August 8, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Steven Leckart
Culture Representation: The documentary film “Stans” features award-winning rap superstar Eminem and a racially diverse group of people (white, black, Asian and Latin) talking about Eminem.
Culture Clash: Fans of Eminem (whose real name is Marshall Mathers) have had many of the same personal struggles that Eminem has had at various points in his life, including drug addiction, mental illness, being bullied, anger issues and parental abandonment.
Culture Audience: Besides appealing to the obvious target audience of Eminem fans, “Stans” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in celebrity documentaries and documentaries about hip-hop fans.
When an artist is a producer of a documentary about fans gushing about how the artist made their lives better, it’s the cinematic equivalent of a humble brag. “Stans” is an adequate Eminem tribute film (produced by Eminem) with no new substantial info. The movie could’ve done a better and more responsible job of realistically examining the dark sides of being a “stan,” the slang term for an obsessive fan.
Directed by Steven Leckart, “Stans” had its world premiere at the 2025 edition of SXSW London. “Stans” was produced by Eminem (whose real name is Marshall Bruce Mathers III), Paul Rosenberg (Eminem’ longtime manager), Stuart Parr, Antoine Fuqua, Tony DiSanto, David Schiff with DIGA Studios in association with Shady Films, Fuqua Films, Interscope Films, and MTV Entertainment Studios. Bruce Gillmer, Amanda Culkowski and Michael Maniaci are executive producers for MTV Entertainment Studios.
All of this information goes a long way in explaining why the documentary has an abundance of MTV Networks archival footage of Eminem. It’s also why former MTV host Carson Daly (who gives sycophantic commentary about Eminem in the documentary) makes it sound like MTV is the main reason why Eminem should be considered the most influential rapper of all time. Interscope (the record company that has distributed all of Eminem’s albums since his 1999 breakthrough “The Slim Shady LP,” his second album) also gets self-congratulatory praise in interviews with Interscope co-founder Jimmy Iovine and longtime Interscope artist Dr. Dre, who talk about how they immediately wanted to work with Eminem after “discovering” him from hearing one of Eminem’s demo recordings.
Eminem (who has a mischievous alter ego named Slim Shady) was born on October 17, 1972, in St. Joseph, Missouri, and was raised in Detroit. His difficult childhood and personal hardships (living in near poverty, being abandoned by his father, being bullied by other kids) have all been well-documented in his songs and in his memoirs (2000’s “Angry Blonde” and 2008’s “The Way I Am”). His rocky relationships with his ex-wife Kim (whom he married and divorced twice) and his mother Debbie—as well as his addictions to prescription painkillers—have also been covered extensively in his songs and in his other media interviews. This documentary doesn’t add anything new or revealing about these issues.
Instead, “Stans” has a bunch of Eminem fans talking separately about how parts of Eminem’s life are relatable to their own lives and how his songs helped them through their own difficult times. The beginning of the documentary mentions how Eminem’s song “Stan” (featuring pop singer Dido) became more than a hit single from his 2000 album “The Marshall Mathers LP.” The song has Eminem taking the first-person perspective of an obsessed Eminem fan named Stan, who becomes increasingly irrational and dangerous. In 2017, the word “stan” (which people have said is a combination of “stalker” and “fan”) became entered into the Oxford Dictionary as a word for an obsessed fan.
In the music video for “Stan,” actor Devon Sawa had the role of Stan, while Dido had the role of Stan’s neglected and pregnant girlfriend. Sawa and Dido are not interviewed for the “Stans” documentary, but the movie has early 2000s archival footage of Dido commenting on the song “Stan.” Sawa in seen briefly in the “Stans” documentary during a re-enactment scene where he portrays a real-life stan named Zolt Shady (not his real last name), who is interviewed in the documentary. All of the non-celebrity Eminem stans who are interviewed in the documentary (almost all of them do not have their last names in the movie) say that they might be obsessed fans but they’re not dangerous, like the namesake in the song “Stan.”
