Motley Crue’s rock-star excesses and wild life captured in Netflix’s ‘The Dirt’
- Whether it was partying with Ozzy Osbourne or snorting cocaine off drum kits, the US rock band lived the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle to the limit
- Band member Nikki Sixx was even declared dead for two minutes after a heroin overdose
Partying with Ozzy Osbourne, snorting cocaine off drum kits and having sex backstage with groupies mid-show.
These are just a few of Motley Crue’s wild antics depicted in their biopic The Dirt, which charts the band’s meteoric rise to fame in the 1980s. But was the rock-star life really as outrageous as it looks in the movie, which hit Netflix in the US on Friday?
“Even more so,” says lead singer Vince Neil, 58. “We were young kids and crazy and wanted to live for that excess. I think they capture it in the film without going completely overboard on it.”
The Dirt is based on Motley Crue’s collective 2001 autobiography of the same name, and stars rapper Machine Gun Kelly as drummer Tommy Lee, Douglas Booth as bassist Nikki Sixx, Daniel Webber as Neil, and Game of Thrones’ Iwan Rheon as guitarist Mick Mars.
MTV Films bought rights to the book in 2006, but the movie lingered in development for more than a decade: changing production companies and directors, and losing original star including Liam Hemsworth. Before Jackass director Jeff Tremaine came aboard and Netflix saved the project in 2017, “we were attached to some different companies that did not necessarily see it the way we did”, says Sixx, 60. “They were worried about ratings and fitting into the landscape, but we stood our ground. We wanted to be able to tell the story honestly from that era.”
