The Dirt: What Netflix Gets Right About The True Story (As Told By Mötley Crüe)
Adapting the biography of a singular figure is hard enough, but how do you adapt the autobiography of a band? Bassist Nikki Sixx, guitarist Mick Mars, drummer Tommy Lee, and Vince Neil joined forces to make Mötley Crüe, one of the most successful bands of the 1980s and well-documented hedonist troublemakers.
In 2001, all four members of the band along with Neil Strauss released an autobiography called "The Dirt," describing the group as "the world's most notorious rock band." The book shot to the top 10 on the New York Times Best Seller list and stayed there for 10 weeks. On a personal note, I used the book as the subject of my own freshman year biography project book report in 2004, when I showed up to school dressed like Nikki Sixx and delivered my presentation in full character ... much to my teacher's chagrin.
In 2019, Netflix adapted "The Dirt" with "Jackass" creator and director Jeff Tremaine at the helm, with a script by Amanda Adelson and Rich Wilkes, the latter of whom also wrote the cult classic, "Airheads." The streamer cast "Jupiter Ascending" star Douglas Booth (Sixx), "Game of Thrones" star Iwan Rheon (Mars), Colson Baker a.k.a. Machine Gun Kelly (Lee), and Australian actor Daniel Webber (Neil) to play the legendary band, and miraculously pulled off telling the story of rock and roll's most infamous figures. If you can believe it, they even got most of it right.
The opening scene really happened (allegedly)
I had to dust off my copy of "The Dirt" for the exact quote, but the book opens the same way as the film — a raucous party featuring a woman squirting as Tommy Lee encourages everyone to look on. I remember bringing this book to my English teacher, praying that she trusted me to be mature enough to cover the material considering the very first line of the book reads as follows:
"Her name was Bullwinkle. We called her that because she had a face like a moose. But Tommy, even though he could get any girl he wanted on the Sunset Strip, would not break up with her. He loved her and wanted to marry her, he kept telling us, because she could spray her c** across the room."
Nikki Sixx revealed to Ultimate Classic Rock that the Bullwinkle scene was a make-or-break opener for the film as far as the band was concerned, and Netflix was the first company that didn't ask them to sanitize the story. "A certain CEO of a certain company said, 'This movie will be made over my dead body if [that] scene is in it,'" said Sixx. "Even though it's childish, immature, raunchy, and raw, we felt it was an important way to start the movie. We wanted to set the bar really low." But did the moment actually happen? It's hard to fact-check this one, but it's in the book, and that's good enough for me.
The true tales of Nikki Sixx
It's pretty impressive how much "The Dirt" gets right when it comes to Nikki Sixx, who doubles as the narrator in the film. Sixx did call the police on his mother as a teenager and grow up in a dysfunctional home. "The most painful part of the film is my relationship with my mother and how I could never mend that," Sixx told Forbes. "There is a scene where she is calling me and I can't pick up the phone. I'm addicted to drugs but have huge animosity because she abandoned me." Sixx eventually found sobriety, but his mother passed away before they could repair their relationship.
On a lighter note, the moment shown of the group using hairspray and lighters to kill the cockroaches in their apartment? That really happened, but should serve as a warning to us all not to make handheld flame throwers at home. These guys aren't exactly role models, after all.
Most shockingly, Nikki Sixx really did overdose on drugs and die for two minutes. The would-be tragedy happened in 1987 after Sixx had taken too much heroin. On the way to the hospital, he was declared legally dead but brought back to life after being given shots of adrenaline to the heart. So that scene in "Pulp Fiction" when Mia Wallace almost dies? That's exactly what happened to Nikki Sixx. If you or someone you know is in need of harm reduction services, here are handy resources so you don't have to one day recreate your own Tarantino movie.
Is Mick Mars really an alien?
"The Dirt" opens with Nikki Sixx describing guitarist Mick Mars as an alien, and while that might not be literally true, the dude is an oddball in the best ways possible. Mars was also the black sheep of the band, avoiding excessive drug use and not getting nearly as swept up in the rockstar lifestyle. Much of this is related to his very real spinal condition, ankylosing spondylitis. Mars was diagnosed with this exceedingly rare form of arthritis that causes chronic pain and involuntary bone growth. He experiences extreme inflammation that often turns into bone, fusing sections of his body into an immobile position. Mars has often described it as if his spine is made of slow-drying concrete. The film shows him getting a hip replacement in the mid-'90s, a procedure he wouldn't actually have for another decade.
Mars has actually been in the middle of a legal battle with the band following his retirement in 2022. In April of 2023, Mars sued the band, alleging they were trying to "unilaterally" kick him out of the line-up. "Those guys have been hammering on me since '87, trying to replace me, they haven't been able to do that, because I'm the guitar player," he told NME. "I helped form this band. It's my name I came up with, my ideas, my money that I had from a backer to start this band. It wouldn't have gone anywhere." All of this just encourages the film's depiction that Mick Mars wasn't like the rest of the Crüe.
The tragic truths of Vince Neil
While all of the members of Mötley Crüe have their own tragic backstories, Vince Neil has been at the center of some truly unthinkable hardships. On December 8, 1984, Vince Neil drove drunk and got into a terrible accident, which took the life of his passenger, Hanoi Rocks drummer Nicholas Charles Dingley, better known by his stage name Razzle. He was only 24. If you're unfamiliar with the band, they're one of the artists featured in "Peacemaker." "The Dirt" showcases the horrific incident with great accuracy, including Neil's blood alcohol level of 0.17, almost double the legal limit.
