A fake Shemp is someone who appears in a film as a replacement for another actor or person. Their appearance is disguised using methods such as heavy make-up (or a computer-generated equivalent), filming from the back, dubbing in audio and splicing in past footage from the original actor's previous work, using a sound-alike voice actor, or using partial shots of the actor. Coined by film director Sam Raimi, the term is named after Shemp Howard of the Three Stooges, whose sudden death in 1955 necessitated the use of these techniques to finish the films to which he was already committed. Once somewhat commonplace throughout the 20th century, the use of fake Shemps to emulate living people is now forbidden under Screen Actors Guild contracts, largely because of a lawsuit filed by Crispin Glover — following his replacement in Back to the Future Part II — that determined that the method violates the original actor's personality rights. The method continues to be used in cases, such as Shemp's, where the original actor is deceased and permission from the deceased actor's estate is granted.
A fake Shemp is distinguished from a stunt double. Stunt doubles usually only substitute for an actor in select scenes where the original actor is either unable to perform the stunt or is unwilling to take the risk of being injured in the stunt. The same techniques are often used for both.
The word became an expanded term-- "What are you doing on Saturday night?" "Nothing, I'm just shemping." "Let's go shemp around somewhere," "What's the guy like, is he an idiot?" "Nah, he's just a shemp,' meaning he's no big deal. "Did you have a good time?" "It was sort of a shemp time, we didn't really do anything." So the term became synonymous with things that aren't substantial, or are fake, or whatever. We've been trying to spread it on different film shoots out here, and it works well, cause you can go, "Ah, shemp that thing over about a foot," or whatever.
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