November 16, 2017 • 46 mins
Ken Carter was a Canadian daredevil who dreamt of performing the biggest stunt the world had ever seen. He wanted to jump a rocket car one mile over a river. For 5 years he prepared, only to have his dream hijacked at the very last moment by the very last person he ever expected.
Thanks to the National Film Board of Canada for their use of audio from The Devil At Your Heels. You can watch the movie here: https://www.nfb.ca/film/devil_at_your_heels/
Also check out Aim For The Roses, a musical docudrama based on The Devil At Your Heels: http://www.aimfortheroses.com/
Credits
Heavyweight is hosted and produced by Jonathan Goldstein.
This episode was also produced by Kalila Holt. The senior producer is Kaitlin Roberts.
Editing by Jorge Just and Alex Blumberg.
Special thanks to Emily Condon, Risky Rick Cruz, Cody Glive, John Bolton, Freddy Sibley, Anna Sosnowski, Lee Fortenberry, Adam Symansky, Lou Ann Leonard, Dick Keller, Harry Simpson, Gordon Katic, Saidu Tejan-Thomas, Blythe Terrell, Jessica Weisberg, Devon Taylor, Chris Neary, and Jackie Cohen.
The show was mixed by Kate Bilinski.
Music by Christine Fellows, John K Samson, and Steven Page, with additional music by Michael Charles Smith, Hew Time, Blue Dot Sessions, and Y La Bamba. Our theme song is by The Weakerthans courtesy of Epitaph Records, and our ad music is by Haley Shaw.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
I have a medical related question. You know my toe ring?
I think, I think maybe yes, I do have a
toe ring. You've never had a ring. When is the
last time you saw my bare feet?
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Three years ago?
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Since then, I've gotten a toe ring. Why I was drunk.
Some people get tattoos. I don't like pain. I can't
get it off my toe. And it really is did
you not take a hippocratic oath? Fine? I know, Bye?
(00:47):
I just hung up on myself or is it hanged
up from gimblet media. I'm Jonathan Goldstein and this is
heavyweight today's episode Kenny. Like most, when I hear the
(01:18):
words tale of betrayal, I think of Judas narking on, Jesus,
Brutus icing Julius, Satan cucking the Lord. But recently I
heard a story of treachery that not only ranks among those,
it might surpass them. While those stories merely have devils,
this one has something far better. Dare devils. This story
(01:44):
of betrayal takes place in the nineteen seventies, a time
when brave men and women mounted motorcycles or got behind
the wheels of cars to jump anything in their field
of vision. Barrels chuck wagons, cement mixers, Stegmayer beer, truck
pits of rattlesnakes, and dens of mountain lions. This was
a time when jumping a shark didn't mean jumping the shark.
(02:08):
It was a time when daredeviling was not only a
viable career path, it was something your parents could be
proud of. I grew up in the nineteen seventies in
a neighborhood fully infected with daredevil fever. The older kids
would lay us younger kids down on the sidewalk and
(02:28):
jump us with our bicycles, all of us, from the
older kids with bath towels tied to their necks like capes,
to us younger kids with tire tracks across our backs.
We all wanted to be daredevils, and the daredevil we
most wanted to be was Evil Knieval. We ate from
(02:51):
Evil Canevl lunch pails and played with Evil Canevl dolls.
Evil Canievl was Elvis, Captain America and Liberachi all rolled
into one. It seemed like everyone in the world wanted
(03:12):
to be Evil Canieval, but there was one man who
wanted more than that. He wanted to surpass Evil canievel altogether.
That man's name was Ken Carter, aka the Mad Canadian.
Before he was the Mad Canadian, Ken was a grocery
boy with a grade school education. His dream to beat
(03:34):
evil Canevl at his own game is captured in a
nineteen seventies Canadian documentary called The Devil at Your Heels.
The movie opens at a local Halifax racetrack. The crowds
here to watch Ken Carter jump eighteen cars. It's nighttime,
and the crowd cheers wildly as Ken Carter barrels towards
(03:57):
a ramp in a souped up hardtop convertible. Ken doesn't
make it. Instead, he lands with a crash, flat on
top of the last car in line. A man runs
over to pool Ken from the car, I get an ambulance.
