‘Goon’ Director and Jay Baruchel Officially Reunite for a Wild True Story

Every year, the Toronto International Film Festival introduces audiences to the fall’s hottest upcoming movies, from pending awards contenders to surprise word-of-mouth sensations. While the festival celebrates cinema across the globe, it’s always a treat when a local specialty like The Stunt Driver premieres. Directed by Canadian filmmaker Michael Dowse, best known for comedies like FUBAR, Goon, and The F Word, The Stunt Driver is a dramatized account of human daredevil Ken Carter, arguably Canada’s Evel Knievel.

Jay Baruchel reunites with Dowse 15 years after Goon to play Carter in this raucous yet heartfelt comedy about a man with lofty ambitions who died doing what he loved most: performing dangerous, live-wire stunts. It’s a story that most American audiences are oblivious to, but that will all change when viewers experience the rollicking laughs and thrills of The Stunt Driver, which also stars Ed Helms and Ben Foster as the legendary Evel Knievel.

Collider‘s Steven Weintraub hosted a Q&A session in LA with Dowse to discuss The Stunt Driver, which releases in theaters on September 25th. The film follows Carter as he prepares to pull off the most extraordinary and riskiest stunt of all: a jump in a rocket-powered Lincoln Continental across a mile-wide expanse of the St. Lawrence River. Both a madcap adventure and a poignant reflection of ambition, The Stunt Driver is based on the 1981 documentary about the real Carter, The Devil at Your Heels, directed by Robert Fortier.

In the conversation below, Dowse shares the influence of the documentary on his narrative film and how he integrated archive footage into The Stunt Driver. Dowse may not have been performing death-defying stunts, but he related to Carter’s aspirational values and perseverance in the face of insurmountable odds when making this independent project.

Below is a full transcript of the conversation between Dowse and Weintraub, with the full video of the Q&A available above.

Michael Dowse Was “Blown Away” by the Documentary That Inspired ‘The Stunt Driver’

Dowse also reflects on the early days of his filmmaking career.

Image via TIFF

COLLIDER: Thank you all again for coming out tonight. Thank you to IFC for teaming up. This was your first time seeing [the movie] outside of Canada?

MICHAEL DOWSE: Yeah, it was. That’s why I watched it. It’s only screened at TIFF and a couple times in Canada. So yeah, it’s great to see with the L.A. crowd.

For people that don’t realize, the world premiere for this was just like days ago. What was it like? I saw you in Canada and you guys came into the studio. You’ll be able to watch that interview on Collider, but what was it like experiencing the TIFF crowd? Because I would imagine a lot of people in Toronto know Ken [Carter]’s story.

DOWSE: Less than you would think. He’s not very well known. He is our Evil Kneivel, but nobody really knows who he was. When I saw the documentary about [him] like 12 years ago, I was blown away by the story and wanted to bring attention to it. But yeah, I mean, it’s a home crowd for sure. When you screen it at TIFF , it helps if it’s a Canadian-themed film, for sure. So it went over great.

Before we jump into why I get to talk to you tonight, I always like going backwards. So if someone has never seen your work besides this film, what’s the one you want them watching first, and why?

DOWSE: Oh, that’s a good question. I don’t know. I think It’s All Gone Pete Tong is a pretty interesting film. It was shot in Ibiza, like, 20 years ago now–Jesus. I’m old. That one’s pretty interesting in terms of using sound in a film. And Goon would probably be the other one, if you’re a hockey fan.

Yeah, Goon is real fucking great. Which of your films changed the most in the editing room in ways you didn’t expect going in?

DOWSE: I would say Goon. Goon definitely changed the most in the edit suite. Just once you unraveled this idea that if you had a shot of a scoreboard and you could put any number in the scoreboard, and you could change the colors of jerseys, and you could really shape sort of a season of what happened from game to game, it sort of opened it up. We had Brent White come in and help on that film, who’s Judd Apatow’s and Paul Feig’s editor. He’s amazing. That’s probably the film that changed the most in the edit suite.

Let’s jump into Stunt Driver. Was there a moment when you first heard Ken’s story and said, “oh, I absolutely need to make this movie?”

