Wednesday, June 07, 2017

Six Degrees of... Somebody!

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If you guys have been around here for very long then you know that the 1993 film Six Degrees of Separation, starring Stockard Channing and Donald Sutherland and Will Smith, is one of my favorite movies, period. It sits among those lofty titles that inspired me to make my home in New York, and I see it and feel it every day I walk around. I mean just last night I was making my way home from a late night art exhibit crossing Central Park when we stumbled upon the statue of a husky dog that is remarked upon in the film repeatedly.  

So I was already feeling the need today to re-watch the movie, and then suddenly this terrific piece on the movie popped up over at The Film Experience and pushed me over the edge - consider this movie on the second I get home.
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The thing is after I tweeted the above gif out I got to thinking about this scene in the film - where Will Smith is found fooling around with a hustler by Stockard Channing in their home - and I realized I had never looked up the actor who played the hustler. So I did look him up... and a mystery appeared!!! This is some real "Six Degrees" shit right here, lemme tell ya.

The actor's name is Lou Milione, and he only has three credits - he was also in Taps (twelve years before Six Degrees) and he was also in something called The Blue Lizard (nine years after). Weird spaced out things, right? But there's not really much else on him anywhere, except a couple of pictures of him on stage in the 80s. Seems not entirely unreasonable for an actor with so few credits so long ago.

But here's the thing: when you just google his name what mostly shows up are a whole bunch of articles about an actor-turned-undercover-DEA agent who brought down a "legendary arms trafficker known as 'The Merchant of Death'" in Colombia in 2012. What the what? Here's an interview with this guy on 60 Minutes!
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Is this the same guy that played the "Hustler" that Will Smith picked up in Six Degrees of Separation?? I am not sure! The DEA agent goes by the full name of Louis Milione, and in the above interview when he's asked about his former acting career he only mentions soap operas and some stage work. But the IMDb page for "Louis Milione" only includes his appearance on 60 Minutes and a documentary about the case he broke. No soaps at all listed in his past...

... but that said there aren't any soaps listed on the IMDb page for "Lou Milione" either. What do we make of it? You guys tell me - is the Naked Dude in Six Degrees of Separation also the DEA Agent who brought down the so-called "Merchant of Death" twenty years later or what?
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Honestly it seems really possible to me that they are the same person, and I sure hope he's not embarrassed by this attention - it's love! So much love. He needs to be proud of this accomplishment! This is a grand great film, and this scene in particular was tremendously important to an entire generation of... certain people... among which I count myself.

But if you're unconvinced and you need to look closer I have included a whole bunch of NSFW gifs from this scene after the jump, you know, for research purposes...












3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I highly encourage you to see the revival currently on Bway with Allison Janney and John Benjamin Hickey. Like you, I love the film, and this production is equally wonderful.

par3182 said...

maybe he doesn't mention it because he doesn't want to turn a wonderful experience into an anecdote...?

Cluster Funk said...

Oh, par3182, that was a BRILLIANT retort. 😂