Rock star cameos surface in rare MIA 70's student film

As reported in Crawdaddy last week, a rare student film has surfaced featuring numerous rock star cameos and 70's B-grade actors.

To ensure an accurate retelling, here's a cut-&-paste from the Darrick Thomas article:

The archives are yielding some rock-meets-film gems as of late: Last week we brought you the Joe Strummer-directed, Clash-cast film Hell W10, which you can watch here, and today, we’ve stumbled upon a comedic short called Sonic Boom, featuring the Who‘s infamous drummer and rock ‘n’ roll icon, Keith Moon. In addition to Moon, the 1974 short, by UCLA film students Jeff Mandel and Eric Louzil, boasts perfromances from Ricky Nelson, Sal Mineo, Chuck Woolery, and Jonathan Winters. From what we can put together from an interview a Chris Radcliffe conducted with Louzil, the filmmakers would search the morning papers to see what celebrities were in town either on tour or shooting, in the hopes of getting them to do bit parts in their productions.

Radcliffe explains:

“The way they cast Sonic Boom was simply this: They would get together at production meetings, take out the entertainment section of the Los Angeles Times and find out who had made it into press. Then they would essentially stalk these performers and ask them to help out with their student film.

“Elton John was in town playing at the Troubadour, so it was a toss up between Keith or Elton. They chose Keith because he was a bigger name at the time. They began hanging out at the clubs he was know to frequent until they caught up with him and he agreed to appear in the film for $1,400 in cocaine and a television, though the one page agreement signed between the producers and Keith read for ‘One Case Of Coke And A Television.’

“In any event Keith’s scene was filmed at the Burbank Court House where he played the part of a professor wearing a cotex [sic] on his upper lip for a mustache. He arrived on the set in a gold limousine (which at that time was extremely rare and impressive) and left in a different one. The short film was eventually released theatrically in 1975 where it was shown before the feature film of the evening Man Friday, starring Peter O’Toole and Richard Roundtree.”

According to IMDb, Sonic Boom is “about a supersonic jet that lands in a small town and creates hysteria about an impending sonic boom that never happens.” (Moon first appears around the 5:15 marker.)

So take the Jiffypop off the stovetop, click the "Full Screen" button, and sit back for a trip back to 1974 for the next half hour. See how many familiar, and not-so-familiar faces, you can recognize.