Eminem Shares Addiction and ‘Stan’ Culture Struggles in New Doc Clutch Fire

Eminem is getting candid about his life in the spotlight — and his complicated relationship with his fans — in his new documentary, Stans.

The film, featuring candid interviews with Eminem (real name Marshall Mathers), Dr. Dre, LL Cool J and a handpicked few of the rapper’s biggest fans, sets out to explore his complicated relationship with his legion of listeners over the years while reflecting on his meteoric rise to the spotlight.

“None of it’s normal. None of this is normal,” the rapper, 52, told cameras at the start of the film, which released in theaters Thursday, August 7. “Once the ‘Hi, My Name Is’ video, once MTV accepted that and played it, it was like a f***ing switch flipped overnight.”

According to director Steven Leckart, the idea of a film exploring the effects of “stan” culture, specifically in Enimen’s life, came about years ago with producer Paul Rosenberg. Eminem’s 2000 single “Stan,” featuring Dido, details an obsessed fan whose hero-worship drives him to his early death. The track became the origin story for the term “stans,” a phrase that still exists in the pop culture zeitgeist today to explain a next-level infatuation with celebrities.

“I grew up on hip hop in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and became a fan of Eminem’s music in ‘99 and watched his rise on MTV,” Leckart exclusively told Us Weekly. “So when the opportunity came to me to have the conversation with him and his team to try to come up with a documentary based on one of the most iconic songs ever written, I was like, ‘Yeah, of course, that sounds wonderful.’ So then it was just a question of coming up with the right approach.”

From there, Leckart and Rosenberg sent out a link on Eminem’s social media to a questionnaire to find the right fans to interview about their love of the rapper’s music. While over 9,000 submissions came in over just a few months, not everyone was right for the project.

“The reason why ‘Stan’ exists and is such an iconic song is that there’s a sense that it could be real, right? And, of course, there’s people out there that are obsessed,” Leckart explained. “I mean, there were people that claimed to be related to [Eminem] for sure. Everything under the sun. When you have 45 million followers on Instagram, and you’re one of the most famous people in the world, you’re going to attract a lot of variety. After a while, nothing surprised me.”

As for his interviews with Eminem, Leckart claimed that nothing was off limits. While the “Lose Yourself” singer opened up about everything from fame to addiction, it was a story about Eminem and his daughter Hailie Jade, now 29, getting mobbed in a mall that left a lasting impression.

“It’s in the songs, right? Like, ‘I can’t let her play in the front yard,’ and all that stuff was there in the music. But to hear him tell a full story, end to end, and to sit across from him during the interview, to just experience his sort of reliving of it, I was really moved by that,” he said. “Because when I became a fan of his in ‘99 I knew he was a dad and had a kid, but I was, like, a teenager, and I didn’t think about it. Now, I’m an adult and have kids of my own, so as a father with a daughter, I was like, ‘Oh, I can really empathize with how that must have felt.’ And it made me, frankly, fortunate that I’m not a famous person.”

Keep scrolling for the biggest revelations from Stans:

Eminem’s Addiction Struggles

The hip-hop legend got candid about his addiction to prescription pills, primarily Vicodin, Valium, Ambien and Xanax, from roughly 1999 to 2008.

“I got into this vicious cycle of, ‘I’m depressed so I need more pills,’ and then your tolerance gets so high that you end up overdosing,” he said. “I woke up in the hospital and I didn’t know what happened. I woke up in the hospital with tubes in me and s*** and I couldn’t get up, I wanted to move. After the overdose, I came home like I needed something … like, I’m gonna die if I don’t do anything.”

He recalled being shown a video of daughter Hailie’s birthday, which he had missed due to his addiction. “I cried because it was like, ‘Oh my god, I missed that.’ I kept saying to myself, ‘Do you want to f***ing miss this again? Do you want to miss everything? If you can’t do it for yourself, you f***ing pussy, at least do it for them.’ I realized I’m never doing this again.”

Eminem has now been sober for nearly 17 years, but he still had to “relearn how to walk, talk and for the most part had to relearn how to rap again.”

He told the camera, “My writing had gotten terrible. When I started to get it back, it was exciting. Because I felt it. It would be conversations, just having conversations with people or the TV. … It was hitting me really fast and I was writing songs really quickly.”

Relapse, Eminem’s sixth album that addressed — and poked fun at — his addiction struggle, released in 2009 to “lukewarm” response. “But it did something. It turned the light on. Like, ‘You gotta do something different. Why don’t you try embracing sobriety?’ I realized I’m not embarrassed anymore about it,” Eminem explained. “I started treating sobriety like a super power and I took pride in the fact that I was able to quit.”

Eminem Recalls Being Swarmed by Fans With Daughter

Eminem recalled the last time he ever went to a mall as himself and “not in a disguise,” which resulted in him and daughter Hailie being swarmed by fans in a way that threatened his safety.

“It got to the point where I picked her up and I’m like, ‘Come on kiddo, time to go,’ and as I’m walking fast and faster they’re walking faster and faster and I feel like I’m being chased out the f***ing mall,” he told the cameras. “And that was one of the points I thought my life really has changed, I can’t do this anymore, I gotta protect my baby. So that was a scary moment. Scary for her too. She doesn’t remember, she was too little to remember it, but I remember it and it was f***ing crazy.”