DOWSE: [It was] after I watched the documentary. A lot of the doc is in this film. We used a lot of the footage from the doc to do a lot of the stunts and shots of the ramp, and stuff like that. We built the ramp, we built our own version of the ramp, like a 60 ft version of the ramp. The real ramp was about 90 ft, and we had to build our own scale version of the car. I felt I had as much challenge as Ken did, except I didn’t have to do the jump by any means. When I saw that doc, I just fell in love with the scale of the jump and just how big it was. And I just thought it would make a great story. And then once you get to know Ken and you research his story, you just fall in love with the guy. He’s such a dreamer and he’s so optimistic. You just want the guy to succeed, and he gets backstabbed. Anything that could go wrong did go wrong with him. When you see beyond it, what happened after that jump and how tragic it was, it just felt like a really compelling story about [a] “careful what you wish for” idea.

Michael Dowse Found a Clever Way to Handle ‘The Stunt Driver’s Action Sequences on a Small Budget

“It’s a nice testament to how brave the real man was and what he accomplished.”

Image via IFC

What a lot of people don’t realize is that you actually didn’t do any of the stunts.

DOWSE: No, we built a car with no motor, because we couldn’t afford it. Every single time the car is moving, it’s Robert Fortier’s documentary, The Devil at Your Heels, which you can watch on the National Film Board of Canada’s website. It’s an amazing doc. For some reason, the Australians have really taken it over, and there’s a huge Australian cult following on the doc, and they’re like, “why have you not named streets after Ken Carter in Canada?” His doc is amazing. He followed him for five years, so we were able to license the doc from the NFB and then we used it to really, as I said, set the period, and do the things that were impossible. If we had tried to do that jump, we could have ensured it, but it would have taken another six weeks of shooting to try and do all the jumps. I also think it’s a nice testament, like every single jump you see in there, that’s Ken doing them, and it’s a nice testament to how brave the real man was and what he accomplished.

Also, if you were going to do these stunts, you’d need a Fast and Furious budget.

DOWSE: Yeah, exactly. It’s insane, the scale of it. The first budget we did was like, “let’s do everything and not license anything.” And then you slowly realize you can’t do that. And then it really creatively opened up ideas in terms of trying to get behind the doc–if you flipped it on its head and usually it’s the other way around. But if you did sort of a making of the doc with a 2: 39: 1 aspect ratio, of a [Robert] Altman film from that time, what would that feel like in terms of cutting between those two formats?

You should also mention that you shot in more than one format.

DOWSE: We shot real 16 mm when we knew we were going to go into the doc footage. We kept an Aires package on the truck, and then we shot four other formats. We shot 2: 39: 1, fake 35 [mm], fake 16 [mm]. We even had a shitty video camera for when we got into the 80s that I, for some reason, was the operator on the shitty video camera.

Can I ask which camera was the shitty 80 camera?

DOWSE: I cannot remember, but it was something from the early 2000s or something.

Was there a piece of archival footage that you saw with Ken that completely changed how you and Jay played a scene or approached a scene?

DOWSE: There was an interesting story about the hypnotism off the top. That was shot, but it was never used in the documentary. Robert couldn’t find a place for it. As you researched with Robert Fortier, he would tell his stories about meeting Evel Knievel and a bunch of stuff that I can’t repeat. He told the story of this hypnotism, and it was sort of a testament to how much of a showman Ken was. He went through this entire hypnotism. It was at a radio station in Montreal where he went under and somebody burned his hand, and he kept with the bit and didn’t break out. And then at the end, he went up to see, [if he’s] okay. And he’s like, “yeah, I’m right as rain.” He had totally made up the entire thing in terms of the hypnotism and to try and raise awareness for it. We couldn’t find the archival footage of the interview, but we found an audio of it on YouTube and you can listen to it. It’s fascinating because, even though he’s sort of “making it up,” all that stuff is pulled right from that interview about why he jumps and his background of having to raise his brothers and sisters and coming from nothing in Montreal. He’s really an interesting character. He literally came from nothing. He graduated grade four at 14 and failed three years, and then went in and became just like a grease monkey and then fell into the traveling circus of.. Oh, God, what’s his name? God, I’m going to forget his name because we had to use a fake name in the movie. This very famous traveling road show, and that opened up his life, and that’s how he really defined himself, when he was nothing. His bravery was all he had. He’s a really compelling person.

How did you figure out the actual structure of the movie? Because there’s many versions of the story you could tell.

DOWSE: I started basically transcribing the documentary, and then you realize the documentary has so many repetitive bits–they do like 3 or 4 car tests. There’s like 12 characters over the five years. It’s a thing of condensing it and trying to streamline it into something. I’m extrapolating in certain scenes with Gloria [Carter], and that’s from getting to know her a little bit and talking to her. There’s obviously some extrapolations for dramatic purposes. I also kind of wanted to stick to what happened, and how those five years went down.

