Jack and Meg White, collectively known as the White Stripes, peer tentatively out of the doorway of their dressing room at the MTV Movie Awards at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. In the hallway stands Sharon Osbourne, and she is perturbed. It seems that Eminem's bodyguards deigned to ask her to remove her brood from the hallway so that the scrawny white rapper could pass by. "Crack a smile, little boy," she cackles as Eminem and his muscular entourage walk past. "Keep your head down. Don't look at me."

Jack and Meg shake their heads in disbelief. "We've slipped into some other dimension," mutters Meg.

"I can't even fathom why they asked us to perform here," says Jack.

Today, the White Stripes have reached a pinnacle of popularity far beyond their biggest dreams -- or nightmares. For the past five years, Jack (on guitar) and Meg (on drums) have been bashing out raw, bluesy garage rock in their home studio in Detroit, recording three albums for independent labels and demonstrating how big a sound just two people can make. As the rock pendulum swings away from new metal, it seems to be heading straight for the White Stripes and a handful of other retro-minded rock bands that they've been lumped in with, including the Strokes, the Hives and the Vines.

"I just laughed," Jack says about first hearing his song "Fell in Love With a Girl" on the radio. "I mean, it would be Staind, P.O.D., then us and then Incubus. Half of your brain is going, 'What is going on? Why are we even involved with this? This is pointless.' The other half is full of people going, 'No, this is new, a quote revolution in music unquote, and something is going to change now, because of you guys and the Strokes and the Hives, and music is going to come back to more realism.' "

Of all these bands, the White Stripes are the most original, which makes their success even more surprising. Their music is raw and meaty, ranging from bottleneck-blues dirges to childlike ballads to squealing Zeppelin-esque guitar stomps. It is shot through with a sense of history: of records that Jack White pledges his allegiance to, most of them by Delta bluesmen. And it is highly improvisatory: No two White Stripes shows are the same. There is no set list. Jack White simply plays what he feels. If he isn't feeling "Fell in Love With a Girl" within the first two bars, he'll switch right away into a new song, and who gives a shit about the pop fans.

At the MTV Movie Awards, for the first time in their history, the White Stripes are being treated like rock stars. And they hate it: They are at heart indie rockers and Detroit scenesters, more focused on credibility than fame. After the Eminem incident, Jack and Meg briefly run into the party-hard singer Andrew W.K., who steps up to the couple and admits that he actually isn't from Detroit proper.

As the Stripes are dragged outside the Shrine for what will be their first-ever red-carpet experience, Jack tries to back out twice. They watch as a man announces the name of each arriving celebrity in a booming baritone over a loudspeaker, as if at a sporting event, and ask him not to announce the White Stripes at all, especially in such a cheesy fashion. When it is their turn to walk the carpet, their preference is not heeded: "Ladies and gentlemen, the Whiiiiiiite Striiiiipes!" They dash down the carpet, heads down and avoiding all interview requests. At the other end, Meg says, grimacing, "It's awful." And Jack asks, "Hey, did Jack Osbourne just flash me the peace sign?"

On their latest record, White Blood Cells, there's a song that imagines a moment much like this: "Little Room." You start out playing your music in a little room, but if the music's good, you graduate to a bigger room, and then you miss what you've left behind. When he wrote "Little Room," Jack was feeling guilty about being an indie-rock star and getting more attention than other Detroit bands. You can only imagine how much more intense those feelings are now that indie-rock stardom has given way to rubbing shoulders with Eminem stardom. "We've never aspired to this level of attention," Jack says before going out onstage. "Look at all the money they spent. This is ridiculous. I don't know why we're doing this."