Taglines: For Paul, every person is a new door to a new world.
Six Degrees of Separation movie storyline. New Yorkers Ouisa and Flan Kittredge are upper class private art dealers, pretentious but compassionate. Their prized possession is a double sided Kandinsky, one side that represents control, the other side chaos. They relay a story to their friends and acquaintances that over time becomes legendary. It is their encounter with a young black man who they had never met or heard of but who comes stumbling upon their front door one evening as they are courting an important investor, Geoffrey Miller, who could make them wealthy beyond what they could have dreamed.
That black man is Paul Poitier, who has just arrived in the city, was just mugged outside their building and is sporting a minor knife wound to the abdomen. He is a friend of the Kittredge’s children, who are attending Harvard, but more importantly is the son of actor/director Sidney Poitier. Tomorrow, Paul is meeting up with his father who is in town directing a movie of “Cats”.
Six Degrees of Separation is a 1993 American comedy-drama film directed by Fred Schepisi, adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-nominated John Guare play of the same name. The plot of the film was inspired by the real-life story of David Hampton, a con man and robber who managed to convince a number of people in the 1980s that he was the son of actor Sidney Poitier.
The writer John Guare was a friend of Inger McCabe Elliott and her husband Osborn Elliott. In October 1983, Hampton came to the Elliott’s New York apartment and they allowed him to spend the night. The next morning, Inger found Hampton in bed with another man and later called the police. The Elliotts told Guare about the story and it inspired him to write the play years later.
Six Degrees of Separation (1993)
Directed by: Fred Schepisi
Starring: Stockard Channing, Will Smith, Donald Sutherland, Mary Beth Hurt, Bruce Davison, Ian McKellen, Heather Graham, Richard Masur, Catherine Kellner, Joe Pentangelo
Screenplay by: John Guare
Production Design by: Patrizia von Brandenstein
Cinematography by: Ian Baker
Film Editing by: Peter Honess
Costume Design by: Judianna Makovsky
Set Decoration by: Gretchen Rau
Art Direction by: Dennis Bradford
Music by: Jerry Goldsmith
MPAA Rating: R for language and some sexuality.
Distributed by: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release Date: December 8, 1993
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