Plenty of dull moment
WATERVILLE - Working as a stand-in for Paul Newman has made Sean Meacham realize that being a famous movie star is no picnic.
While on the set recently, several women ran up to him and begged him for his autograph. When he told them he was not Paul Newman, they didn't believe him.
"I think it's ludicrous, but if they want my autograph, I sign it 'Max,' " Meacham said.
Like Newman, Meacham, 62, of Northport, has longish white hair and a white beard, which is appropriate for the part of Max Roby, who, in Richard Russo's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, is "sempty" years old." Meacham also is about Newman's height and weight.
Whenever Newman is on the set, so is Meacham. His job is important because before Newman acts in a scene, Meacham helps prepare it by standing in so that the crew and director can determine the exact camera angles, lighting and position for filming Newman.
"They shoot each scene about six times from six different positions," Meacham said.
On Monday, Meacham was in the city's South End, working on the set at the Second Baptist Church -- the setting for St. Catherine's Roman Catholic Church - and an adjacent house being used as the church rectory in the movie.
Newman had climbed a high ladder, from which his character was to be painting the church. When Newman descended the ladder, Meacham took his place.
"I go up and do the posing and the camera is fixed on me," he explains. "They shoot about every angle you can think of and that took all morning -- from 6:30 to lunch time."
Meacham has been on the job about two weeks. He earns $11 an hour and works long days -- sometimes 12 hours in which he does a lot of waiting. During a break Monday, Meacham said the experience has taught him patience -- as well as empathy for actors.
"This is very boring, and being a movie actor is not glamorous," he said. "The work is terrible. I guess the glamour is the lifestyle. You're waiting hours and hours and hours. I'll probably wait all the rest of the day and maybe do nothing."
In real life, Meacham is a handyman and skipper of a 32-foot sailboat he owns in Puerto Rico, where he goes when the weather gets cold. He often charters day cruises or skippers another boat, he said.
A New Jersey native, Meacham many years ago was an extra in both "Dr. Zhivago" and "Battle of the Bulge," working in scenes shot in Madrid, he said. He also was an extra in "Thinner," filmed in Camden a few years ago.
His move to Maine was a circuitous route. In the 1970s, he was a broker for the American Stock Exchange, where his firm required he take a month vacation a year, so he went to the Bahamas on a friend's boat, he said. The experience prompted him to quit his hectic job.
"I came back and I resigned," he said. "I went off and bought a little boat and sailed on it for 10 years in the Carribean."
Then 20 years ago he and his wife, who was then eight months pregnant, came to Maine and traded the boat for a piece of land with a beautiful view in Northport. He never left.
In August, at the urging of a friend, he came to auditions for "Empire Falls," but was told there were 600 people ahead of him in line, so he left a photo and application form and forgot all about it until he was called recently to be a stand-in. He does not get to chat with Newman, he said.
"It's not really a social scene when you're on the set," he said. "He's in character. He has a mind-set."
Amy Calder 861-9247
acalder@centralmaine.com
Copyright © 2003 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.