Razzle wasn't the only one harmed in the accident, as the car Neil plowed into two other cars. One driver was thankfully unharmed but the other driver, an 18-year-old named Lisa Hogan, was in a coma and came out with a broken arm, two broken legs, and brain damage. Her passenger, 20-year-old Daniel Smithers, also suffered a broken leg and brain damage. And yes, it is true that he was unforgivably only slapped with 30 days in jail (serving 19), five years probation, and $2.6 million in restitution as punishment.
Just as tragically, Neil's daughter Skylar did pass away from a rare form of cancer when she was only four years old. Chapter 3 of part 10 of "The Dirt" is written by Neil and discusses the period of time from diagnosis to his daughter's passing, and it is a sincerely devastating read. At one point Neil breaks open his hand after getting in a physical altercation in a hospital parking lot. "I cut the most pathetic figure: a father who just couldn't deal with the pain of knowing that soon he would have to undergo the worst tragedy a parent can bear — having to bury his own daughter," he wrote.
Tommy Lee really was that chaotic
Tommy Lee remained in the public eye long after Mötley Crüe lost relevance due to his high-profile personal relationships, so "The Dirt" could have shown him doing just about anything, and it would have been easy to believe as fact. Tommy Lee really did throw up on a stripper, and as Rolling Stone reported, a real stripper was hired to film the scene for the movie and she suggested Machine Gun Kelly actually puke on her for accuracy. So when you see the scene in the movie, that's not movie magic, that's MGK blowing real chunks on a hot babe. For what it's worth, MGK is delivering the best performance of his career in this film. It's almost frustrating how good he is.
Shockingly, the situation with Tommy Lee punching his ex-fiancée Honey in the face is also (allegedly) true. This moment serves as foreshadowing for the allegations that would later come from Pamela Anderson. In the film, Lee's mother calls Honey a groupie while they're on the bus, but in the book, it's that she called her "Jessica," the real name of the aforementioned "Bullwinkle," while she and Lee were in a limo. This sparked Honey to call Lee's mother a "c***" in retaliation, so Lee had their driver pull over as he asked her to leave the vehicle. Honey refused and began kicking and punching him as resistance. Lee physically pulled her to the sidewalk and threw her belongings next to her, and she continued berating him. Lee then punched her in the face, allegedly knocking out a few teeth.
Tommy Lee has since apparently gotten his life together and is now married to comedian and social media personality Brittany Furlan. Their relationship was featured in the Netflix documentary "The American Meme," and the duo often make TikToks together.
Was the band as wild as they seem?
Yes. Holy mother of god, yes. They threw a TV out of a hotel window and smashed a brand-new Mercedes-Benz after getting high with Dio's keyboard player, Claude Schnell. They did so many drugs it's impossible to keep track. There's no way to know how many women they had sex with over the years, and property damage? Good luck trying to find an accurate number to give an accountant. One of the most infamous moments was setting a hotel room on fire, which took place in Switzerland after Vince Neil and Tommy Lee fired off a flare gun inside the room just for the funsies. It apparently bounced off the walls before setting the bed on fire, and the duo was also busted for breaking the glass windows inside the hotel's elevators. Do you know how toddlers will knock over blocks or LEGOs and laugh maniacally at the destruction? That's Mötley Crüe but fully grown and covered in hair spray and Jack Daniels.
Another legendary moment came not from the Crüe, but the prince of Darkness, Ozzy Osbourne. The film sees Ozzy (played by "The Righteous Gemstones" star Tony Cavalero) snorting a line of ants because they were all out of cocaine ... and then (allegedly) licking Nikki Sixx's urine off the ground. Former Osbourne guitarist Jake E. Lee said it was a single spider but that the pee-licking was true, but Ozzy has gone on record to say he has no recollection of that actually happening, but isn't counting it out. "That's very possible, but I can't remember," he told GQ. Ozzy is as unreliable with memory as the band, but at least he admits it. So is it true? Well, it's a he-said, he-said sort of situation. My take? It doesn't matter. They got into enough weirdness for a lifetime — snorting ants isn't even the top 10 strangest stories associated with any of them.
What The Dirt gets wrong
"The Dirt" is a whopping 607 pages, so condensing that down to an hour and 45 minutes for the movie meant some creative liberties had to be taken. The timeline of the film isn't wholly accurate, and some of the details were ignored. Tommy Lee did not meet Nikki Sixx at a Denny's with only high school marching band drumming experience like the movie says. In reality, Lee was a drummer in the band Suite 19, and their meeting at the diner was a planned discussion on starting a new band. Additionally, Vince Neil was not the original singer of Mötley Crüe, that honor belongs to O'Dean Peterson. They also didn't play "Live Wire" when Neil finally agreed to a jam session with the band, because Sixx hadn't yet written it.
On the business side of things, Elektra Records A&R representative Tom Zutaut did not sign the band a minute into meeting them at a bar. He actually had to court them quite a bit before joining the label. At the time, they had created their own label, Leathür Records. Doc McGhee never arranged a surprise visit with Sixx's estranged mother, and his firing was after he and Lee got into a fight because Bon Jovi was allowed to use pyrotechnics when they weren't, and they were given low billing at a festival. McGhee's partner, Doug Thaler, was cut from the movie completely.
Other inconsistencies include Tommy Lee meeting Heather Locklear for the first time. It wasn't the night of Neil's car accident, but actually an REO Speedwagon concert. The joke about confusing her with Heather Thomas from The Fall Guy is accurate, however. And most obviously, the film omits the existence of Pamela Anderson. Considering Anderson was vocally opposed to the Hulu series "Pam & Tommy," her exclusion was likely by design. The film also ignores countless other allegations lobbied against the band, including an alleged gang rape that Sixx has since claimed was embellished for the book.