Jay Baruchel takes the wheel as Canadian daredevil Ken Carter in Toronto-premiering adaptation of Bob Fortier's 1981 cult doc "The Devil at Your Heels" Michael Dowse’s “The Stunt Driver,” starring Jay Baruchel as ’70s daredevil Ken Carter, who tried to jump a mile across the St. Lawrence River in a rocket car, roars into its Toronto Intl. Film Festival world premiere offering warm-but-never-fuzzy retro visions of stunts and cross-border tension that resonate in the present moment.
Dowse has premiered five features in Toronto, notably “Goon” (starring Baruchel) and “The F Word,” which screened in 2013, right around the time he encountered Carter’s story. His intro was Bob Fortier’s 1981 National Film Board of Canada documentary “The Devil at Your Heels,” which follows Carter’s prep for the jump. It is, to this day, a cult fave in Australia.
You can see the stakes in the scale of the ramp and the size of the car. And then you fall in love with the character of Ken. He’s jumping a river, but can’t swim.
He’s a stunt driver but doesn’t have a license. The man spent his entire life jumping things and breaking every bone in his body. He’s no coward but he was legit worried about the jump — and for good reason.” The animosity between Carter and Evel Knievel (played by Ben Foster) was mostly for show but is upped in Dowse’s film for dramatic purposes.
The tension was simmering.” During the five-year wait to get the rights to the NFB doc, Dowse wrote the first script — a “manuscript” of the documentary. But we befriended many people who were around Ken. We did our research.” Obtaining the doc rights and building a relationship with its director unlocked creative ideas and practical gifts.
Fortier, who consulted on the script, revealed that he had filmed Carter being hypnotized on live radio to explain why he jumps. The footage wasn’t in the doc and had disappeared, but Dowse’s team found the audio, which inspired the film’s opening, where we learn Carter’s backstory. It’s hard to imagine anyone but Baruchel, whom Canadians have known since his tween roles, inhabiting the character.
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