In “The Stunt Driver,” Jay Baruchel plays Ken Carter, a stuntman who quite literally lived and died behind the wheel doing death-defying jumps. Though he would never actually take those risks, the actor said that playing the character made him reflect on his career and how he has changed since the stand-up days of his young adult life.
“It’s weird. When I was in my 20s, doing stand up comedy in New York and trying to break into late night comedy, and I had this very irrational certainty that it’s where I was supposed to be, and that I was gonna make it,” Baruchel told TheWrap at the Toronto International Film Festival.
“I yearn for that now. I don’t have that. I’m far more successful than that kid was. But I don’t have his confidence, that sort of irrational bullheadedness, and I think Ken’s pretty special because he’s a rare guy that just never lost that,” he added.
“The Stunt Driver” tells the story of Carter, who was known as “The Mad Canadian” for his death-defying jumps, and his ill-fated plans to drive a rocket-powered Lincoln Continental over the Saint-Laurent River. Baruchel said he was drawn to the film by the way the script conveyed how Ken deals with the fear that would keep 99.9% of humans from doing what he did.
“He had this this very beguiling vulnerability, where he could sort of hold his fear, and share his fear, and also like hold his determination to do this thing,” Baruchel said.
Written and directed by Michael Dowse, “The Stunt Driver” is a feature adaptation of the documentary “The Devil at Your Heels,” which followed Carter’s multiple attempts at the river jump as it unfolded. The doc inspired Dowse to dig deeper into Carter’s life, and he loved what he found.
“He comes from nothing, but he’s found a home in this world. He’s a dreamer, and I think any filmmaker can see a bit of Ken Carter in themselves because there’s a lot of similarities between trying to make a film and trying to do something crazy that might not pay off,” he said.
While the film has plenty of humorous moments, it also had to balance that with the reality of Carter’s death, which came after a failed jump in 1983. Baruchel hints at that with a tragic bent to his character’s need for external approval.
“I think he just wants people to look him in the eyes, you know? He has this eagerness to be like the heroes he’d see on the silver screen and all of the lessons he would have learned from those movies is that these type of men get access to a world that he wouldn’t have, he has to be like them,” he said. “That makes an inherently funny person that is also inherently tragic as well.”
“The Stunt Driver” will be released in Canada on Sept. 25 and is seeking international distribution.
