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Ricardo Villagomez
The Dirt
THE IRREVERENT ART OF BEING A ROCKSTAR
Ricardo Villagomez
Composition I
12.01.2021
Ricardo Villagomez
The Dirt directed by Jeff Tremaine, released on March 18, 2019, with an initial budget of 23
million dollars, produced by Netflix, casting Douglas Booth( Nikky Six), Iwan Rheon (Mick Mars),
Machine Gun Kelly ( Tommy Lee), Daniel Webber (Vince Neil).
The Dirt, Based on the Autobiography from Motley Crue, the film is a romanticized story of
drugs, sex, and rock and roll, almost like a fairy tale, but instead of having fairies, you got prostitues, and
four young mussisians looking for fame, and excess, rising from the streets of the sunset street of
Holliwood, leaving behind who they were to become the acclaimed 80s band Motley Crue.
The approach of the director was not to exactly to tell how really was the life of Motley Crue, but
to tell the story of a broken generation that can resonate with the viewer, by using true life facts of the
band, Jeff Tremaine, achieves this by introducing at the beginning of the movie the main traits of the
characters, starting with Nikky Six, a kid who lives in a messed up family where his mother blames him
for the abandonment of his father, and the only way to escape his reality is through the music. The
Director does this with every single member of the band, by doing this, the viewer can empathize and
resonate with any of the characters from the beginning, on top of that, every character is different from
each other, showing a different aspect of society and the inner desire of the youth who thirst fame, excess,
and success.
The movie, succeed in portraying not just the main aspects of the lifestyle of the rock bands
coming from the sunset street, but capturing the essence of the lyrics from the songs written by Motley
Crue, probably the most notorious songs are, Shout at the Devil, Kickstart My Heart, Take Me to the Top,
Wild Side, Merry-Go-Round, and The dirt, these songs could tell the story in short of Motley Crue.
The movie also shows the misogynistic, sexist aspects of 80s, to the point of romanticizing the
crude reality of being a Rockstar, although, at the end it looks for redemption but by this point it's too late,
Ricardo Villagomez
when in most of the movie, what it does its to glamourise the main issues around the members of the
band.
The technicals aspects of The dirt when it comes to cinematography, resembles the style of
Queentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese, which it works to trick the viewer for the lack of originality and
personal style of the director, wasting the opportunity to show something different, instead they give us a
movie that falls once again into the category of BlockBuster, or for what it truly is a Netflix Movie, but
even using this technique it fails to capture a wider audience not just for this reason but for the abuse of
save the cat technique written by Blake Snyder, on the other hand, the premise of The Dirt, bring us a
different approach of how BlockBusters should be written.
The music is one of the strong aspects of the movie, bringing us the old classics from the last
years of the golden age of rock music (Glam Metal), with new hits, and remastered songs from Motley
Crue, and its latest single The dirt. The originality of the movie is how little it explores this genre, there
are many autobiographical movies about rock and pop music, but there is not a single movie exploring
Glam Metal which is a subgenre of Heavy Metal, and this opens the opportunity to explore the stories of
many other bands, singers, artists which do not fall into the category of being mainstream or conventional.
The performance from the actors is without doubt what the audience should look for. A
remarkable aspect is how the actors worked together in their performances with the original members
from the band, spending time outside and inside of set, which let us see in the movie a clear and very
accurate approach of how the members were back then, letting us see the darkest and brightest side of
their personalities and how this four musicians turned into the legends who they are now.
In conclusion, this movie lacks a lot of technical aspects when it comes to a different approach in
cinematography, but the music, performance, and the originality of the story gives it balance for what it
Ricardo Villagomez
lacks, making it fun to watch. The dirt fairly succeeded in being a different and irreverent movie with a
unique perspective and personality, just as good Rock and Roll song should be.

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Ricardo Villagomez

Machine Gun Kelly ( Tommy Lee), Daniel Webber (Vince Neil).

different approach of how BlockBusters should be written.

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