First Usage
Aspiring filmmaker Sam Raimi, a professed Stooges fan, coined the term in his first feature-length movie The Evil Dead. Most of his crew and cast abandoned the project after major delays (mostly due to budget issues) pushed production well beyond the scheduled six weeks. He was forced to use himself, his die-hard friends Bruce Campbell, Rob Tapert, Josh Becker, assistant David Goodman, and brother Ted Raimi as "fake shemps".
Sam Raimi's later productions in film and TV have also often used the term to refer to stand-ins or nameless characters. For example, 15 fake shemps were included in the credits for Army of Darkness, Raimi's second sequel to The Evil Dead. The description is sometimes modified in the final credits; in Darkman, Bruce Campbell's quick cameo in the final scene is credited as "Final Shemp", and Campbell was also credited as 'Shemp Wooley' (a pun on singer Sheb Wooley) when doing the voice of 'Jean-Claude the Carrier Parrot' in the short-lived TV series Jack of All Trades.
Read more about this topic: Fake Shemp
Famous quotes containing the word usage:
“Pythagoras, Locke, Socrates—but pages
Might be filled up, as vainly as before,
With the sad usage of all sorts of sages,
Who in his life-time, each was deemed a bore!
The loftiest minds outrun their tardy ages.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“...Often the accurate answer to a usage question begins, “It depends.” And what it depends on most often is where you are, who you are, who your listeners or readers are, and what your purpose in speaking or writing is.”
—Kenneth G. Wilson (b. 1923)