Eminem Gains New Perspective on Fans

The rapper remembered being shocked at fan response after the Slim Shady LP released in 1997, wondering why what he had to say “now is important.”

He was taken aback by how many fans would come and talk to him about what his music means to them, causing him to write paragraph-long autographs that would get him yelled at for going too slowly through the line or people waiting.

 “What I put out was very much raw and just real as far as situations in my life and how I came up and shit like that and I think that’s maybe one of the things that made people feel like they could maybe relate,” he said. “It was a weird, strange kind of adjustment and my personality wasn’t well equipped to handle that.”

Eminem Burped in Journalist’s Face Upon Meeting

Anthony Bozza, a journalist for Rolling Stone, recalled meeting Eminem for the first time to interview him for a cover story. The writer said when he went into the bathroom, Eminem was throwing up. When he was done, he got up and burped in Anthony’s face. Anthony said he then followed him around for the night but Eminem didn’t “speak to me at all,” adding that it was probably “defense against the attention and the fame, he was trying to take it in because it all happened so fast.”

The ‘Weird’ Part of Fandom

It’s become a tradition for diehard fans of Eminem to visit the land in which his now-condemned house used to stand, making it a pilgrimage — something the artist has mixed feelings on.

“It’s cool that people care, but it’s also weird, still. Because you’re like, but it’s me … it’s really not that big of a deal,” he confessed.

He thought about LL Cool J and how he looked up to him as a kid, and wondered if he was that to someone else: “I thought, ‘This has to be about an obsessed fan who’s taking my s*** too literal and slow down, I’m just Marshall, I’m not your f***ing savior,’” he said.

Fans of Eminem Empathize With ‘Stan’ Character

A handful of loyal fans were also interviewed for the documentary, and some confessed that they empathized with the character from Eminem’s “Stan” video (played by Devon Sawa), who gets so frustrated by not hearing back from his idol he drives himself to an early death.

“Reaching out and reaching and no answer, I can see how that could affect someone,” one fan confessed, while another added, “That’s extreme but at the same time I was like why isn’t it one of my letters he’s reading.”

A third one said, “It was one of the moments where I had to look at myself and go, am I one of these crazy stans?” A fourth admitted:  “The difference between me and Stan is that I never killed my wife … I don’t have a wife, I’m just saying.”

A Troubling Look at Some of Eminem’s Real-Life ‘Stans’

The fans interviewed for the documentary, while “stans” themselves, voiced worries for Eminem’s safety among other, more unstable followers. The documentary then gave a glimpse into various troubling letters Eminem has received over the years.

“Our psychic connection is so strong I sometimes think you are god,” one letter read, while another said, “I love listening to you and acting like we’re friends.”

A third person wrote: “I know you got my last letter,” which is reminiscent of the Stan character’s own letters in the music video.

The Positive Side of Stan Culture

While some letters were troublesome, others opened up about the genuine good being a fan of the rapper has done for their lives. One fan claimed that they stopped taking pain medication after learning about Eminem’s own addiction. Others referenced getting clean and finding the strength to face their mental health issues thanks to his music.

One Woman Has 22 Eminem Tattoos

One woman confessed she had 22 tattoos of her favorite artist, which got her placed in the Guinness Book of World Records. She noted that people have told her she should be in a “mental institution” but she has no regrets, as she met her husband through the Eminem fandom. The twosome, after bonding over their shared love of music, ended up getting married in Detroit — Eminem’s hometown — at one of the places the rapper first performed.

”Without Eminem, I wouldn’t have the life I have right now,” she said.

Is There Really a Stan?

One fan, a French man named Zolt, told his personal story of meeting Eminem. The diehard follower recalled being outside a hotel and watching Eminem get in a car and start to drive away before reversing and calling for Zolt to get in the car with him. Zolt said Eminem shook his hand.

“When you’re an artist like Marshall, you do not have time for anything. But he took his time for me,” Zolt said.

The documentary then does an imagined replay of the moment, revealing the guy playing Zolt to be Sawa, who first appeared as Stan in the 2000 music video. He looks at the camera and winks, leaving viewers confused on if Zolt is meant to be the real-life “Stan.”

“The way [Zolt] told the story in the interview was so like a dream. It was so bizarre,” Leckart told Us. “And until you see the photograph, you’re like, ‘Is this real?’ The way he describes it, it was like he had ascended to heaven and met an angel.”

Eminem Wants Haters to ‘Eat a D***’

Eminem praised the loyalty of his “stans” over the years at the end of the documentary, telling cameras, “A true die hard fan really does understand me and every aspect of me and understands that I am just a person, just a human being. … They see some of themselves in me … For every young person who gets older and wants to pay the world back, that’s the person who connects with me most. Because they understand me, and I understand them. I get them because they are really me. The fans that have grown with me until now, it’s unbelievable that they’re still with me. … to my fans, thank you, I love y’all. I would not be here without you. I owe you my life, and that’s who I do my music for – is them.”

He then addressed his haters, adding, “And f*** everybody else. Eat a dick. You don’t like it? Eat a fat dick.”

The documentary ends with a producer leaving a voicemail for Eminem, saying, “Hey Em, watched the movie, we got to talk about the ending. Call me.”