(04:21):
Crew arrives and while being carried out on a stretcher,
Ken waves to.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
His fans, okay, take me over to the microphone please.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
The paramedics carry the stretcher over to a microphone, and
while lying injured on his back, Ken makes an announcement, believe.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
Me, We'll be back here to more light.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
At eight o'clock sharp. We'll be back here to more light.
Thank you very much, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Rub on a little Ben Gay, soaked the tootsies and
Ebsen salts, and hit it again the next night, for
three nights every week. This is how Ken Carter makes
his living. But he has plans to change all that.
Ken had been watching Evil Canevel on TV for years
(05:08):
and he wanted what Canieval had, adulation, respect, and a
lot more money. Up until this point, Canevel's biggest stunt
was over the Snake River Canyon, a distance of one
quarter mile. Ken Carter's plan was to jump the Saint
Lawrence River, a distance four times that length a full mile,
(05:35):
by applying a little Canadian elbow grease. Ken Carter was
going to drive a rocket powered Lincoln Continental offer ramp
in Canada and land in the United States, watching the
movie as a Canadian. The idea of flying through the
air in a Lincoln Continental while listening to Gordon Lightfoot
on the eight track player for one mile and landing
(05:56):
in America without so much as a Canadian passport written
attestation as to whether my rocket car contains fruits or
vegetables felt noble. This is my dream. I don't care
if I ever jump again.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
But this I'm going to do.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
This is my dream. Nobody ever jumped a car a mile.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
That's what I'm going to do.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
But right from the jump there are problems. Over and over.
A date for the super jump is set, and over
and over things go wrong. The crew building the ten
story ramp miscalculates the measurements.
Speaker 4 (06:33):
No Ken is deeply disappointed.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
He was dialed into, as he says, he was dialed
in to do it. There's an unexpected rain that turns
the ramp to mud. The crew tries to dry it
off using a helicopter. You know, I'm just coming to
the end of my rope. On another occasion, an hour
before the jump, the crew decides to strike, demanding twenty
seven thousand dollars in cash before going back to work.
(06:56):
I gotta budget here. Fuel tanks explode repeatedly.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Holy christ Man, what are we doing?
Speaker 1 (07:03):
This goes on for five years, again and again and again.
The jump is canceled. Over a million Canadian dollars are spent,
Investors back out and new investors are found. Countless problems
are allayed, doubts are assuaged, gotays are grown, and goatease
are shaved. But then Ken's luck turns, ABC's Wide World
(07:40):
of Sports wants to air Ken's super Jump on live
television for its millions of viewers. Before making the deal official,
the network needs to send an inspector over to the
jump site to report back on the stunt's viability, and
the inspector they send is none other than Evil Canievil.
(08:03):
Once Evil Knievel gives it the go ahead, ABC will
air the jump, and once ABC airs the Jump, Ken
will become an international star and kids will play with
mad Canadian action figures and carry Mad Canadian lunchboxes.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
And it reminds me of the Canyon.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
How much hires this ram another thirty. It should be
noted that while Evil Knevels sports the sideburns of an outlaw,
Ken Carter sports the goatee of an assistant professor. And
while Evil Knievel looks like a rough and tumble movie
matinee idol, Ken Carter at the moment, wearing a leather
jacket and a gold chain around this turtleneck neck, looks
(08:42):
like your best friend's weird uncle in a turtleneck.
Speaker 4 (08:46):
This looks like a dangerous jump to me, boy, you
got no elevation, You got no.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
Room for air.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Later, ABC airs Knievel's verdict. He delivers it while seated
atop a bulldozer at the jump site.
Speaker 4 (09:01):
I don't think i'd attempt to try this stunt. I
think that the time and preparation that's been put into
it is much too little. This is maybe a daredevil
stunt that might end all their devil stunts.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Evil Caneval is essentially saying that if Ken goes through
with this super jump, he'll end up killing himself live
on national television and in doing so, completely ruined the
daredeviling industry for everyone. Ken, sitting on his living room couch,
watches as Evil Canevel tears up his dream on TV.
(09:40):
I've been saying it for years. I still believe that
Evil Knievel's the second best dear devil in the world.
And I say that because I feel it.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
I'm number one.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
So I also feel that if you don't think in
terms of win.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
You do not win.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
ABC was out This was a blow, but not a betrayal.
