“I’m just Marshall. Like, Im not your fucking savior.” Eminem is typically brash and cerebral in Stans, two of the rapper’s character traits those interviewed for this documentary – the “Stans” of its title – profess their love for. Directed by Steven Leckert and featuring interviews with Eminem, Dr. Dre, LL Cool J, Adam Sandler, and Carson Daly, the majority of Stans assesses Em’s music and career from the perspective of everyday people, those who see some of themselves in his 2000 single about an obsessive fan, but have transcended the track’s ruminatons on parasocial obsession and suicidal ideation. 25 years later, “to Stan” has come to mean being fully invested, and following all your fave star’s socials. But for the Stans of Stans, they were committed exclusively to Em right from the start.
The Gist: “Hi, my name is chika-chika [Insert Stan Here].” Stans uses the chorus of Eminem’s smash 1999 breakthrough “My Name Is” as a device to introduce a series of individuals for whom Eminem fandom is central to life. There is Zolt, from France, who has worked to physically embody his hero as he makes regular pilgrimages to Detroit. There is Katie, who fashioned her own version of Eminem’s superhero get-up in the “Without Me” video, and who got a job at Gilbert’s in the Detroit suburbs just because he once worked there. We also meet Nikki – she set a world record for most tats featuring the same musician – and Ramon, Brendan, Noah, and others. Each has an individual quirk that defines their Eminem stanning. But they all consider his music and influence universal. As Brendan says, “there’s a Slim Shady in all of us.”
Stans is on Paramount+, which means it has access to MTV’s archives. And that’s key for a doc featuring Eminem, because the rapper and his outsized, crass “Slim Shady” alter-ego became a perfect storm of content generation for Total Request Live. Carson Daly is on hand to describe that scene back in the late 1990s, as Eminem surged to rap’s top tier and his exposure took over American pop culture. And many of the Stans remember, too. Sure, Em’s Slim Shady LP track “Don’t Give a Fuck” was major. Dr. Dre says it was one of the songs that inspired him to sign Eminem to Aftermath. But for Stans like Ramon, it was all in the attitude. “He’s just being him, and he’s having a grand time. Going at pop culture people to a ‘T’ – he doesn’t give a fuck!”
For many of the Stans, their journey with Eminem is personal. His struggles aligned with their struggles. His resilience inspired their own. While Stans periodically cuts to Eminem himself, who describes his early life challenges and says listening to hip-hop – and then writing his own rhymes – empowered him, it stays mostly with the Stans and their own stories of connection. Some of them were bullied at school. But they had songs like “Brain Damage” to crank in their headphones. “I had Marshall’s music…it made me feel like I wasn’t alone.”
Stans also veers into straight doc material on Eminem – the trajectory of his career, his addiction to pain pills, his life as a father. But once it gets around to “Stan” and its Devon Sawa-starring music video, the focus is on both the rapper and his cadre of the most dedicated. The song is “probably how a lot of people see me,” Nikki says. But the Stans mostly take the side of their hero. “Stan,” they say, is “extreme.” But in another way, it’s the purest expression of what inspired their deeply held fandom in the first place.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? There has never really been a formal documentary project about Eminem, with origin stories, successes, struggles, and sit-down interviews. This is something Stans acknowledges by becoming such a doc every now and then. Adam Sandler offers a few testimonials to Em’s talent in Stans – they’ve traded cameos in projects over the years, with the rapper popping up in Funny People and playing a heckler character in the recent Happy Gilmore 2. And might Stans and its examination of 8 Mile and Em in that era be joined by “8 Mile: The Series”? That’s what 50 Cent once teased. (50 also surfaces for a couple seconds in Stans, in footage dating from 2001and his and Em’s appearances on the Anger Management Tour.)
Performance Worth Watching: We know he recently did it again, but who watches the VMAs now? In Stans, it’s the archival footage of Eminem’s 2000 VMAs performance of “The Real Slim Shady” and “The Way I Am” – featuring an army of blonde-dyed Slim sims – that really speaks to his creativity and reach.
Memorable Dialogue: From Alex, a Stan since 1999: “Eminem is absolutely like an unwilling cult leader. He’s someone who did not want to take up that position, but has been, to no fault of his own, kind of thrust into it.”
Sex and Skin: None. Well, unless you count Eminem’s giant plastic ass in “The Real Slim Shady” clip. “My bum is on your lips…”
Our Take: Beyond its themes of obsessive behavior and self-harm and entry into the pop culture lexicon, “Stan” is also notable for being a song written around the idea of correspondence. The writing, sending, and exchange of physical letters through the mail. It’s an extension into the physical for obsession, something we kept thinking about during Stans. If it was released today, would the character in Eminem’s song use ChatGPT to manage the lengths of his fandom?
But print is also central to Stans in other significant ways. Eminem opened up his writing process to the filmmakers; in interviews, he even describes what kind of pens he uses in his composition books. And the Stans are fascinated when presented with Em’s handwritten lyric sheets. (“I feel like a see a busy brain.”) It’s like they can see everything that made him a hero in their eyes, right in those cramped scribbled couplets and curse word scrawls.
And most of the Stans admit to having penned fan mail they never sent. One guy jokes he’s still waiting for Em to respond to his email from a decade ago. (Jokes, kind of – there is another current in Stans that suggests the interviewees were hoping for an IRL meetup.) And in one of the film’s most fan-forward and powerful moments, a young woman reads her own unsent letter aloud. We see her handwriting. We hear her working through the thoughts she wrote down, see her finding solace. “Your picture on my wall reminds me it’s not so bad, it’s not so bad…”
Our Call: Stream It, particularly if you yourself are an Eminem stan. The rapper is thoughtful in his interviews, but true to form, he also kisses off his haters. Few of whom appear here, though. With a ton of input from a collection of real-life Stans, Stans attempts to reframe the song and its themes as the realest connective tissue possible between an impossibly huge star and the fans who always stayed committed.
Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide, and The Village Voice.