Why Jay Baruchel Was the Perfect Person to Bring Ken Carter to Life

“In terms of improvisation, you get to let those guys run a lot.”

Image via IFC

You bring up what I wanted to ask. How much do you feel obligated to the facts, and where did you give yourself the permission to say “this makes a better movie”?

DOWSE: Yeah, I think comedy goes a long way. Jay [Baruchel] gives such a great performance, and he really put this film on his back. He’s like a thoroughbred. In terms of improvisation, you get to let those guys run a lot. He, Ben Foster, Ed [Helms] are all brilliant actors. On the day where you let them run, they’re doing stuff. I just thought of trying to dig into the heart of the movie a little bit. We wanted to dig into Gloria a little bit, but that’s with talking to her and researching her. And then, it’s really about just finding snippets from the documentary and diving into it. In the documentary, Ken refers to the conversation he has with Bill Wilkins, who’s a combination of three characters, and he talks about what happened to him that day. The real guy’s name was Kenny Powers, which is a direct connection to Eastbound and Down. They’ll never admit to it! He talks about it, but it was extrapolating from that, and writing out those scenes that he refers to. So it’s a bit of adding a little bit of your own juice, but also trying to stay as true to what happened as possible without really making a ton of shit up.

Ken is an underdog, but he’s also incredibly stubborn and self-destructive. How important was it that the movie did not romanticize him too much?

DOWSE: I think I kind of romanticize him, but I think I wanted to keep it real to who he was, to a certain degree. I mean, what he’s doing is quixotic. It’s romantic. I think it’s baked in already. It’s insane what he’s doing. We had the car in Toronto, and [it’s not] until you stand beside a scale model of what that car is, do you really understand how fucking insane it is to to try and launch that thing. When you stand on top of the ramp, even the 60ft ramp, which is two thirds of what it is, you’re like, “this is fucking insane what he tried to do.” It wasn’t hard to romanticize what he was doing, and he’s very open about his fear. I found such a human quality in something so relatable. It was the guy. He talks about it openly–he’s scared of what he’s about to do. I just found that very relatable. I think anybody in their life has a 90ft ramp that you want to attack. For me as a filmmaker, I think every film I try to make feels like you’re trying to launch yourself off a 90ft ramp for glory.

Well, the other thing is, he was talking about his feelings and his fear in an era that people really didn’t do that.

DOWSE: For sure. In the doc, he’s very open about it. He’s not shaking or anything like that. In the movie there are more delays. There’s delays upon delays, upon delays that we truncated. You see the human aspect of it. You also see that side of people getting worn out by it as he keeps talking. He was scared, and I think the stuff about the runway is accurate. He was worried about the water. He was worried that the runway wasn’t ready, and he was correct about that. But he was not a scared man. He was a brave, brave person. I think anybody who does that for 30 years, it’s going to wear on your nerves a little bit. I think it’s all totally relatable and understandable that you’d get a little raw after a while.

Well, the other thing is, he was doing these stunts without the use of computers, physics, and math. They’re doing shit where they’re like, “I think this is going to work.”

DOWSE: There’s no real testing at all, except to send it off. There’s no 3D model or AI model of what would happen for him. There’s no real safety stuff, not really. As you can see, when it goes into the water.

In the end of the film, you show the real footage of his tragic accident. How much did you guys debate over including that, not including that, or how much to include?

DOWSE: Yeah, it’s a good question. I thought about it, and then I thought, “why pull a punch?” That’s where he gets crushed. He dies later in the ambulance. That’s what happened on that day. That’s how he died, and we should show that. He died doing what he loved. It’s awful, but it’s what happened. When you’re using archive footage, you have to respect the truth, especially when you’re dealing with that.

So I asked you this earlier, but I am curious, you have a cut that you’re happy with. How did this film get shaped in the editing room? Did anyone see an early screening and give you a note that basically said, “how did I miss this? I gotta fix this”?

DOWSE: What do you mean?

I’ve spoken to a lot of directors and they failed to mention that “this was like the 1982 race.” There’s always something that–it’s obvious to you, but maybe not obvious to the audience.

DOWSE: We screened it to lots of people. It’s just an ongoing thing. If anything, I probably cut it too short, initially. I started as an editor, so I’m very tough on that stuff. And then, we let it breathe a little bit more. In terms of things that we discovered, I think we discovered how important Gloria was to the story. That was the feedback that I got that I tried to take to heart. Laurence [Laboeuf] is an incredible actress, and she does breathe life into this part, but it’s a tough part. She does very well with some ham-fisted dialogue that I wrote for her.