The actual betrayal was yet to come. Without the promise
of a live televised event, Ken's investors drop out. Desperate,
(10:12):
Ken turns to a group of Hollywood producers who offered
a fund his super jump with a stipulation, a safety net,
if you will, they would distribute it as a pre
recorded special. In this way, the whole huge event would
take place without an audience, a traumatizable, blood splashable, we
want our money backable audience, which meant Ken's dream of
(10:36):
grandstands filled with cheering crowds and tables selling Ken Carter
Onesie's beer, cozies and go take homes would not come true.
All there'd be was a lonely ramp, a small crew,
some cameras, and Ken. Months of delays follow, and finally
a new date for the super jump is set and
(10:57):
once again it rains. But the new investors don't care
about safety. They have limited funds and just want the
jump to happen. The scene opens on the jump site.
We see the ramp, a group of journalists, a man
holding out a boom mic, and then the camera moves
in on a man wearing a yellow jumpsuit and a
(11:18):
cowboy hat.
Speaker 5 (11:19):
All right, the lights are green, and let's get ready
and go.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
I want to go.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
The man in the yellow jumpsuit is not Ken Carter,
but he poses on the ramp and gives quotes to
reporters about the jump he's about to make.
Speaker 4 (11:34):
I always like to stay to New York, so I'm
sure I hope they like me when I get there.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
The man has the same goatee as ken Carter, the
same style of hair, but he's shorter, younger, and brasher.
Speaker 5 (11:45):
All right, guys, my advice to get off the ramp.
Speaker 4 (11:47):
You don't want no tar tracks on you.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
As I watch it all unfold, I grow increasingly confused.
Where's ken Carter? Had I missed something? Was some key
scene accidentally cut? Finally, the voice over informs us that
this yellow suited man is ken Carter's long time understudy,
Kenny Powers. It turns out the investors had begun to
(12:18):
suspect that ken Carter had lost his nerve, that some
excuse was always going to pop up and he would
never make the jump. So they came up with a
scheme simply put ditch ken Carter and place Kenny Powers
behind the wheel of the rocket car have him do
the jump instead. But first they had to get Ken
(12:38):
out of the way, so they invited him to a
fake business meeting at a hotel an hour from the
jump site. With Ken Carter out of the picture, Kenny
Powers steps up, and Kenny Powers really seems to be
enjoying the attention. The countdown was too long. I think
it was too long. Ten second countdown, that's all I need.
I'm not ready in ten seconds.
Speaker 6 (13:00):
I'll never be.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Ready, and I'm gonna give it heil. Kenny warns the
people of America to get ready. Staring into the camera,
he instructs them to clear off their breakfast tables because
when he crashes down on their roofs, it might rattle
the dishes. Kenny Powers gets behind the wheel of the
rocket car, the name Ken Carter emblazoned along its side,
(13:24):
and then the car blasts off, races up the ramp,
and is airborne. Let's press pause here to consider what's happening.
The idea of jumping a mile in a rocket car
is completely insane, But as the car soars into the air,
(13:46):
so soars my heart. It might only attest to what
hopeful creatures we humans are. But in this moment, as
the car reaches top velocity, it seems that Kenny Powers
that humanity might maybe, somehow possibly make it across. But
(14:08):
of course this isn't to be Almost immediately after leaving
the ramp, the car plummets into the river. Debris flies,
parachutes open, someone screams. During his nine second flight, Kenny
Powers made it a total distance of five hundred and
six feet. For our Canadian listeners, that's a lot less
(14:33):
than a mile, Jim Jam. Because the car was built
specifically for Ken Carter, Kenny Powers was too short to
reach the gas pedal, so we never gained enough speed.
Before leaving the ramp, several members of the crew trudged
(14:55):
through the water and pull Kenny Powers from the driver's seat.
As though the spinal injury has yet to be invented,
they carry him from the river atop their shoulders bar
Mitzvah boy style. How Kenny Power says, ow ow later
he'll learn he's broken eight vertebrae, cracked three ribs and
(15:18):
fractured his wrist after the jump. As Kenny Powers lay
bandaged up in a hospital bed, the film's director showed
up outside Ken Carter's hotel room door to tell him
(15:39):
what happened.
Speaker 5 (15:40):
Can what the hell you want?
Speaker 1 (15:43):
But Ken already knows I don't want to talk to you.