Zolt Shady, who dresses like 2010s-era Eminem and who has a face that resembles a younger Eminem, gets the most screen time of all the stans in the documentary. He has an Eastern European accent, is based in Paris, and says he’s been an Eminem stan since 2001. Zolt is seen going to Eminem’s former hangouts in Detroit like he’s on a religious pilgrimage.
Zolt talks about meeting Eminem for the first time when Eminem was in Paris to record music, and Zolt was waiting outside a building with some other stans to catch a gimpse of Eminem. When Eminem was about to leave in a car, Zolt says he was shocked that Eminen called him by his name and invited Zolt to have a short conversation with Eminem in the back of the car. (The documentary has a photo of this meeting.)
Other stans interviewed in the documentary are Katie (a stan since 2009), who likes to dress in the superhero Robin (the DC Comics character) costume that Eminem had in his 2002 music video for “Without Me”; Noah, a stan since 2010; Brendan, a stan since 2008; Wonje, a stan since 2000; Kripa, a stan since 2015; Daniyela, a stan since 2003; Meagan, a stan since 2000; Alexander, a stan since 1999; Ramon, a stan since 1999; James, a stan since 1999; Brookyln, a stan since 2013; Kyle, a stan since 2002; Melissa, a stan since 1999; Marshall, a stan since 1999; and Nikki, a stan since 2001.
The stans are racially diverse, but they mostly live in North America or Europe. Eminem has loyal fans from around the world, so it’s baffling that the “Stans” filmmakers chose only two continents to be represented in this documentary for the overwhelming majority of stan interviews. Although these stans have lively personalities on camera, they don’t talk about how their obsessive fandom has cost them money or personal relationships. What types of sacrifices have they had to make to fund an Eminem stan lifestyle? Don’t expect to hear those stories in this documentary.
But here come the sob stories: James, Marshall, Kyle and Meagan say they can relate to Eminem being bullied as a kid because they experienced this abuse too. Meagan says of Eminem: “He inspired me to write. His music made me feel like I wasn’t alone in what I was going through.”
Daniyela says Eminem’s songs helped her cope with her anger over having an absentee father, just like Eminem says he had a deadbeat dad. Kripa (the documentary’s youngest stan, who was 14 when this movie was filmed) breaks down in tears when she reads an unsent fan letter that she wrote to Eminem after her parents’ acrimonious divorce. (Most of the stans interviewed in this documentary are in their 20s, 30s and 40s.)
Ramon and Melissa both talk about overcoming addiction issues and suicidal thoughts because they were inspired by Eminem’s own recovery from addiction. Katie and Ramon get emotional when discussing how Eminem’s music helped them cope with the deaths of loved ones. Marshall is a transgender man who says that Eminem’s music helped him during his gender journey and inspired Marshall to change his first name to the same as Eminem’s real first name.
Eminem also gets into a little bit of a self-pity party when he comments on his fame: “None of it is normal.” He later adds, “It was a weird, strange kind of adjustment, and my personality couldn’t handle it.” Eminem also says that after a harrowing incident in the early 2000s, when he and his daughter Hailie (who was born in 1995) were mobbed by fans at a shopping mall, he never again went to a shopping mall without wearing a disguise.
The documentary demonstrates Eminem’s love/hate relationship with the media by mostly showing old video and audio clips from the 2000s and 2010s, where he makes soundbite quips responding to some of the criticisms he had at the time. (“I’m just Marshall. I’m not your fucking savior,” he says in one archived clip.) Anthony Bozza, a journalist who interviewed Eminem for Rolling Stone magazine when Eminem became famous, doesn’t have anything insightful to add, unless you think it’s illuminating that Bozza says the first time that he hung out with Eminem for the magazine article, Eminem didn’t speak directly to him for hours.
Most of the documentary’s exclusive interview footage with Eminem shows him sitting in a room. However, “Stans” has a few scenes where Eminem is interviewed outside of a room, such as when he visits the site of his former childhood home in Detroit. Eminem said he wanted to buy the building after he became famous, but the deteriorated building had already been condemned by the city and was demolished years ago.
