It took six weeks of rehearsals and reams of flubbed lines, but by the time 8 Mile hit theaters, Eminem had scored a hip-hop movie masterpiece. Shining a light on both sides of Detroit’s railroad tracks—trailer parks and battle cyphers—Em’s first leading role is a true underdog story, bolstered by callous punch lines and a guy named Cheddar Bob. Ten years after the classic film’s premiere, VIBE rounds up the gang—Eminem, Mekhi Phifer, Anthony Mackie, Evan Jones and Omar Benson Miller—to wax cinematic. This opportunity comes once in a lifetime…
Written by Jeff Rosenthal
VIBE: Eminem, at the time you hadn’t really acted before; but the story was based in Detroit, based off of some of your life experiences. When the cameras stopped rolling, did you feel that you headed further into these guys’ world of acting, or they into yours?
Read the entire interview after the jump
Eminem (B-Rabbit): I definitely felt like I was about to embark on some shit that was not necessarily up my alley. It was all brand new, and I’m so glad I had all of these guys around me. My hardest part, was remembering the lines. ‘Cause really, all I had to do was take myself back into the mind frame of how I felt before I got signed with Dre. It wasn’t really too much to just be myself.
Anthony Mackie (Papa Doc): It was crazy for me because it was my first job. When we started, I didn’t really have no lines. Motherfuckers would be like, “Yo, your character sucks, so we just added this. Do this.” My biggest thing was just trying to be on the same level as Mekhi fucking Phifer.
Mekhi Phifer (Future): You pulled it off, Cat Daddy! You pulled it off!
Eminem: When I look back at the movie, one of the cool things is we all became friends on the set. The film carried over to how we [eventually] interacted in real life.
You always said this isn’t your life story. Does it matter that everybody thinks it is?
Eminem: It doesn’t really matter to me. People who really listen to my music probably know what’s real in that movie and what’s not. There were bits and pieces that were taken from my life, but for the most part, it was the story of the underdog. We rehearsed so much before we even started the film, and I was in every scene. I was there every day from 6 a.m. until—half the time—5 in the morning the next day. It became a point where I felt like I am this person. I’m fucking B-Rabbit because I was living this movie. I had no choice but to be him.
In hindsight, everyone thinks this movie was an easy decision, but the studio and Jimmy Iovine were wondering if this could hurt the Eminem brand. Mariah Carey’s Glitter had just tanked and the last time Universal had worked with a rapper was on Cool As Ice with Vanilla Ice. Mekhi, you initially passed on the movie. Why?
Phifer: I was due to start ER and 9/11 had just happened. They was like, “Okay, we want you to fly to Detroit.” It was like, September 13. “I ain’t getting on no plane! I’m staying here and I’m gonna be a doctor, Goddamn it!” I hadn’t read the script yet, and they were so hush-hush about the script that I had to sit and read it in [director] Curtis [Hanson’s] office because they weren’t releasing it. But when I read it, I thought, Oh, this is kinda slick! They had me go to Detroit to see if me and Em was going to have chemistry…This cat became my man so fast that I was like, “This is gonna be dope.” And when I met all the rest of the guys, I was all in. It was the best decision I ever made.
Omar Benson Miller (Sol George): 8 Mile is so revered, it’s like everywhere I go, somebody’s talking about it. Yesterday, me and Cheddar were walking down the street, heads down, and some kid walked up to us from behind and was like, “Anything goes when it comes to hoes/I’m the kingpin when it comes to flows…”
Evan Jones (Cheddar Bob): [Laughs] Yeah, who wrote that rap?
Eminem: That shit should’ve been a single. “Ten freaky girls! Ten! Ten!”
Benson Miller: I just want to bring up something: Because of Em’s celebrity, not being able to move around so much, Proof was out there a lot. And I can remember the wrap party literally... We kept singing the song and they didn’t want to let me and Cheddar into the wrap party because they didn’t know who we were. Proof came out and it was all good! I’ve been doing movies for a while now, and there’s a lot of funny dudes out there. The inclusive nature of you guys, Em and Mekhi, who were already on and who were senior to us in that sense, was great. It was really something special.
Eminem: I definitely appreciate that.
Phifer: You’re cool cats. Y’all made it easy on us.
Mekhi, your character was based off of Proof. Did you have any long conversations to try and really understand who he was?
Phifer: I definitely spoke to Proof. I didn’t sit him down, because to me the character spoke for itself. I mean, I wanted to portray him as he was in ’95. That’s why you see me with that wig, that crazy wig! [Laughs] And that even came down to the wire—we almost couldn’t do dreads because they couldn’t get the wig right.
Eminem: [Laughs] We used to call Proof “the Wolverine” because at the Hip-Hop Shop, his hair was crazy. I think that, for the most part, being that I wasn’t playing Marshall, Mekhi’s character didn’t have to be exactly like Proof. As long as it had that authenticity, which I felt it did. He just had to be Detroit.