Speaker 5 (15:46):
Get out of here.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Eventually, Ken pulls him into the room. Why the camera
crew remains in the hallway recording audio through the hotel door.
Did you know about this fortune?
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Look at him.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
About we fade to black. Then a title card appears
on screen. It reads one year later, Ken is shown
sitting at the base of the ramp. He promises he'll
make the jump someday, and that's it. The credits role.
Some song about the power of a man in his
(16:21):
dream starts to play, and the movie ends without ever
addressing the craziest detail in this whole crazy story. As
it turns out, Kenny Powers, the man who hijack Ken's
car and his lifelong dream, wasn't just Ken Carter's understudy.
Kenny Powers was Ken's best friend. Ken Carter and Kenny
(16:47):
Powers have both since died, So I called Bob Fortier,
the film's director, to see if I could find out more.
When I ask Bob why Kenny would betray his friend,
would ruin the dream Ken had spent so many years chasing.
Bob mentions a drinking problem and rumors that Kenny had
gotten himself into some sort of trouble down in Florida
and was desperate for a way to pay his legal
(17:09):
fees for Bob. The reason for this betrayal is as
classic as they come. Money. The backers offered Kenny a
lot of money to betray his friend, and Kenny took it.
That's just the kind of guy he was, Bob says,
someone who'd betray the guy who'd been supporting him for
ten years. Right at the last moment. After the movie wrapped,
(17:32):
Bob never spoke to Kenny Powers again. Kenny Powers, he says,
isn't the kind of guy you want to keep in
touch with. After the Jump, Kenny Powers was effectively run
out of Canada. One stuntman website even refers to him
as quote Judas in a cowboy hat, and Ken Carter
he went back to his old life of racetrack jumps.
(17:55):
About a year after the Saint Lawrence River Jump, Ken
Carter died attempts to jump a pond. He never achieved
the legacy he'd hungered, after all, because of his supposed
friend Kenny Powers. I watched the failed super Jump over
and over and I'm not the only one to be
(18:20):
transfixed by it. On YouTube. That one scene from the movie,
which has been retitled destroyed in seconds Jet Car Daredevil
has over a million hits. Before that, the jump was
immortalized in The Gruesome Faces of Death Too, a movie
composed of boxing, ring deaths and failed stunts. Ken Carter
(18:40):
had spent years training for his stunt, meticulously planning out
every last detail. As a professional stunt man, Kenny Powers
had to have known the risk of just jumping behind
the wheel like he was dipping out for drive through
chicken nuggets, even for all the money in the world.
He had to have known that trying to fly a
rock car across a mile wide river with absolutely no
(19:03):
training was a death mission. In a bid to better
understand the Daredevil psyche, I bravely jump down a rabbit
hole of Daredevil's subculture. I watched stunt video after stunt video,
and even learned the distinction between daredeviling, stunt manning and
(19:26):
thrill mastering. I read about important industry figures like Spanky
Spangler and Spanky Junior, Lucky Teeter, Calvin Scarecrow, Shirk, big
Ed Beckley, Jim crash Moreau, Stony Roberts, Daredevil, Doug Klang,
Doctor Danger, Mister Dizzy, Cory the Headache Cowl, Froggy Jasper,
the Clown, Walt King, Kovaz Bumps, Willard Risky, Rick Cruz,
(19:49):
Doug Danger, Earl, the Squirrel, Nicky Mighty, Aphrodite mc Burnett,
Don Snake, Prudome Levi, the Kamikaze Kid, Troutman, and Snooks Wenzel.
It's while watching my stunt videos that CEO and Gimblet
Media founder Alex Bloomberg sneaks up behind my desk and
asks what I'm doing research, I say, pausing a video
(20:12):
of a flaming station wagon falling from a drawbridge. I
close the browser window and open up a ted talk
on how to do business, and Alex smiles approvingly. I know, folks,
you're wondering, why do you allow Alex to walk all
over you like this? But I've got a wife and
child now, and podcasting into a chicken drumstick on a
(20:34):
Canadian breadline is the last thing I need at home
that night, a one room, cold water flat with a
screaming baby and a secondhand bassinette. I continue my research,
and somewhere around three am, I stumble upon a video
that defies explanation to.
Speaker 6 (20:55):
Auto thrill seekers across North America, The Mad Canadian and
Your Madness.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
I guess that's the way to call you.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
Well, I'll tell you what you know.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
The video was shot just a few months after the
failed super jump, and Ken Carter is back to working
race tracks. Here he is being interviewed before his stunt.
