While the film took Eminem back to his past, it also took him to his home city of Detroit, where he still lives with Hailie. (Universal Pictures and Interscope Records declined requests from The Associated Press for an interview with Eminem.) 'This movie literally took me back to that time and to that place, stripped me of all ego, before I was Eminem, before I was anybody,' he said in a videotaped interview made available to the media. In '8 Mile,' Eminem's Rabbit lives in a trailer park north of Detroit with his mother and sister, works by day at an unsatisfying job at an auto stamping plant, and at night takes to the stage of the Shelter, a hip-hop club where he tries to prove himself through freestyle lyrical battles. Thanks to his music and the media hype surrounding him, the rapper's life story has become common knowledge to millions:Ī transient childhood spent mostly in Detroit and its northern suburbs, a series of dead-end jobs, contentious relationships with his mother and wife, and an ascent to the pinnacle of rap.

The blur between fact and fiction always has been an issue for Eminem, who rose to superstardom with clever, controversial lyrics and a penchant for purging his soul through music.Įminem - whose show-biz name is a play on the initials of his real one (Marshall Mathers) - has shared so much of his personal life on three best-selling CDs that listeners know the figures in his life by first name. The scenes in which Rabbit complains to his mother (Kim Basinger) about her lack of a job and direction are reminiscent of Eminem's repeated criticisms on his albums about his real mother, Debbie Mathers-Briggs.Īnother clear connection to real life is Rabbit's loving relationship with his sister, Lilly, who appears to be about the same age as the rapper's real-life daughter, Hailie. Ical '8 Mile,' a film that so closely represents a period in the rapper's life that it's difficult to determine where his movie alter ego, Jimmy 'Rabbit' Smith Jr., leaves off and where Eminem begins. The 30-year-old Grammy winner makes his feature film debut in the semi-autobiograph. 'If you had one shot, one opportunity/to seize everything you ever wanted/in one moment/would you capture it or just let it slip,' Eminem raps as hundreds of students rush the stage, knocking down chairs and each other at this unannounced live performance taped and broadcast by MTV this month.īut will the real Slim Shady please stand up? The deliberate guitar chord that marks the beginning to Eminem's 'Lose Yourself' begins. The screen goes blank and begins its slow ascent to the rafters of the Michigan State University auditorium in East Lansing, site of an advance showing of the film. Eminem's movie alter ego, Rabbit, turns and makes his way into the dark night as '8 Mile' ends.

Eminem 8 mile soundtrack battle