I don’t know if you’ll remember this, but what was the last thing that you cut out before picture-locking? For people who don’t know, picture lock means you’re not making any more changes.

DOWSE: The scene of them in the hotel room, when he’s in the yellow sweater. That was the last thing.

Goon has a similar, lovable underdog with a dangerous obsession. What did you learn from that film that carried you into this one?

DOWSE: Just energy, and just letting actors go and trying to get that energy from improvisation In terms of the character, there’s a lot of parallels towards Doug Glatt (Sean William Scott) and Ken Carter, so it’s [about] molding that similar character. Doug Glatt is much more of a Rocky Balboa meets Chauncey the Gardener (from Being There) type. Ken is his own thing, but I think there are a few parallels to those guys, for sure.

One of the things about making a movie, and especially one that you’re making on a budget–every movie is on a budget–but you get what I mean, is that you have a set, you have a limited schedule, and a limited amount of time. Where did you feel like “we really only have time for like two takes here,” and where did you feel like you needed to deploy additional resources to make sure a certain scene really worked?

DOWSE: We shot this film in 21 days, so we hammered this fucking movie, I gotta say.

For people who don’t realize, that’s really not a lot of time.

DOWSE: I produced it with my wife. We didn’t have a studio. We were funded by some fine folks up in Canada. It was really like a mom and pop shop. 21 days was tight to begin with, but I think the Evel stuff is definitely something we wanted to make sure we had enough time for them to play around. All the Senneterre stuff was really important, because it was shot at the same location as where they shot 50 years earlier, so we wanted to make sure we had enough time there. What was interesting was that there’s that jet car thing, where he’s in a Montréal street. We only put two shots in there, and then the rest of that is the documentary. We just built 20ft of a backdrop, which is actually the Molson brewery, and put that behind the car, and then put her actors in front of that same piece of wall. And then we were able to intercut that in with most of the other footage. 21 days was possible because we knew we had some scenes that were mostly archival, and we were just putting a little bit into it.

That’s still just a crazy short schedule.

DOWSE: It’s a crazy short schedule, but I shoot fast.

What did Jay do on set that maybe surprised you?

DOWSE: He just owned it. I love Jay. He’s a great friend and a great actor, and a great writer and director himself. When I called him four years ago to do it, I just knew he was the guy. I think as a filmmaker, you get pulled a bunch of ways. Like, “oh, you need this big name, you need this big name for foreign sales, blah, blah, blah.” I saw BlackBerry and it suddenly dawned on me that Jay was 38. He was the same age as Ken Carter, and he was perfect. He’s from the same neighborhood. His parents probably ran in the same circles as Ken. He understands what it is to be an Anglo in Lower Notre-Dame-de-Grâce in Montreal, which is a very specific reference, but it’s a poor area, so he understood the culture. Then he just proceeded to put this film on his back like he prepped incredibly. He’ll say that it was the first movie he did a lot of homework on, and he would just send me these strange voice memos where he had repeated some of the dialogue from the doc verbatim, and I would just pop up on my phone every once in a while. He really took it to heart. For us, it wasn’t about a facsimile of the character. It was about him finding that gray area, that Venn diagram of him and Ken Carter and finding that middle ground where he’s embracing himself, but he’s also bringing in some of the characteristics of Ken. It’s just about it making it feel honest. He’s just so funny. He can ad-lib with some of the best of them, and his brain works in mysterious ways.

Michael Dowse Explains What ‘The Stunt Driver’ Is Really About

Image via IFC

I completely concur with what you just said. Ken spends years chasing one giant moment. Do you see the movie ultimately as being about pursuing a dream or about knowing when you should let one go?

DOWSE: I think it’s about pursuing a dream. I don’t think it’s about letting one go. It’s tragic what happens to him–that’s what happened to him. You could say he maybe painted himself into a corner in terms of the career he chose. I think this movie’s about a dreamer, for sure, and hopefully it’s inspiring, even though the guy dies. I think there’s something interesting about somebody just being so focused on doing that for five years. And it’s a cautionary tale, as well, I guess in the same breath.

Now that you spent years thinking about Ken Carter, do you personally understand why he needed to make that jump?

