Digging In The Dirt

Mötley Crüe rhythm section Nikki Sixx and Tommy Lee tell EW about the wild ride behind making the raunchy and rocking biopic The Dirt.

- Katherine Turman

“THE SEX, THE CASH, THE FAME/Living out a life you can’t deny/ The drugs, the lies, the pain/Will never get enough to satisfy,” Mötley Crüe profess on the title track to The Dirt, a biopic that’s as brazen and raucous as the band’s own music. Based on the 2001 autobiography of the same name, the film is a forthright and fast-paced portrait of ne’er-do-wells who succeeded in the music biz but stumbled in real life.

Like Bohemian Rhapsody, another ballyhooed rock flick, The Dirt took years to come to fruition. In fact, explains bassist Nikki Sixx, “We were first at Paramount years ago. But there were creative differences as far as keeping it clean. If you take out the ugly parts, then you just have a Disney movie.” (For the record: The final version, from Netflix, is as much like a Disney movie as Mötley Crüe are like Mother Teresa.)