The Dark Story of Eminem (30 page)

8 Mile
‘s filming through late 2001 returned Eminem to his childhood heartland, places he had barely left even now. The Continental Mobile Home Village on the 8 Mile border of Warren, almost identical and adjacent to the trailer park where Eminem had grown up, was the major set, its residents cordoned off by Warren police, or compensated by Universal Pictures, as a neighbour they had never noticed came back with power and wealth at his command. Their homes and bodies were now extras in a Hollywood movie about a place which, until Eminem, America had ignored. It was something about which Warren, like the principal of Eminem’s school there when I talked to him, could feel only confused and uneasy. The production put millions into the local economy. But, like so many Eminem had used in his art, they worried they would somehow be sullied. There were a few pickets. When a building in Highland Park, in downtown Detroit, was burned down (with injuries to four crew-members), as part of a scene in which it’s torched, after a rape behind its walls, there were complaints that the area was being given a bad name. “The fucking white trash capital of the world?” Eminem asked
The Face
, exasperated. “I’m white trash, so what the fuck? You can’t tell me. I grew up in it.”

As Hanson’s cameras explored the empty lots and industrial husks of Detroit almost as much as Warren’s trailers and trash, true to the city’s theme of division which the road he took his title from expressed, sensible residents should have been calmed. Hanson, a long-time friend of Robert Towne, writer of the legendary cinematic excavation of LA
Chinatown
, was fascinated with urban America too, as proven by his own
LA Confidential
. By bringing such an insightful director back to his home, as much as by making his records, Eminem was putting the broken city he loved back in America’s thoughts. Once it had been known for Henry Ford’s residence there. Then, for the slow closure of Ford’s factories. Now, the refusal of the country’s most infamous pop star to leave it behind seemed like one of Detroit’s few signs of hope.

Taryn Manning, who played Jimmy Smith’s bitter ex-girlfriend (and had also appeared in Britney Spears’ rather different vehicle,
Crossroads
), watched Eminem as he worked in Warren. She sensed he was under great pressure. “He just knows he has the power to create something that could have a lot of longevity,” she said. “He can feel it inside. He’s focused. He’s intense. He’s also really goofy.” Part of the strain came from Eminem having to co-create the movie’s soundtrack with Dre, a task far from complete as he started to act. “Any downtime, he was writing,” Manning said. “You could see him formulating stuff in his head.” The composition of a second album for 2002, even as he finished his first major film, showed the drive behind
Marshall Mathers
had not withered. But it was Eminem’s first release of the year,
Marshall Mathers
’ belated, official follow-up, for which the world was really waiting, still.

Interscope let intimations of its content trickle out in the early months of 2002, preparing the atmosphere for their artist’s return, delicately building expectations. The title, it was confirmed in February, would be
The Eminem Show
.
Nothing Mathers
had been considered. Eminem had produced it himself, with the help of Dre and the Bass Brothers. It would be, Marky Bass told a fan website, more “serious”, the same thing insiders had said of
Marshall Mathers
. “It’s better,” Bass continued. “He’s matured since the last one, and he’s been through so much since then, good and bad. He kept going and wrote a fantastic album. He’s a tough kid – it’s brilliant.”

“I do feel he has matured as a lyricist,” Dre chipped in, to MTV, “but I don’t know if saying he’s moving in a different direction is accurate. His stuff is really crazy to me because just when you think, ‘Okay, he has run out of stuff to say, he can get no crazier than this,’ something comes out of his face that gives you chills. Makes the hair crawl on your skin. So I think the shock value of Eminem is definitely going to still be there.” With this new stimulus, rumours flew around Eminem’s name again, but this time with a force near to fact, as Interscope leaked and manipulated news, till the day when the waiting would be over. There would be a Seventies rock direction. Eminem would appear as bin Laden in a song. Kim would be back again. “Ohhh, Kimmy, Kimmy,” Bass teased. “You’ll hear all about her on this one. Is she at the bottom of the lake, or is she in Bel Air? You’ll find out …”

In March, Eminem himself broke his silence, to
The Source
, but said nothing about the album, except the idea behind it. “The concept is my life becoming a show,” he told them. “All my personal shit people are able to know about. Nothing I do is behind closed doors, so it’s kinda like
The Truman Show
, Springer Show. The album is more personal than I’ve ever gotten.” The same magazine contained an advert for the record: red curtains, a spotlight, an empty stage, and the words, “Coming This Spring”, the show now so real you could almost touch it.

The release date was pushed back. First it was April. Then May. Finally, June 3 was set as the day
The Eminem Show
would start. The few copies in existence were being kept under the tightest security. Almost no one at his own label had heard it, a few weeks before the world would. But nothing Interscope did could control what happened next.

The Marshall Mathers LP
had briefly made its maker the most notorious and brilliant man in pop. But the two years since had cooled everything. In his show and other actions, he had worked to dismantle his monstrous image, and succeeded. He was now a veteran artist in hip-hop, a genre more dismissive of the past than any other. He was a pop star in an era when attention spans flickered at light speed, and the durability of a Sixties star on the streak of genius he had so far ridden seemed impossible. He had imprinted British culture with fear and fascination not seen since the Sex Pistols, for a couple of months. Since that heady instant, he had worried no one. To still be the force
The Marshall Mathers LP
had made him would need not only an astonishing record, but for him to buck the nature of his times.

And so, the show began.