There's a lot of kids out there watching. Who look
at evil Knieval?
Speaker 6 (21:15):
Look at guys you're like yourself as heroes.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
This is where I spot something unbelievable. Strolling in the
background right behind Ken Carter is the man who betrayed him,
Kenny Powers. Kenny stops, turns to Ken and just watches him, smiling,
and then he walks out of frame and is gone.
(21:46):
I rewind the moment several times.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Who look at evil Knieval, look at guys who look
at evil Knieval, look at guys who look at evil,
look at guys.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
And there Kenny is, as clear as day, a warm
smile on his face, watching Ken Carter admiringly. By all measures,
Ken Carter should have hated Kenny Powers, should have been
trying to hunt him down and beat him up. But
there they were, happily spending a day together at the speedway,
A betrayal as grand as the one we see at
(22:15):
the end of the documentary isn't the kind of thing
you get over, especially not after a couple months, And
so I hop down a new rabbit hole and search
for whatever information I can find about Kenny Powers. According
to the Internet, Ken and Kenny remain friends after the jump.
(22:36):
Not only that, but to quote the Internet, Kenny Powers
carried around an eight x ten photograph of Ken Carter,
taking it everywhere he went, right up until the very
end of his life. Why would Kenny Powers carry around
a photograph of Ken Carter, the man he betrayed. I
promise to answer this question and possibly other questions, if
(23:00):
you promise to patiently sit through these messages from our sponsors.
Speaker 6 (23:17):
Steve Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
To help make sense of Ken and Kenny's relationship, I
reach out to Steve Beelock. Steve knew Ken Carter and
Kenny Powers from the very beginning. For years, he spent
countless hours with them on the road. You're in your
car right now.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
It's all hands free, so I'm good.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Steve also toured in the Mad Canadian Stunt Show as
a mechanic. Back then, he went by the nickname Super Wrench,
named after I assume the tool that professional mechanics use
and not the feeling of sadness caused by a painful
parting because I had limited time for our phone call
and wasn't looking for drama at first.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
It was just me and Cat for the first two years,
going around the country jumping rapped the ramp, and he
was stubborn. He was fair, but he was stubborn.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Steve proceeds to pull back the curtain on the version
of Ken Carter we see in the movie. According to Steve,
he put a lot of pressure on his crew, often
requiring everyone to sleep in the same school bus as
they jumped over. He aggressively booked shows miles apart, and
while his team was forced to drive for days on end,
Ken would fly ahead, arriving at the events in a helicopter.
(24:36):
But in spite of the cushy travel arrangements and his
mister Macho man image, things were getting tougher for Ken.
He was only in his late thirties, but in daredevil years,
Ken was old, his bones more brittle. With each passing year.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
Ken fractured his ankles several several times. That's why I
walk funny. One jump in Tulsa, he landed past the
ramp and split a sternament too when he gets a column,
(25:11):
and when Ken was really hurt, it was when Kenny
Powers would step in.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
When Kenny Powers joined the show, he was a young
guy in his twenties, so as Ken spent more and
more time laid up with injuries, Kenny would step in
to perform for him, to the point where he was
doing more jumps than Ken, but still getting none of
the credit. I wondered if on the day that Kenny
got behind the wheel of that rocket car, he saw
it as a chance to emerge from Ken's shadow and
(25:40):
show the world that he was the better stuntman, because
Steve says, even when Ken was in top form for
a stuntman, he was surprisingly cowardly.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
Ken Carter was never really into speed. Okay, he did
not like going fast.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
Yeah, you know, there's a scene in the in the
documentary where he's taken into that rocket car for the
first time, and when he steps out of the car,
you could see that he kind of has his his
stomach is just in his throat.
Speaker 3 (26:15):
He probably had to change his underwear. I don't know
if you can say that on radio, but lucky.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
For us, we're not on the radio. We're on a podcast,
and so we could do all the cussing and the
fuss and we like butter tart, liking sugarcrotch, kicking spam,
dagger dorkin squacker, poo poo platter with a henous that's right,
rhymes with anus case of the trots. That's just a
few of the things I can say here at Gimlet Media.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
He probably should his pants tell you the truth. He
was scared. I mean, there's no doubt in my mind.