DOWSE: Absolutely. It’s the same reason why I had to make this film. It’s like it just eats away at you. This took 12 years for me to make this film, so it’s on the back of your mind as you do other movies. You’re always thinking about this movie. Yeah, I totally related to him. I think anybody who has something that feels insurmountable, if you’re writing a novel or an album or whatever you’re doing in your life. I think this story is inspiring because it shows, even though you know, it doesn’t go the way you planned, but he just has so much positivity about doing it. I recommend you guys should watch the doc, too. They’re both standalone films, but the doc is very interesting because he’s a very compelling character.

You worked on this, as you said, for 12 years. How many times were you nervous that someone else was going to make the movie before you could get it made?

DOWSE: So many times. Because another producer had the option for like ten years, they, at one point, sent me their version of the script for me to direct, and I just turned it down. I sent it right back. I didn’t even read it. I just sent it right back to my agent and was like, “Do not send me anything else to do with this. I want to make it myself. I was very nervous. Then, at one point, I think [Leonardo] DiCaprio was going to do an Evel Knievel movie with Damien Chazelle, and I thought the timing of that would have been exquisite, because it was right around when we were going into pre-production that we got wind, and we thought if there was a Leonardo DiCaprio, Evel movie to go with ours, that would be perfect.

There is so much footage of Ken from the doc, and you include some of it in the film. How much did you debate which scenes and what stuff of the real Ken to include?

DOWSE: There’s one shot where they’re walking at night, which is Ken’s back. There’s a shot where he gets pulled, and obviously all the driving and stuff is Ken. It was tough to pick the moments. The ones that we wanted to use were the ones that gave the film scale. We wanted to use anything that had the ramp in it or anything that would set the time period or the era, for sure. Ed [Helms] is sort of an amalgamation of Dick Keller in this guy called Slamming Sammy Miller. There’s a great scene in the doc where Slamming Sammy Miller tricks him and says, “oh, you’re only going to go 200 miles an hour?” There are some scenes where we lift the dialogue completely from it. The press conference was one that we lifted completely, for the most part, which I just loved how heartbroken the real Ken was in that scene. There’s a lot we grabbed directly from the doc for sure.

Image via IFC

If Ken could see this film, what do you think he’d want people to walk away understanding about him?

DOWSE: That he tried. That he wasn’t scared. Talking to his girlfriend, Gloria, who’s still alive in Montreal and going to the Montreal premiere next week, she said he would be proud of this movie. It does what he wants. He wanted people to remember his name, you know? Hopefully this film is a small part of cementing his legacy as an incredibly brave, stunt driver and daredevil. I hope he would have liked it.

I am 100% sure he would really like this. I really appreciate your work and making this on your own. It’s really fucking hard to do, and I commend anyone who can do it. For the fans of yours, are you currently writing anything? Is there another project you’ve been working on for 12 years?

DOWSE: There’s a film called, Cult-de-sac, which is about a doomsday cult that’s correct, that I’ve been trying to make. I wrote it with a bunch of other guys. It’s complicated. That’s one that I’m trying to make. And then I’m writing a horror film right now. Those are the two big ones right now that I’m trying to make.

Horror goes through a lot of ebbs and flows, but right now it’s on a very strong high. There’s so many horror films that have done so well. Does it make it any easier, or is it still always a challenge?

DOWSE: There’s obviously a massive market for it. I love the medium, just because I think some of the most creative work right now is in horror, where they also get to blend in comedy and a bunch of things. Backrooms is an amazing film, and it’s almost like a German arthouse film. And the fact that kids went out to it and supported it so wholeheartedly is so inspiring and great for the marketplace and for the business. It’s incredible that something that abstract found such a huge audience, and it’s encouraging. I like horror because it’s not necessarily cast-reliant. So you can cast the right actors, and it doesn’t need to be the most famous person. They’re super creative films, and they allow you to work on some different muscles as a director.

The other thing with the horror space is that you can really take some swings. People are willing to go along and studio people are willing to go along because you’re not spending a lot and there’s a lot of upside.

DOWSE: I think people want to get engaged. People want to feel an emotional relationship with any story. That’s what I miss about comedy–people laugh and there’s a reaction. I think people are getting that same thing from horror where they’re feeling scared and there’s an emotional connection with the project or with the film.

I think Resident Evil is playing in one of the theaters next door because it was so loud with all the people getting killed and whatever’s going on in that movie. It sounds like a beast. That’s another horror movie.

DOWSE: Exactly, and Zach Cregger is killing it. His filmmaking is insane. It’s wonderful

The Stunt Driver opens in select theaters September 25.

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Release Date

September 25, 2026

Runtime

99 minutes

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Director

Michael Dowse

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