Evan, what was Eminem like in those first rehearsals?
Eminem: I was a fucking dick! [Laughs]
Jones: Like everyone’s been saying, he was fantastic. Right off the bat, he took us to the Detroit Lions game. On the way back, you jumped in our car and played us some new tunes off your album [The Eminem Show], and it was so good. You made us all feel like family.
Eminem: Wow, that’s crazy. I forgot about the Lions game, man! That was nuts!
Mackie: My ’hood-ass group, Em was taking me to shoot pool and strippers was jacking me out of my per diem and shit!
Eminem: We was making it rain with your per diem?
Mackie: We was at the bedbug inn and I was fighting in the parking lots of strip clubs for per diem. When keeping it real goes wrong.
Eminem: “Making It Rain With Per Diem,” I think that might be the name of my next album.
Movies are a collaborative process, and they can get screwed up at any point in the creative process. When did you first begin to feel confident that this would be a successful motion picture?
Benson Miller: Evan and I talk about it a lot, us all being so young... I had no idea it was going to be a classic. Even when the movie came out and was a mammoth, I just thought this was how everything goes… But I remember Curtis had us all come together to show us a little highlight reel of the film. It was probably four or five minutes, and it was dope! Everybody was like, “Oh, we’re on to something now!”
Eminem: I was just hoping I didn’t look stupid in that shit. “I just hope that it’s a decent movie and it does okay and just doesn’t suck.”
Phifer: I remember our first day of shooting was when we was leaving Cheddar Bob’s house because he shot himself, and we go into Big O’s little car… It felt real. And when me and Em was doing “Sweet Home Alabama.” But when I really knew was in the battle scenes; the crowd, the extras, they made those battle scenes. The rhymes were dope, but the extras were… They made it hype. Being up there hosting and feeling that energy, it just felt… special. Even our energy in the scenes, it felt like something I hadn’t done before. It didn’t feel actor-y. It just felt like we were “being.”
How were the battle scenes written?
Eminem: I think Curtis had a lot of the guys write their own things, and then I would see what they were going to say. I might sit there with some of the guys and be like, “What if you changed this?” The hardest thing for me was trying to figure out what that last [rhyme] was going to be. As I was going back and forth with the other guys about what they were going to say—“Okay, if you’re going to say that, then I’ll write this”—the last one was [challenging] because I didn’t have anything to respond off of. So I had to write it myself, off what somebody could say to me.
Mackie: I’ve gotta give it to Curtis, because he challenged us. It wasn’t just, “Okay, bring us what you’ve got.” He kept you on edge, like, is this enough? Am I giving enough?
Eminem: That’s the other thing, too, with the battle scenes. I remember him saying, “This shit has gotta be flawless. [Then] Curtis would say, “Is this good enough?” I went back and rewrote a couple of lines. Curtis definitely, definitely pushed us.
Anthony, you play Papa Doc, the leader of Free World. Now, I don’t mean to start any fights 10 years after the fact, but do you think Rabbit still could’ve won had his manager not been the host?
Mackie: Man, fuck no! I told Curtis, “There is no way he would’ve won that battle!” That was my whole argument! I said, we should have a tie at first and that’s when he comes back and do the shit he did. But when we did it, it was so cold and it worked so well. The energy of the crowd was so intense when we was filming that people was passing out and shit, throwing up because it was just so chaotic in there. Still, I know for a fact, if the Chin Tiki was that crazy, no way he could have beat me if his manager wasn’t the host. If I’m the killuminati of the Tiki?
Phifer: That wasn’t at the Chin Tiki, fool! Go watch the movie again. That was at The Shelter! [Laughs]
Eminem: Man, we had 10 freaky girls in the Chin Tiki. How were you fucking it up?
Jones: You know, you had the line where you said, “This guy went to Cranbrook, that’s a private school,” and we all thought whatever… But Mitt Romney went there!
Mackie: That’s crazy. I didn’t know that!
Phifer: That’s the type of cats Papa Doc was hanging out with. Straight Republicans.
Mackie: When Papa Doc became mayor of Detroit, I bulldozed all that shit.
Evan, Omar was talking about you getting recognized as Cheddar Bob. Have you learned to shoot a gun in the past 10 years?
Jones: The gun in that movie was the crappiest gun I’ve seen, ever, in all the movies I’ve been in.
Eminem: That was like a cowboy gun.
Jones: I love that Plaxico Burress was called Cheddar Bob forever.
Benson Miller: Cheddar Bob has gotten hella rap references.
Phifer: Beanie Sigel.
Eminem: Busta Rhymes.
Phifer: You know what’s so funny, Evan? You did
your thing, B, because people come up to me sometimes and go, “Was Cheddar Bob really like that?” I’m like, “Nah, Evan is good! He’s not mildly retarded or nothing. He’s a very intelligent man!”