Even when we were in the ramp truck together, he
did not want me driving all over the speed linder whatsoever.
He just not like to go fast.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
You'd think that a need for only the legally acceptable
amount of speed would be a liability for a daredevil.
Not only that, but according to Steve, Ken was even
scared of water. He never learned to swim, so driving
off a ramp at almost three hundred miles per hour
over a deep, fast moving river seemed like an odd
(27:24):
career move.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
I don't think Carter had the cohones to do it.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
So you think that that Kenny Powers had had more
cahonys I do. Steve says that Ken Carter was never
going to attempt that jump, that it was all in act,
nothing more than showmanship.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
I can't believe any other way, only because of being
in the same hotel room with Ken Carter for three
and a half years, knowing the promoting that he did,
knowing him as well as I did, I just don't
think it was his intention to get into that Lincoln.
I don't think it was.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
According to Steve, Ken must have asked Kenny to do
the jump for him, knowing that Kenny would do whatever
Ken told him to, just like he always did. So
to my question of how is it possible that Ken
and Kenny made up and became friends again, Steve's answer
is simple, they were never not friends in the first place.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
And I can just see the conversation going on. Ken's
standing there, going Kenny, you're going to sit in that seat?
Do you think you can do it? And Kenny saying yes,
I think I can. And I truly believe that Kenny
powers did this just out of the love of his
(28:55):
heart for Ken.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
The idea that Kenny had attempted the sun not out
of hatred, but out of love explains everything. Is what
I thought for all of two minutes before realizing it
made no sense at all. Don't get me wrong, I
believe in love and have plenty of it. If a
friend asks me to pick him up at the airport,
while I never do it, I do make a point
(29:19):
of apologizing profusely, really scrunching up my face, as though
my refusal is causing me as much agony as it
is them. I'd even go so far as to say
that this is because my Mama raised me right, but
we all know she hasn't. But even if she had,
going off a ten story ramp only to plummet to
my death because I wanted to do a pal a
(29:41):
solid for that, I'm afraid my heart as well as
my cajones, are far too petit. When I ask Steve
about the photo of Ken that Kenny carried around with him,
he didn't know anything about it, but he says that
Daredevil share a special bond. Well, I could, of course
(30:02):
imagine the love that unites a Spanky Spangler and a
Spanky Jr. Or even Evil Canievel at his Laverda Eagle motorcycle.
This fell deeper, somehow, and more complicated. Kenny nearly died
for Ken. What was the power that Ken exerted over Kenny.
What made Kenny so loyal that he was willing to
speed off a ramp and into oblivion just because he'd
(30:24):
been asked to? To find out, I phoned Beverly powers.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Let me give you the landline where I am because
I'm in the mountains right now.
Speaker 6 (30:34):
Oh sorry, after break speak, the next.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
A love break.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
Hello, Beverly, Yes, let me turn off the television. Oh great, okay,
and the television is all.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
Beverly is Kenny's widow. She grew up in the same
South Carolina town as Kenny. I knew him back when
he was the star halfback on the school football team
when I was in.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
The sixth grade. Kenny was a senior in high school,
and I had a crush on him then, But you know,
he didn't know I existed.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
Years later, after Kenny had already been married seven possibly
eight times, No one seems to be too sure, they
found each other again. Kenny asked Beverly for a ride
home one day and then asked her if she wanted
to stay for Jumbalaya.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
Oh. He was a wonderful cook, and he was a
barber in the Navy. He cut my hair better than
anybody has ever cut my hair in my life. He
should have just stuck to barber and instead of the
stunt man.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
If he had, says Beverly, he'd have avoided all the
pain of the super jump.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
That he received a compensation for his jump was his
paid medical bills.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
And that was it. There was no there was no profit.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
No, Kenny didn't make anythink.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
No, why do you think like he chose to remain
relatively in the background with Ken Carter as the.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
Mean that has always been a mystery to me, because
Kenny had a tape personality that was totally out of
character for Kenny to stay in the background.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
Well, there's a lot Beverly still doesn't understand about Kenny.
Like Steve the mechanic, She's certain that Kenny attempted the
jump not to betray Ken, but to protect him. In
Beverly's telling, the investors were out of money and they
were getting threatening.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Kenny and Ken should have never become involved with these men.