The site where the building used to be is a patch of grass that has a mini-shrine to Eminem. In the documentary, he says it still feels weird to him that people would build a shrine there because where he used to live “is not that big of a deal.” Despite his ongoing discomfort with mega-fame, Eminem expresses appreciation for his fans in the documentary, mostly toward the end of the film.
In the documentary, Eminem talks about dealing with grief after the 2006 shooting death of rapper Proof (whose real name was DeShaun Holton), Eminem’s best friend since childhood. Eminem says this grief made his addictions worse. Eminem also discusses feeling bad about having to cancel performances in 2005 on the Anger Management tour because of his addiction problem, which was announced at the time as “exhaustion.” Again: All of Eminem’s “confessional” comments in the documentary are not new and have been public knowledge for many years.
If you believe the comments from Eminem’s colleagues and stans in the documentary, then you’d have to believe that Eminem was the first rapper to show vulnerability in his songs when he talked about his struggles with addiction and mental health. Dr. Dre says, “There’s so much strength in vulnerability. That’s one of the reasons for Eminem’s success.”
Apparently, the “Stans” filmmakers want to forget about Tupac Shakur’s emotionally vulnerable songs—such as “Dear Mama,” “Keep Ya Head Up” and “Life Goes On”—that were well-known to hip-hop fans before Shakur was murdered in 1996, long before Eminem was a star. And before that, LL Cool J (whom Eminem says in the documentary was one of his earliest rap idols) had arguably rap’s first emotionally vulnerable hit, with 1987’s “I Need Love.”
“Stans” also doesn’t address the racial issues that Eminem faced in his early career as a talented white person in a music genre invented and dominated by African Americans. In this fawning documentary, Eminem doesn’t talk about why he succeeded in hip-hop when other talented white rappers failed, but the explanation can be seen in the documentary’s archival footage when Eminem had his meteoric rise to fame in the late 1990s and early 2000s: Eminem surrounded himself with black rappers (such as rap group D12, producer Dr. Dre and Eminem protégé 50 Cent) for knowledge and credibility.
Meanwhile, as Eminem became a superstar and courted controversy with his violent, misogynistic and homophobic lyrics, there were black rappers with similar lyrics who didn’t get as much support from MTV and radio that Eminem did when Eminem was controversial. (Eminem has since stopped releasing violent, misogynistic and homophobic songs.) While certain magazines would never put groundbreaking and inoffensive mainstream rappers such as Run-DMC or LL Cool on their covers, Eminem was on the covers of those magazines—even if he didn’t do interviews for these cover stories. It wouldn’t be too far off the mark to describe Eminem (for better or worse) as the Elvis Presley of rap music.
By the same measure, the documentary hints at but doesn’t adequately explore why Eminem became very popular with people who usually aren’t known for being hip-hop fans. The closest that “Stans” does to acknowledge this phenomenon is to mention New York Times opinion columnist Mauren Dowd, an Eminem critic-turned-begrudging-Eminem admirer, who admitted in a 2002 column that she and other older white women she knew had become “smitten” by Eminem’s bad boy jokester image and antics.
Is it a coincidence that Eminem also became the first rapper to win an Oscar for Best Original Song? He won for “Lose Yourself,” from the 2002 semi-biographical drama “8 Mile,” starring Eminem in his first feature film. “(“Lose Yourself” is still his biggest hit song.) Eminem didn’t bother to show up for the Oscar ceremony where he won this Academy Award, and he hasn’t starred in a scripted feature film since “8 Mile,” although he’s done some very small roles as an actor in other movies since then.
Eminem has refused to become a movie star or pursue a career as an actor after winning an Oscar. He seems almost embarrassed about being accepted by Hollywood’s filmmaking elites who rewarded him with an Academy Award for his first feature film. And although Eminem fans in “Stans” rave about “8 Mile” being a game-changing and beloved Eminem project, Eminem himself has nothing to say about “8 Mile” in this documentary.
“Stans” tells Eminem’s celebrity story in mostly chronological order, but leaves out a lot of information, such as not getting his thoughts on “8 Mile” and not mentioning his songwriting process for any specific Eminem album. The closest that Eminem gets to talking about his songwriting process is when he says he never gets writer’s block because for years, he has kept notebooks of lyrics and song ideas. The documentary has very quick glimpses of a few of the hand-written pages in these notebooks.
