Hook with Maggie Smith, who played Professor Mc Gonagal in Harry Potter with Alan Rickman. Mission accomplished—and in six degrees.

I have never been very good at playing six degrees of separation and found myself in a state of disbelief that we had actually done it. It was actually a very heightened emotional state as there had been several ups and downs on our way to victory. I was surprised by how easy it is to make a loop and wind up back at the same actor you started with. I thought of this the next day, when I overheard the little girl talking to her mother in line at the airport. You can always find your way back to the place that you started, but you may take a different way to get there.