Six Degrees of Scarlett Johansson

Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon is one of the all-time great “nothing else to do” party games. It’s too bad its heyday was pre-smartphone, so it was easy for people to try to cheat. When it started, Kevin’s career had taken the perfect path to where the game was challenging, but yet almost anything was possible. A Few Good Men basically killed the game and made it too easy. Not right when it came out, but within a few years given everything the cast members went on to do.

I’ve thought we need a new six degrees actor. That game is too good to die because Kevin Bacon got too successful.  And now we all have smartphones and if someone claims an obscure movie nobody has ever heard if, we can check to see if it really exists. 

Scarlett would have been a good choice before The Avengers, because she has done a cross-section of different types of movies, including small roles in indie films, but generally avoided big-cast blockbusters until recently. The Island might have made it too easy, though. Just take Djimon Hounsou to Anthony Hopkins in Amistad and from there, you can get anywhere. Actually, that and He’s Just Not That Into You would have made it too easy before The Avengers.  Six Degrees of Amanda Seyfried would be better. Maybe that would be a little too hard. But it has to be a girl this time. 

Jeopardy! is a great show, but its getting a little long in the tooth. I was thinking a “Six degrees...” game show would be fun, with a different celebrity host each week who is the subject of the game. That’s an idea for later, but in a moment, we’re going to play my version of Six Degrees of Scarlett Johansson...

You have to appreciate this Scarlett Johansson thing from my perspective. I wasn’t out looking for Scarlett Johansson. I tried to avoid the types of places where celebrities hang out. It’s not like I saw her at Comic-Con. I wouldn’t be caught DEAD at Comic-Con. I was just wandering along through life, and truth be told, I’d more or less given up on the idea of love. I had written in a sort of poem I posted, “No more dream girls, I’m wide awake now...”. I’m just walking through Las Vegas minding my own business and...oh, I guess there is still one dream girl. 

The fact that I didn’t recognize Scarlett is a joke that will never stop being funny to me even if no one else ever gets it. How could I NOT recognize SCARLETT JOHANSSON?!?!  But what this does is, it splits Scarlett into two people for me—the famous actress, and the girl I saw in Vegas. 

So consider this:  I see this girl, THAT girl, the one you are going to remember for the rest of your life, and I make the stupidest decision of my life when I walk past her. But now I can’t get away from her, because it turns out that she’s not only basically like the most famous girl on earth, but someone I’ve admired since she was fourteen years old. Ordinarily, your random encounter with a passing stranger fades slowly into memory, no matter how striking she was. But I can’t escape this stranger...

A few nights ago, I’m in my hotel room flipping channels. I have such little interest in the programming on the four major networks, that I don’t even stop to look at them. As I’m scrolling through them, I’ve already hit the “Next channel” button before the satellite-delayed image fills the screen. A face comes up, golden skin against a gold background. The brain says something like this: “Hey, it’s that girl from Vegas on TV!  Oh wait, that’s Scarlett Johansson...Leave me alone, Scarlett!  No wait!  Don’t leave me alone!”

The image is gone in a fraction of a second because I’ve already scrolled to the next channel before I see her. With every fiber of my being, I want to go back for another look, but with every fiber of my being, I won’t let myself do it. I tell myself she’ll probably be gone, as I think it was a “Get out the Vote” commercial. All I heard her say in that strange wonderful voice is “You vote for American Idol”. I have never voted for American Idol, Scarlett. 

I can handle seeing her when she’s at work on TV, in The Island or Ghost In the Shell or an Avengers movie.  But I can’t handle her looking straight at me like that. It was only a flash and she was gone, but like the images Tyler Durden was splicing into movies in Fight Club, I know I saw it and that moment of her impossibly beautiful face is burned into my memory. I mean, I know Scarlett’s on TV a lot, but...

People sometimes go nuts because they cannot separate an emotion that they feel from reality. The emotion that I feel when I see Scarlett is, “That girl must have been made for me. She’s too perfect for any other explanation.”. But of course, Scarlett Johansson was not actually made for me. I don’t think. But, I’ll plant my flag and say that any man who doesn’t feel that way doesn’t deserve her. 

So this girl I passed in a hotel lobby on my way to a date with another girl follows me still. I recently signed up for Peacock, NBC-Universal’s new streaming service. Scarlett movies all over the place. I can’t watch. The one Scarlett Johansson movie I’ve been wanting to see FOREVER is Eight-Legged Freaks, but that never comes on ANYWHERE! 

Even if I were to go on a media fast, I still can’t escape. I walk through the mall, there’s a cardboard cutout of Scarlett in the window of a comic book shop. I walk down the street in downtown San Diego, there’s an Avengers Endgame banner with Scarlett’s face hanging from a lamppost. It’s as if Scarlett roped me into her universe with that one look, and there’s no way out. 

Even space is not safe!  Broadcasts of Scarlett Johansson have been spreading across the universe since 1999. I can’t even hide from Scarlett on Mars!  Minimum safe distance from Scarlett Johansson: 22 light years. That’s 129 trillion miles!  And she’ll still catch up to you in a year. You have to keep running from her at light speed. Maybe I can hide inside a black hole. When the aliens get here, they won’t say “Take me to your leader”. They’ll say “Where is that one who is called Scarlett?  She’s so cute.”

But I don’t want to escape Scarlett. I do and I don’t. What I want is to find love, first and foremost. I highly doubt that Scarlett will be the one I find it with, but you never know. Some people do get to live the fairy tale life. Maybe I’ll get that lucky. I can’t give up because she deserves to know what her options are. Maybe Colin just did something unforgivable today. 

