In a new interview with The Independent, Eminem’s long-time friend and manager Paul Rosenberg spoke about where the idea of STANS documentary come from and how influential the song “Stan,” featuring Dido is.
“I didn’t realize at the time how impactful ‘Stan’ was going to be, and certainly didn’t think 25 years later we’d be sitting here talking about a film we made based on the song. When I first heard it, I felt like one of the most interesting things about it – especially back then in the pre-internet days, was thinking that people would for years question whether this was a real story, or parts of a real story.” said Paul Rosenberg.
Then he continued: “What I didn’t think about back then is just the vision that Marshall had at such an early stage of his career to be able to write a story that was so perceptive about fandom – when he was really just sort of still getting started – and to do it in such a fantastically meta way. You know, this is a guy who is a star writing about fandom, but specifically writing about a fan of himself, right? Which was, you know, just so brilliant.”
The Dido sample, which loops the first verse with the lyrics, “But your picture on my wall/ It reminds me that it’s not so bad,” apparently reminded Mathers of his own hero worship of artists such as LL Cool J. “It made him think about him coming up and putting up pictures of his heroes on his wall and listening to their music and absorbing the feelings of imagining what these people are like and what their lives are like. That’s where the inspiration came from. Like, ‘I can’t believe that I’m in a position now where people are thinking this about me, because I spent so much time thinking this about others.’” said Rosenberg.
Then he continued: “Marshall never really wanted to do something that was a standard or traditional ‘look back at my career’-type of documentary – he thinks it’s been done to death, but also feels like that’s something you do when you’re at the end of your career. I just kept thinking about ways to do something unique, that people would enjoy and that wasn’t traditional. So obviously, throughout the time working with Marshall and being at his shows and being around his fans, we realized that there were a lot of interesting people we had met with unique stories.”
“I didn’t expect it to be quite as heavy and emotional. I probably could have anticipated that, but I thought we would get some interesting stories from some interesting people… and it [turned out to be] stories about the impact that his music had on them, in a profound and deep way. I think it made the film have more depth than I anticipated, and that I think the audience is going to expect.” Paul Rosenberg added.
