producers, Roy Baird and Bill Curbishley, "held it together" and the film was made. Only one scene in the film was shot in the studio; all others were on location. Beachy Head, where Jimmy considers suicide at the end of the film, was the location of a real-life suicide that supposedly influenced the film's ending. The stunt coordinators underestimated the distance that the scooter would fly through the air after being driven off Beachy Head. Franc Roddam, who shot the scene from a helicopter, was almost hit. Jeff Dexter, a club dancer and disc jockey fixture in the Sixties London music scene was the DJ in the club scenes, and was the uncredited choreographer of 500 extras for the ballroom and club scenes. He also choreographed Sting's feet in his dance close-ups. Dexter managed America whose first major gig at "Implosion" at The Roundhouse, Chalk Farm, was the opening act to The Who on 20 December 1970. Black actor Trevor Laird (Ferdy) was scripted to appear in a party scene kissing and having sex with a white girl, but was excluded from the scene by associate producer John Peverall due to concerns that it could cause problems with distributors in South Africa and the southern United States. Toyah Wilcox has said that cast members discussed going on strike over the incident. Reception The film had its premiere at the Plaza cinema in London on 16 August 1979. It opened to the public the following day and grossed £36,472 in its opening week from four cinemas in London, placing second behind Moonraker at the London box office. Janet Maslin, reviewing the film for The New York Times in 1979, called it "...gritty and ragged and sometimes quite beautiful", creating a "...slice-of-life movie that feels tremendously authentic in its sentiments as well as its details." Maslin states that the director's scenes of youth battles "...capture a fierce, dizzying excitement that epitomizes a kind of youthful extreme." Reviewer Brian Gibson from Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada) stated that "Roddam's look back at an angsty young man in '65 is a throwback to the kitchen-sink dramas that began plumbing the depths of working class lives then. Reeking with a restless teen spirit, Quadrophenia leads us down adolescence's blind alleys of rebellion." Critic Matt Brunson from Creative Loafing stated that the film "[m]anages to be both quintessentially British and irrefutably universal", giving it a 3.5/4 score.