[Laughter]
Phifer: But he played that role, that’s what I’m saying! You played it!
One of the extras said in an interview that Brittany Murphy was on the set, singing at the top of her lungs and hanging from ladders, but she could instantly get into character when the director was ready. What was she like to be around?
Eminem: Brittany was a good person, a super-nice girl. She was very down-to-earth; she’d talk to anybody.
Jones: And a really good actress. She brought so much to that role.
Phifer: She was bubbly.
Mackie: She was always speaking positivity, and when it was time to get busy, she got busy! Like Evan said, she brought a lot to the role. I remember reading it and not thinking there was so much on the page.
Em, tell me about writing songs on the set.
Eminem: I remember doing “Lose Yourself.” I went to the trailer during lunch and laid a scratch from top to bottom, just one take through and then stacked some ad-libs and shit. I was going to come back and re-do it. I actually ended up keeping it. That’s my most vivid memory—that song, and walking around set with a pad of paper. If I didn’t have that, I’d write it on my hand. I was like a little hamster: I’d go from my lunch trailer to the treadmill to run and then jump to the music trailer to make some beats.
Since we’re discussing “Lose Yourself,” growing up, how was your mom’s spaghetti?
Eminem: How was it? From what I remember, it was pretty damn good. Like goulash. [Laughs]
8 Mile is a dark movie, but there are definitely some bright spots: Cheddar Bob’s gunshot wound; Eminem battling Xzibit. Which day was the most fun on set?
Benson Miller: Wow. The freestyle session in the parking lot was a lot of fun, except it was so long! We were there like 19 hours that day!
Eminem: And like four degrees out.
Phifer: That’s what I was happy to have the dreads for—it was like a little hat.
Benson Miller: You know what? The final battle. Curtis did a really smart thing, and so did Marshall, because he didn’t preview to us what he was going to say. So he just shot the rehearsal.
Mackie: Those reactions are real.
Phifer: When we burned down the house? Em, you remember we almost died in that joint! The pyrotechnic dude almost blew himself up, singed his eyebrows off and all of that. He’s got that surprised look now—no eyebrows.
Eminem: I got my shit singed a little bit, too. I can’t remember exactly how that shit went down, but…
Phifer: Didn’t you jump out the window or some crazy shit?
Eminem: Yeah.
Mackie: You guys were all on the second floor [with] all the camera guys. The gas line got a kink in it, so the dude turned the gas up and fire flames came kicking out the windows… and the guys all threw their cameras and jumped out the window.
Eminem: Yeah, the shit just fucking went up! I think they got it on film, but then they dropped the camera. What you see in the movie is the actual thing that happened, and then I’m sure they actually cut because the shit was real.
Phifer: It was like an inferno!
Benson Miller: It was so hot. It really was like, six, seven degrees outside, and I remember thinking, Man, I should take my jacket off.
Anthony, they were talking earlier about how people wrote their own rhymes—you didn’t get the chance to rap at the end. I’m just wondering, how nice are you on the mic?
Mackie: Oh, I’m an assassin on the mic.
Eminem: So, you’re not nice at all. You’re completely the opposite. You’re very impolite on the mic.
Mackie: [Laughs] That’s why Curtis only wanted me to have one verse, because he was like, “Nobody’s going to believe that this guy would lose!” [Laughs]
8 Mile ends on such an uncertain note: Will Rabbit succeed? Will he fail? Em, was there any discussion to make the ending more definitive?
Eminem: Nah, I don’t think there ever was. The coolest thing was it was open for interpretation. Curtis was saying was that it was so open you could make your own determination of what happened. You kind of saw where Jimmy was going, but you weren’t 100 percent sure. It could’ve worked out, it could’ve not. But I think one of the coolest things [about the movie is] the ending.
Jones: Yeah, it was just another week in the life. Kids who watch it, they don’t realize.
Benson Miller: It’s the vulnerability; nobody has to be invincible. Everybody has that vulnerable moment that everyone can associate with. In other movies, there’s a glorification oftentimes of the lead; where you want to make the lead so likable and lovable that there’s a superhuman-ness to him. This movie stayed away from that. We’ve gotta give a lot of credit and a lot of love to that.
Eminem, this movie broadened your base to an incredible degree—after its release, you were suddenly surrounded by stadiums of people ages 5 to 55, which is weird considering the word “fuck” is said 200 times in 110 minutes. Were you prepared for parents to like you?
Eminem: My career up to that point was very me-against-the-world. That was the mentality that I had—“Fuck everybody.” And then all of these parents loving me? It was weird. Like, Fuck am I going to do now? I need to figure out a new way to piss people off. I wasn’t ready for that. I still don’t understand it. It is what it is. I don’t even know what that means, but it is what it is.
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