Six Degrees of Separation (1993)

February 28, 2022 11:21 AM

An affluent New York City couple finds their lives touched, intruded upon, and compelled by a mysterious young black man who is never quite who he says he is.
posted by spikeleemajortomdickandharryconnickjrmints (6 comments total)

Love this movie. It was a very brave move on Will Smith's part, taking on the role of a gay hustler, at that point in his career.
posted by hoodrich at 1:15 PM on February 28, 2022

I really enjoyed this film as a teenager - Will Smith playing against type, Donald Sutherland embodying the crass commercialism behind the façade of fine art dealing, and Stockard Channing emerging from underneath a cloud of cocktail banter into something real and raw. Just beautiful.

And, bizarrely, a cameo by a young J. J. Abrams.

It also has this prescient cringe:

There’s a scene early on where Will Smith says his dad is directing a movie-version of the musical Cats.

And he says this... to IAN MCKELLEN.

“Someone is directing a film of Cats?” Stockyard Channing inquires while SITTING NEXT TO IAN MCKELLEN.

“Surely they can’t make the movie of Cats”, Donald Sutherland groans, INCHES FROM IAN MCKELLEN.

“He's going to use PEOPLE”, Will boasts, which IAN LAUGHS AT - YA KNOW, THE GUY THAT PLAYED GUS THE THEATER CAT IN THE EVENTUAL MOVIE ADAPTATION OF CATS?

A sad coda, the real-life con artist who inspired this died of AIDS in 2003.
posted by Paragon at 3:11 PM on February 28, 2022 [7 favorites]

"And we turn him into an anecdote, with no teeth, and a punchline you'll tell for years to come: "Oh, that reminds me of the time the imposter came into our house." "Oh! Tell the one about that boy." And we become these human jukeboxes spitting out these anecdotes to dine out on like we're doing right now. Well I will not turn him into an anecdote, it was an experience. How do we hold onto the experience?"

I think about those lines a lot, as I go about my business and experience things that I want to talk to other people about. Like, how do I make it not just a story I tell? How do I remember it as something that happened to me, something that happened to someone else and is a part of their life?

I love this movie for many reasons, but this part in particular has stayed with me since I first saw it in the movie theater.
posted by Gorgik at 7:41 PM on February 28, 2022 [7 favorites]

A sad coda, the real-life con artist who inspired this died of AIDS in 2003.

Shortly after the play this was based on opened, I remember that there was suddenly a front-page story on my college's student newspaper - because Hampton had been using his connection to this play to pull his scam on students on campus.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:56 AM on March 1, 2022 [2 favorites]

It was a very brave move on Will Smith's part, taking on the role of a gay hustler, at that point in his career.

Although he didn't actually kiss Anthony Michael Hall (who is also very good here) on the advice of Denzel Washington, something that Smith later said that he regretted.

This is really pretty good, though; I don't know if it lost anything in translation from the stage, but everything from the specifics of the casting to the general concepts really pulled me in . The whole concept of six degrees of separation was a mind-blower at the time, and I also very much like the quote that Gorgik repeated above; I know people who do that, quite unabashedly, and I think in the back of my mind that, if they haven't yet reduced me to an anecdote, they probably will.
posted by Halloween Jack at 12:44 PM on March 1, 2022 [2 favorites]

It also has this prescient cringe:

I remarked a few years ago on the blue,

I don’t think I have seen the movie more than once since its initial release in 1993 and definitely not since 2001. I am sure I would have noted that Paul (Will Smith) delivers the line about how “imaginative” Lord of the Rings to Geoffrey (Ian McKellen). More recently, I might have taken note that the same monologue also references Star Wars and Star Trek, in a movie also with a small role for unremarked-upon twentysomething actor J. J. Abrams.

posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:48 PM on March 3, 2022 [1 favorite]