“We weren’t a band, we were a gang…a gang of fucking idiots” In the first scene of “The Dirt,” director Jeff Tremaine goes for an over the top shock value of Jeff Wilkes screenplay adapted from Mötley Crüe’s biography of the same name. The scene misses but the narration is spot on. Anyone who has read “The Dirt” or Nikki Sixx’s book “The Heroin Diaries” knows there were a number of shocking ways to make this movie; in the end it misses the mark because it feels small in scope. The timeline is a mess, valuable characters are missing, and because, in 2019, showing people snorting cocaine over and over is not shocking…or interesting.
Mötley Crüe are Nikki Sixx, Tommy Lee, Mick Mars, and Vince Neil. They came together in Los Angeles at the end of the seventies punk scene which gave way to the eighties new wave scene and the emergence of Hard Rock/Heavy Metal. They were a band that combined the elements of Van Halen with The Sex Pistols – then dressed to shock. They became stars and sold millions of records.
Helped by the newly formed MTV they were one of the decades biggest stars. Like so many of their contemporaries, their fame and fortune led to excess and addiction. They went from nobodies to somebodies to broken to fixed to broken up. In between they were wild, maybe one of the wildest bands ever. The film tells this tale starting with Nikki Sixx’s childhood (or lack thereof), that led him to be essentially alone until he meets his soon to be brothers while forming the band. It ends with them triumphantly reforming and settling old differences and playing music together again.
The film stars Machine Gun Kelly as Tommy Lee, Douglass Booth as Nikki Sixx, Daniel Webber as Vince Neil and Iwan Rheon as Mick Mars. Other major players are David Costible as band manager Doc McGee and Elektra Records A&R man Tom Zutaut played by Pete Davidson.
My biggest complaint about this movie is that it feels small. Mötley Crüe was always about being big, loud, and over the top with everything. With Los Angeles as the backdrop I expected some fantastic shots of Hollywood and the surrounding areas. It really comes up short of my expectations. Outside of a few shots of street signs, a quick glimpse of the Hollywood sign it feels like this could have been anywhere. There is one scene that made me feel I was in Los Angeles, and that was the house party in the Redondo Beach mansion; it looked great and felt like the big landscape the rest of the movie should have been painted on.
The film centers around the excess and addiction Mötley Crüe experienced in the eighties and that feels like it. There is very little of the making of the music, the music’s success, the reaction to their music and videos, the bands that were part of the Hard Rock/Hair Metal/Fashion Metal or whatever you want to label this scene as. It’s all about the excess and addiction and a few scenes which tell the sad story of Vince Neil’s daughter Skylar dying of cancer.
If you are familiar with the band and their story you will immediately notice the timeline is a mess. There is a moment where they are on stage preparing to rehearse for the “Theater of Pain” tour (1985) and then it goes right into the band on stage in an arena for the “Girls, Girls, Girls” tour (1987). It’s Jarring. There is a lot of story left there in that time period. Too much time is spent on people snorting drugs whether it’s cocaine, smack, or the bands special mixture they dubbed “Zombie Dust.” It just becomes pointless.
I did like the point of view shots of Tommy Lee (Machine Gun Kelly) reliving what a day in his life was like during the 1987 “Girls, Girls, Girls” tour. I feel like they dropped the ball depicting Nikki Sixx’s battle with heroin addiction and his overdose in 1987. I never felt like it captured the weight at which the drug had taken over the man and his friends. I would have loved to have seen Nikki Sixx’s roommate during the 1985 time period where he discovered and began using Heroin, Ratt’s guitar player Robbin Crosby. While the film depicts Sixx as only having a few bad days alone in his house and then going to rehab (more on this later) and kicking the habit, the drug overtook Crosby and led to his demise in 2001. He became an addict and acquired HIV through a needle and died alone.
The film kind of depicts Sixx’s addiction like an after school special. There is real drama and potential to make people think there’s more than seeing naked women and plates of drugs being sniffed in my opinion. The band went through multiple rehabs to get and stay clean. In real life Nikki Sixx I think has done a great job in discussing what addiction is what it does and why he doesn’t need it anymore. I wish some of this would have found a way into the film. A story built around why the band was so excessive and dark would really be interesting, instead we got the we are four idiots story.
Nikki was able to battle back from heroin addiction and today lives what appears to be a great life. This is not the usual ending and Nikki being able to recover from this dark lonely place along with his bandmates is a more compelling story to me…most just die in the dark lonely place.
As a fan of all the metal bands of this time period I was hoping to see more of them in the film. They are not here. The one scene we get is an over the top drunk Ozzy Osbourne (Tony Cavalero) poolside out grossing the band. It just feels pointless in the film. I don’t think anyone is shocked at this point by anything concerning Ozzy Osbourne.
My overall opinion of this film is this: if you are a baby boomer or a millennial you will most likely not like it. If you are generation X…the MTV generation you will enjoy it even though it has so many shortcomings. Mötley Crüe were stars on such a high level that essentially everyone in this age group even the people who hate the band and its music can probably sing the words to “Home Sweet Home” and hum Mick Mars tremendous guitar solo.
In regards to the #MeToo movement that everyone keeps asking about concerning this film and this band I will say this. Stephen Pearcy (lead singer Ratt) said in his book (Sex, Drugs, Ratt & Roll: My life in Rock) that “the sunset strip was like Woodstock for people who hated hippies.” I think that mindset is needed to watch a movie about a time period like this. This was the decadent eighties and for some reason the members of Mötley Crüe continue to want to be only known for these excesses. The film portrays that in a scattered small scale version. You already have Netflix so you might as well watch it. For the record my favorite Mötley Crüe song is “Don’t Go Away Mad, Just Go Away” and it didn’t make it into the film.
-by Todd Hebert
