Dishing ‘The Dirt’ on Motley Crue
The 5 craziest moments of Netflix biopic.
Beware! Minor spoilers ahead for anyone who doesn’t know the history of Motley Crue, plus many instances of abhorrent behavior and sexual situations. (It was the ’80s, after all.)
Sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll fuel the new Motley Crue biopic “The Dirt” – while not necessarily in order of importance, there’s plenty of each, as well as trashed hotels, airborne furniture, fbombs galore and a band member being stabbed by his significant other with a pen.
Singer Vince Neil, bass player Nikki Sixx, guitarist Mick Mars and drummer Tommy Lee lived the wild life coming up on L.A.’s Sunset Strip and becoming a heavy-metal hit in the 1980s, and the stories they told in the 2001 autobiography “The Dirt” are brought to bonkers, fourth wall-shattering life in the new Netflix movie (streaming now).
The insanity begins from the start in the party-hearty Motley house where Nikki (Douglas Booth) watches in awe as his arm’s ablaze, Vince (Daniel Webber) has sex in the bathroom (a running theme of the film, in fact), Tommy (Colson Baker, aka rapper Machine Gun Kelly) has sex in the middle of a pack of people, and Mick (Iwan Rheon) lies down crossed-arm vampire-style on his bed trying to ignore the chaos. Somehow, it gets nuttier from there. “They weren’t like other bands who raised hell because they thought that’s what rock stars were supposed to do. Mötley Crüe did stupid things because they were Motley Crue,” tour manager Doc McGhee (David Costabile) says in extreme understatement.
It’s true, “The Dirt” makes “Bohemian Rhapsody” look like the “Pup Pup Boogie” episode of “Paw Patrol.” But if you’re down for a house call from Dr. Feelgood to your home sweet home, here are the five craziest moments from Netflix’s very Motley movie:
The first Crüe show was a rock-and-wrestling affair
Once the band gets together and show up for its first club gig, the long
hair and glam outfits are met with disdain by hecklers. One beefy guy calls Vince a girl and spits on his favorite $800 leather pants. Peeved, Vince leaves the stage and is punched in the face, Nikki nails a dude in the face with his bass, Tommy does a stage-dive clothesline move to another guy, and Mick kicks somebody else in the head. Head butts and broken bottles ensue, though by the end of the brawl, the remaining crowd claps at the chutzpah before the band launches into “Take Me to the Top.”
Nikki Sixx loses a gross-out battle to the great and powerful Ozz
Motley Crue’s first major tour teams them with Ozzy Osbourne (Tony Cavalero), who comes out to meet the youngsters by the packed motel pool after mooning a couple of elderly guests. Ozzy asks for a bump of coke – because, fun fact, this movie has more white stuff than your average snowpocalypse – but instead Ozzy grabs a straw to do a line of ants off the ground.
A car crash wrecks Vince Neil’s mojo
“The Dirt” has some definitely heartbreaking scenes, most of them befalling Vince. One occurs in 1984 at the singer’s Redondo Beach house, where a very drunk Vince leaves to get more booze for their party and Hanoi Rocks drummer Razzle (Max Milner) rides shotgun in his sports car. On their way back, as they debate whether they’d rather have sex with Cyndi Lauper or Boy George, Vince swerves into oncoming traffic, the car is annihilated and Vince wakes up to see his friend’s bloody head in his lap. It’s a harrowing scene that sets the stage for a lot of hardships for Vince and creates fractures within Motley Crue.
Nikki Sixx dies. (No, really.)
Another one of the more infamous Crue stories is the 1987 incident in which the bassist was declared legally dead of a heroin overdose. Of course that legend is featured in “The Dirt,” as Nikki shoots up various parts of his
body – between the toes, in the neck – and reveals spending a grand a day on smack. One December day in the Franklin Plaza Hotel, he just keels over and flatlines in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.
Tommy Lee somehow lived through an insane daily routine
In one of the more left-field sequences, Tommy takes the viewer through a typical day on tour – which would pretty much end any normal human being.
The unbelievable itinerary includes, over an 11-hour period, waking up at 5 in the afternoon handcuffed to a bed and remembering nothing, punching a record executive in the junk, doing a drum solo in “a giant spinning steel cage,” calling fiancee Heather Locklear while having sex with – ahem – someone other than his fiancee, throwing up on an exotic dancer and staying true to the mantra “Drink, snort and (expletive) everything in sight.” Rinse, repeat and, in his case, rock out.