20 years “8 Mile” – 8 points for the cult movie with Eminem

We are in Detroit in 1995, America’s former automotive metropolis is a collection of ruins, the car a mother gives her son for his birthday is the same, everything is always broken, jobs, housing, relationships. Only one thing carries the youth without God and without prospects through their bleak lives: hip-hop.

White and black Detroit are separated by a street, it’s called 8 Mile, the social woes are the same on both sides, the trailer park in which Jimmy B-Rabbit Smith (Eminem) with his mother (Kim Basinger), sister (Chloe Greenfield) and the His mother’s unemployed lover (Michael Shannon in one of his first roles) is really no fun.

Jimmy works in his steel mill and spends every spare second of the day writing: on his hand, every scrap of paper, receipts, it doesn’t matter where, he jots down his mother’s curses, his own unworthiness, the noise of the city. At night battling tougher and tougher black opponents on bigger and bigger stages, it’s the struggle of a bleach-blond rapper in a true black genre – and like Eminem, Jimmy manages to earn his respect. Not least by always humiliating himself more than his opponents.

“8 Mile” has aged surprisingly well, aesthetics, music and the presence of the American nightmare of poverty and social neglect are as relevant today as they were then. The fact that Eminem and the screenwriter Scott Silver (he also wrote “Joker”) refrained from exaggerating Eminem’s start in the music business to the American dream should be credited to them.

The fact that “8 Mile” contains biographical features of Eminem’s life is an open secret, with some even calling the film a biopic. However, the rapper said in an interview that he and B-Rabbit are not the same person. However, he sat with the screenwriter and shared details of his life, which were then written into the film.

For example, in “8 Mile”, Jimmy and friends shoot down a police car with a paintball gun. In real life, Eminem was arrested for it, despite a friend pulling the trigger. The case was dropped after the alleged victim failed to appear in court. Another similarity is how Eminem grew up: poor in Detroit with a mother who was addicted to drugs. However, Eminem did not live in a caravan and Jimmy’s relationship with his sister Lily is probably based more on his relationship with his daughter than on his younger half-brother Nathan.

“His hands are sweaty, his knees are weak, his arms are heavy, his sweater already has puke, mom’s spaghetti,” says “Lose Yourself,” the credits song for which Eminem received an Oscar. Now you might be wondering if you should actually make a restaurant name out of something that’s been puked, but Eminem did.

In September 2021, he opened Mom’s Spaghetti in his hometown of Detroit, which he still loves, a small shop in an alley that serves exactly three dishes: tomato spaghetti, tomato spaghetti with meatballs, tomato spaghetti with toast. Of course also as take away. During the pandemic, health workers from eight Detroit hospitals and visitors to a vaccination center received Eminem’s spaghetti as a gift. Of course, he himself played the salesman on opening day.

Jimmy falls in love with Alex, but she only uses her charms for pleasure and to help her career, because Alex, the new girl from the steel mill, wants to be a model. Brittany Murphy plays it beautifully, fresh and lost at the same time, street smart and fragile.

She herself, who was never a great actress but was an extremely talented actress, started out in Clueless and starred alongside Angelina Jolie and Winona Ryder in Girl, Interrupted, and was only 32 years old. Her death is fitting for a neglected Detroit kid, someone with no money for health insurance and little else about healthy living: In 2009, she tries to self-medicate pneumonia, makes things worse, and dies.

Of course, it was “dream big” when it came to filming the start of the turn of the millennium’s biggest rap star. Eminem’s team wanted Quentin Tarantino. But he was just filming “Kill Bill” and with his style he would have been the wrong man for the desired Detroit naturalism.

Next up was Danny Boyle, who would have loved to direct the movie and present a good concept, but Eminem just couldn’t connect with him. Finally, Curtis Hanson was hired, who had won an Oscar for the screenplay of “LA Confidential” and in whom Eminem immediately had great confidence.

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Hanson said of working with Eminem, “I knew he had acting experience and the role of Slim Shady. But what I was looking for was the opposite of that. When you take on a role, it’s artificial. You hide behind it. What I needed in this story was a semblance of a total lack of artificiality.” The two did just that.

Unfortunately, Hanson also brought along his “LA Confidential” star, Kim Basinger, and she’s about as convincing as Jimmy’s mom from the trailer park now as a silver spoon trying to impersonate plastic cutlery.

Lily is Jimmy’s little sister, a beloved but also utterly mangy little thing who always has to watch the grown-ups yell at each other or beat up or drink in a coma. A really unfortunate worm. Chloe Greenfield, who was seven at the time of filming, does a fantastic job, almost as if she’s totally familiar with this kind of milieu. Which unfortunately should be the case.

With her first role, Chloe saves herself and her single, unemployed mother from being evicted by the landlord. She never wanted to be an actress, the casting was just a desperate attempt to get a paying job. After the casting, Universal gave her mom a new Nokia so they could be reached if accepted – and it worked reliably.

Today Chloe Greenfield shares how fun and enjoyable it was to work in her hometown. Later she starred in other films with songs in the title – “21 Carbs” and “Project 313” – and in 24 episodes “Emergency Room”, after which her acting career was over again. Today she is interested in herbal medicine, personal and financial growth.

In an interview, rapper 50 Cent said that a remake of the series “8 Mile” is in the works. It took little convincing to convince Eminem of the idea. The series will not be a copy of the film, but a more contemporary version.

A sequel called “Southpaw” was announced in 2010, Eminem was supposed to star, but he declined the offer. In his place, Jake Gyllenhaal took over and Southpaw became a standalone film rather than a sequel.

“8 MILE” runs on Netflix.