The movie cherry picks Eminem lyrics that express dark thoughts by showing them as on-screen captions and as examples of his mental health struggles. The documentary fails to mention Eminem’s most controversial lyrics, where he talks about his fantasies of being a murderer or when he says derogatory things about LGBTQ people. A more interesting documentary would’ve done something like ask transgender stan Marshall what Marshall thinks about how Eminem’s lyrics and attitude about LGBTQ people seem to have evolved. Instead, the movie shows photos of Eminem and Elton John performing at the 2001 Grammy Awards and an old quote from gay icon John saying that he never thought Eminem was homophobic.
Because “Stans” only puts a positive spin on Eminem fandom, you’re not going to hear how Eminem copes with his dangerous fans. And it’s an ironic omission because the song “Stan” is about a dangerous Eminem fan. The documentary also paints a rosy and unrealistic picture that Eminem’s fandom is like one big happy family when they meet each other, when in reality any celebrity fandom has people who are toxic and competitive with each other.
There isn’t much in the documentary to indicate how or why most of the interviewed stans were chosen to be in this movie. The only criteria mentioned is that they identify as Eminem stans. Almost all of them say in the documentary that they’ve never met Eminem—although that situation has changed since the documentary was filmed, because all of the documentary’s non-celebrity stans posed for photos with Eminem at the movie’s New York City premiere on August 6, 2025.
Only two of the Eminem stans in the documentary seem to take their fandom to extremes: Zolt is obviously a stalker type, who says that he knows what Eminem’s cars look like and where Eminem is at any given time. Nikki brags that she holds the Guinness world record for the person with the most body tattoos for a music celebrity. At the time she filmed this documentary, she had 22 Eminem tattoos on her body.
None of these stans except for Nikki (who married another hardcore fan of Eminem) talk about how being an obsessive Eminem fan has affected their love lives. Some of the stans mention having a sibling or a friend who introduced them to Eminem’s music, but that’s about the extent that they say how other people in their lives are affected by Eminem fandom. And although some of the stans share some of their personal struggles, it’s told in the context of “This is how Eminem’s music helped me,” not “This is how other people in my life are affected by me being an Eminem stan.”
Ed Sheeran, LL Cool J and Adam Sandler are three of the celebrities interviewed in the documentary. Sheeran (who collaborated with Eminem on 2017’s “The River” song) describes himself as an Eminem stan, while LL Cool J and Sandler seem admiring of but also a little bit envious of Eminem in their comments. Sandler (whose 2009 movie “Funny People” and 2025 movie “Happy Gilmore 2” each had a cameo appearance from Eminem) remembers seeing Eminem at the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards (where Eminem brought a small army of look-alikes on stage with him) and recalls saying to himself about Eminem: “Yeah, that guy is cooler than me.”
The documentary curiously has no interviews with female celebrities who are Eminem stans or Eminem collaborators. Eminem had two of his biggest hits with Rihanna (2010’s “Love the Way You Lie” and 2013’s “The Monster”), but Rihanna isn’t even mentioned in the documentary. And surely, Dido isn’t that hard to contact. Why wasn’t she interviewed for this documentary that was inspired by her Eminem song collaboration? Don’t expect “Stans” to answer that question.
The “Stans” documentary might be fascinating to people who know almost nothing about Eminem except that he’s a famous rapper. But for everyone else who knows more than a little about Eminem, the documentary’s “revelations” are recycled. “Stans” is really a public relations vehicle for Eminem, with good use of many of his songs. And with a title like “Stans,” it’s reasonable to see that this a fan-oriented film. Just don’t expect “Stans” to be more than testimonials praising Eminem, a “greatest hits” compilation of his music, and “nothing new” commentary from Eminem.
Trafalgar Releasing released “Stans” in U.S. cinemas (exclusively at AMC Theatres) for a limited engagement from August 7 to August 10, 2025. Paramount+ will premiere “Stans” on August 26, 2025.