Speaker 6 (32:54):
But what do you mean, I can't.
Speaker 2 (32:56):
It's not something over the final that I could discuss.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
You'd think about that for a while, and so I
thought about it for a while. You're talking about if
I can say over the telephone the mob Oh, so
you're wrong. So Kenny Powers knew someone had to make
that jump, and he also knew that, because of his
(33:25):
youth and physical condition, he stood a better chance of
surviving it than Ken. That's why, according to Beverly, Kenny
decided to step up. But unlike Steve the Mechanics version
of the story, Beverly says there was no secret plan,
no plan at all, just Kenny deciding on his own
spur the moment to help his friend. And if that's true,
(33:49):
Ken's getting angry back at the hotel might have been
less about having the jump stolen out from under him
and more about being scared for Kenny and angry that
Kenny would just up and try something so impetuous. In
the documentary, when we first see Kenny posing beside the ramp,
the voiceover explains that Kenny always wears his back brace
(34:09):
when making jumps, but that day he'd left it behind.
When I first saw the movie, I chalked it up
to vanity that as he enjoyed his moment in the spotlight,
he wouldn't want the brace visible under his tight jumpsuit.
But thinking on it now, how last second. The whole
thing was he probably didn't even have time to put
it on ten second countdown.
Speaker 5 (34:32):
That's all I need.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
I'm not ready in ten seconds.
Speaker 5 (34:35):
I'll never be ready.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
If Kenny had taken any time to consider the insanity
of the jump, he probably wouldn't have been able to
do it. Kenny Powers, standing alone on the ramp in
his yellow jumpsuit and cowboy hat must have been terrified.
Beverly says that Kenny's relationship with Ken was more complicated
(34:59):
than just a special bond between stuntmen. For Kenny, she says,
the story begins much earlier.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
He was always an injured soul because of his abusive upbringing.
He never could escape that as his father was a
binge drinker and his father was often very abusive to him.
He talked about his father swinging around by his testicles,
walks through the air. I think at one instant was
(35:31):
pretty traumatic for him.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
Do you know how old he was.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
It must have been before he was eight years old.
I think he might have gotten things from Ken Carter
that he never got from his father and that he
really needed emotionally, just spending time with him is showing
him affirmation and teaching him things and helping him to
(36:02):
grow is a person and it's professional and making Kenny
feel good about himself. When the car was floating in
the water, even with a broken vertebrae, he was getting
his self out And the first thing that he said,
(36:24):
did I do well? Are you pleased? He wanted to
please people.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
Beverly says that after the failed jump, Ken visited Kenny
in the hospital and that they made amends. And the
thing about the photograph that Kenny carried around in an
eight by ten picture of Ken for the rest of
his life, Beverly says that not only is it true,
but that she gave Kenny a special leather portfolio that
he used to carry it around in everywhere he went.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
He had a briefcase before the end, and he used it,
but he started using another portfolio.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
Were there were there other photos in there that he
had no just Ken Carter's Yes? Why why do you
think that was?
Speaker 2 (37:19):
I guess true love forgives King. He never quit loving Ken.
I who love Ken?
Speaker 1 (37:33):
But in the end, all that love got Kenny powers
was the role of Judas in the Ken Carter life story.
But while most stories of betrayal begin as love stories.
This is the rare tale that ends as one. It
takes guts to risk your life for glory, but it
takes even more guts to risk your life for someone else,
knowing that risk will only lead to obscurity and shame.
(37:57):
A jump that big needs to be fueled by something
bigger than money or the spotlight. The greatest leaps always do.
After the failed super jump, Kenny continued performing stunts on
his own, but he never achieved even a fraction of
(38:19):
the fame and respect that Ken Carter had. In two
thousand and nine, Kenny died and Beverly planned his funeral.
Everyone ate hot dogs and watched videos of Kenny stunts,
and of course they traded their craziest Kenny Power stories.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
Kenny could be hilarious. You never knew what Kenny was
going to do. Kenny had a loaded down mote and
he drove up into a horse barn of one of
his friends and they maybe get it out real quick.
He just never knew what Kenny was going to do.
(38:58):
He had to be there.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
A lot of Kenny Power stories end this way. You
just had to be there. For the time he snuck
up behind a friend at the urinal and kissed him
on the lips, or the time he wore his best
suit to visit the dogs at the town dump. It's
while listening to one after another of these stories that
something occurs to me. It's a crazy thought, but when
I'm compelled to share with Beverly. Did you ever? Did
(39:23):
you ever see this TV show called Eastbound and Down?
