Canada — Michael Dowse Built the 90-Foot Ramp and the Rocket Car for Real on “The Stunt Driver”
- Michael Dowse built a 90-foot ramp and a fiberglass rocket-car body for real on “The Stunt Driver.”
- The film shot in Montreal, with river scenes staged between Boucherville and Varennes on the St. Lawrence.
- No stunt coordinator or second unit credit has been made public for the production yet.
Posted: September 24, 2026
Michael Dowse and Jay Baruchel sat down with The Playlist the day before The Stunt Driver opens, and the part worth the trade's attention is how little of Ken Carter's signature gag was left to post. Dowse's line on the approach is blunt: “You have to build a ramp. You have to build a replica of the car.” The production put up the 90-foot ramp and a fiberglass rocket-car body for real, and Dowse describes the fiberglass work as its own headache on top of resistance from local government over erecting a structure that size. Principal photography ran in Montreal, with the river sequences staged between Boucherville and Varennes on the St. Lawrence — the same stretch of water Carter spent years trying to clear.
Baruchel's framing of the stunt is the useful reality check for anyone rigging a ramp jump: “Google, ‘How far has a car ever jumped?’ It doesn't come anywhere near his goal.” Carter, the world-champion Canadian stunt driver billed as “The Mad Canadian,” spent the mid-1970s chasing a mile-long rocket-car launch across the St. Lawrence, and the film is built from the 1981 National Film Board documentary The Devil at Your Heels. Ben Foster plays Evel Knievel opposite Baruchel's Carter. No stunt coordinator or second unit credit has surfaced publicly for the production yet. Dowse wrote and directed; Mongrel Media releases it across Canada September 25, 2026, after a TIFF premiere on September 11.
Learn more on IMDb: The Stunt Driver (2026)
