I was cc’d on this letter to Derb who may be too humble to post it himself:
Jonah is indeed correct about the meaning of “Bacon number.” I think the Bacon number has to have been derived from the concept of “Erdos number” (http://www.oakland.edu/~grossman/erdoshp.html), which is decades old and quantifies one’s collaboration with Prof. Paul Erdos. However exciting your movie career is (and it is, very), some of us are more interested in your Erdos Number.
I would suspect that any person with an Erdos number and a Bacon number each under five might border on the ultimate in coolness.