'The Stunt Driver': Jay Baruchel goes full 'Elbows Up' as Ken Carter, Canada's answer to Evel Knievel

There couldn't be a more fitting time for Jay Baruchel to play a Canadian stunt driver determined to outdo his larger-than-life American rival.

In The Stunt Driver, now in theatres, Baruchel plays Ken Carter, the Montreal daredevil who spent years pursuing an audacious goal: jumping a rocket-powered car a mile across the St. Lawrence River.

His rival? Evel Knievel, played by Ben Foster in the film.

Against today's "Elbows Up" backdrop, the unapologetic Canadian-ness of writer-director Michael Dowse's film lands differently. That was particularly apparent when The Stunt Driver premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). Especially, when Baruchel delivers a monologue in which Carter confronts Knievel and says Canada is "God's country," eliciting a roar of cheers from the crowd.

Carter is certainly an interesting character, from his unique personality to the fact that he was a stunt driver without a driver's license. But Baruchel's task was to find the middle ground between staying true to what's known about Carter, who died in 1983 during a stunt attempt in Ontario, while injecting his own interpretation of this character into the film.

"I am playing a real guy, so I have to be mindful of him, and I wanted to get his posture and his cadence right. But … I'm not doing a sketch. I can't just do an impersonation for four minutes and call it a day," Baruchel told Yahoo Canada during TIFF.

"There's the Ken Carter documented in [the documentary that inspired The Stunt Driver, The Devil at Your Heels], and then there's the Ken Carter in our movie, and they're all very similar, but they're also their own thing, and so it was just this journey with him. And I go off [Dowse's] awesome script and his direction, and try to find spots where we could find our own thing. But it isn't just about finding your own thing, you can't just guitar solo. It's got to be the right guitar solo based on the song you're playing. So it was just a conversation the whole time."

L to R: Laurence Lebeouf as Gloria, Jay Baruchel as Ken Carter in THE STUNT DRIVER by Michael Dowse (Philippe Bossé/Mongrel Media)

Laurence Lebeouf elevated the role of Ken Carter's girlfriend

Aside from Carter's perspective, another interesting element of The Stunt Driver is his relationship with Gloria, his girlfriend, who was an incredibly supportive and motivating presence for Carter, played by the incomparable Laurence Leboeuf.

"It's a tricky character, right? … What was nice is that Gloria is still alive in Montreal, so I had a chance to meet Gloria and really get some insight in terms of what that relationship was like in reality, and she's an amazing person," Dowse said. "And I have to credit, a lot of this is Laurence, and just her talent as an actor. I did my best as a writer and a director to give it something where it had some shape and some difference, and it wasn't just the girlfriend in the part. But I've got to say, Laurence elevated some ham-fisted dialogue that I put in the script and turned it into very eloquent words."

"She's an incredible actress, and she did my script very well, and I'm very grateful that she did this film."

'Courage or bravery is not absence of fear'

But what really stands out in The Stunt Driver is that the film doesn't shy away from the fact that Carter was terrified. He had the courage to do these seemingly impossible stunts, but Baruchel has moments where we see Carter trying to fight off his nerves and fears. A refreshing addition to the story.

"I think there's this idea that everybody is 100 per cent up for whatever they're doing because they do it for a living. … But I am certain that there are NHLers that jump onto the ice and are like, 'This f—king sucks. Why am I here?'" Baruchel said. "I remember, I flew home with P.J. Stock once, who's a pretty famous fighter, and I asked him, I was like, … 'Did you like it?' He's like, 'No, I f—king hated it. Did you see Sandy McCarthy? He was like a f—king gorilla.' … But that was the gig, right? And I'm sure a piece of him had to have liked it at some point."

"We are all messy as people, and I think we do things that are hard for us and self-defeating, but you can be scared of a thing you love to do too. The thing for [Ken Carter] was, in my opinion, the way that I approached it was, this was a guy who was born with zero advantages, and he found a thing that made him valuable because he could do a thing that others couldn't. The rest of it, how much he enjoyed it, was something else to unpack. … Courage or bravery is not absence of fear, it's going through it despite the fear. I just approached it like, … he probably had to psych himself up to some degree, and how hard that must have been, and he must have lost a piece of himself every time he did that."