But I know there are a lot of girls I could be happy with now that I know how to be happy.  Assuming that what I felt when I saw Scarlett was not mutual, what I really REALLY want from her...is a job. That would be fairy tale enough. Plenty of cute Jewish girls in the world...(But you really are NUMBER ONE on my list, Scarlett. I really mean it.). 

The world is an incredibly small and interconnected place. If you don’t move around much, it can be hard to see this, but it is true for everyone. So was it really some strange supernatural moment when I saw Scarlett, or was it actually something I should have expected?  Perhaps even something inevitable, that eventually Scarlett and I would end up in the same place at the same time?  Had it already happened before, and I didn’t know it?  The reality is, I have an extensive network of loose social and professional connections to Scarlett Johansson. Here are just a few facts to show how connected to Scarlett’s universe I actually am:

I know Denzel Washington’s church pastor. He and my father were friends for decades. Denzel Washington was in Out of Time and Training Day with Eva Mendes. Eva Mendes was in My Brother The Pig with Scarlett Johansson. 

I was friends at Stanford with Sterling K. Brown. Sterling K Brown was in Black Panther with Chadwick Boseman. Chadwick Boseman was in various Avengers movies with Scarlett Johansson. 

I was also friends at Stanford with Sterling K. Brown’s wife Ryan Michelle Bathe. Ryan was in Good Fences with Danny Glover, who was in The Rainmaker with Matt Damon, who was in We Bought a Zoo with Scarlett Johansson. (Seriously, WTF, both of you!  I’ve got a movie for you two!  I know you’ll both love it.)

I used to work for the tax lawyers of Dolph Lundgren. On top of also being Swedish, Dolph Lundgren was in some movie I forget with Scarlett Johansson. 

Those same tax lawyers I worked for represented Alec Baldwin. Alec Baldwin was in The Departed with Matt Damon. Matt Damon was in We Bought A Zoo with Scarlett Johansson. 

I’ve sort of met Oliver Platt. Sometime in 1997 or 1998, I was waiting to see a movie at the AMC theaters in the Century City mall when Oliver came up and asked me what time it was. Oliver Platt was in Chef with Scarlett Johansson and in a great movie that needs a bigger budget remake that I want to write and get Scarlett to star in—Dangerous Beauty.

The one scene of my movie All-Nighter that was filmed featured Sharif Atkins. Sharif Atkins was on E.R. with George Clooney. George Clooney was in The Men Who Stare At Goats with Ewan McGregor. Ewan McGregor was in The Island with Scarlett Johansson. 

My sister used to work for some production company where Stan Lee kept an office. She said he was really nice. Stan Lee created the comic book universe that Scarlett Johansson has spent the last several years working in. 

My other sister worked at Fox in the Century City tower, where I’m guessing Scarlett knows a LOT of people. 

My niece went to The Brentwood School with the children of a host of Scarlett’s professional colleagues. 

Tatyana Ali was going to be in my movie. Tatyana Ali was in Jawbreaker with Rose McGowan. Rose McGowan was in Machete with Lindsay Lohan. Lindsay Lohan was in Mean Girls with Amanda Seyfried. Amanda Seyfried was in In Time with Olivia Wilde. Olivia Wilde was in Her with Scarlett Johansson. How smoking hot is that list!?! There are probably easier ways to make that trip, but I couldn’t resist building that chain of smoking hot girls. Man, I don’t know how you Hollywood guys survive Oscar night. I would think you’d just look around the room and die from an overdose of smoking hot!

I used to live roughly in the same neighborhood as James Caan, and there was a local bar and restaurant where we both occasionally enjoyed a night out. James Caan was in A Bridge Too Far with Robert Redford. Robert Redford was in The Horse Whisperer with Scarlett Johansson...

I could go on and on with these but I’m probably boring you already. The point is that, far more than I even realized when I started this blog, for better or for worse, I’ve been in Scarlett Johansson’s orbit for a long time. One degree away, two degrees away...six degrees away.  And then I saw Scarlett Johansson at the Aria Hotel in Las Vegas, August 31, 2012. That’s zero degrees. Looking back at it now, maybe it had to happen sometime, though it still feels so magical. 

I think of that moment when I saw Scarlett—that, and one other moment with the former most beautiful girl I’d ever seen that Scarlett unseated. I see myself at the instant before I made the decisions that I regret so much. I see those moments like the Greek myth of Icarus. Those were the times in my life where I sailed so high on my wax wings that I thought I could reach the sun. I was close enough to touch it, when the wax melted away and I fell. Not down TO earth, but down THROUGH it, to the hell my life is now. 

What I told myself that night when I walked past the most beautiful girl that I’d ever seen was that if it was meant to be, I would somehow find my way back to her. I just didn’t know then that she’s been here all along, just around the corner out of sight.  

All of this isn’t because Scarlett Johansson is special (even though she’s SOOO special!), or because I am. It’s the way the world works. We’re all interconnected whether we recognize it or not, and the fact that I didn’t recognize Scarlett that night is a microcosm of what happens every day in our society. We walk past people we know as if they are strangers, because the connections are too distant to be seen through the tunnel vision we use to navigate the world.  

If you see that once-in-a-lifetime girl, and she even looks in your direction, you’re already a very lucky man. Luckier still if it turns out that girl is someone whose name will be prominently listed in the history of the 21st century. And it turns out that she is someone you already know, whose face is so familiar from years of seeing her on movie screens and televisions, on magazine covers and billboards. But for some reason, whether it is the angle of the light or the color of the room, it’s like you’re seeing her for the first time, and six degrees is much too far away...