Speaker 2 (39:27):
I did? And this is interesting, you asked me. You
cannot tell me the writers did not know my Kini Powers.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
East Bound and Down was a comedy series on HBO.
The main character is a brash, foul mouthed, and washed
up athlete from the South and his name Kenny Powers.
Speaker 5 (39:52):
Come on raising up? Who come on?
Speaker 2 (39:55):
Go too?
Speaker 5 (39:56):
Look at your fucking ball?
Speaker 2 (39:58):
WHI okay, okay? Where he's going to fuck up?
Speaker 1 (40:04):
But it's not just that his name is Kenny Powers.
The TV Kenny Powers macho swagger is eerily similar to
the real Kenny Powers, and so is his physical style,
right down to the goatee.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
There's so many things that he said in that is
just exactly verbatim what Kenny used to say.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
Do you remember what those moments were in the show?
Speaker 2 (40:28):
I don't think I can repeat it.
Speaker 1 (40:30):
Oh, please go ahead, After all, it is a butter
Tartan podcast.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
Oh I don't talk this way, I can. He's say,
Kenny motherfucking Powers. This example, Kenny could use a F
word as a noun, verb, adverb, conjunction, adjective, all in
one sentence, in every sentence of the paragraph, quite effectively.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
I'm not kidding, I'm fucking in and you're fucking out.
I get the fuck out of my chair.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
But just after Kenny did, Yeah, my son and I
used to sit and watch it and laugh it with
just like Kenny Kenny. It was hilarious. It really about comfort.
Speaker 5 (41:14):
To me, the.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
Idea of Beverly sitting on a couch in the days
after Kenny's death and taking solace in the antics of
possibly one of the crudest, most offensive characters in the
history of television was enough to warm my heart and
my researching fingers. I'm looking at the Wikipedia page for
Kenny Powers, the character from Eastbndon Down. Okay, yeah, it
(41:39):
has all of his nicknames here, the Peopil's Champion, the
Shelby Sensation, the man with the Golden d c k
uh doctor. Okay, some of these I can't even I
can't even say something. Even a podcast has its limits.
But as I continue to read, I see that Wikipedia
(41:59):
support it's our theory. The name Kenny Powers, it says,
was inspired by a real life American automotive stuntman in
the nineteen seventies by the same name. But there's no citation,
no way to confirm whether it's true. So before getting
off the phone with Beverly, I promise her I'll deploy
all of my journalistic learnings and all of Alex Bloomberg's
(42:21):
bitcoins to track down the truth. Eventually, I get a
hold of an executive at the production house that makes
eastbounden Down. He forwards my question about the Kenny Powers
character onto the show's creator and star, Danny McBride. The
executive says that mister McBride quote wants to take the
(42:45):
time to formulate a good answer for the next few weeks.
I send emails checking in to see if there's anything
I can report back to Beverly. Even a simple yes
or no would be fine, I say, but I never
get an answer. In the end, I decided to take
mister McBride's unusual response to mean that the real Kenny
(43:05):
Powers did receive a legacy, after all, For what greater
homage can a person be paid than to be immortalized
in a hit TV show in such a way that
there's just enough ambiguity to avoid possible litigation over the
non consensual use of their identity and or likeness.
Speaker 2 (43:25):
I'm Jenny Powers. I don't mean a benu.
Speaker 5 (43:27):
Wayne.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
You have fucking pissed me off, So I'm gonna go
ahead and go. But I'm not gonna stop yelling, because
then that'll mean I lost the fight. I love y'all
very much. Pains out. So maybe, somehow, possibly Kenny Powers
did land that jump into America after all.
Speaker 5 (44:19):
Now that the furnitures returning to its goodwill home, now
that the last month's rent is skeeding with the damage
to poss take this moment to dissolve.
Speaker 6 (44:39):
If we meant it, if we.
Speaker 1 (44:40):
Tried, were felt around for far too.
Speaker 2 (44:47):
Empty from things that accidentally Talk.
Speaker 1 (44:54):
Heavyweight is hosted and produced by me Jonathan Goldstein along
with Khalila Holt. The senior producer is Aitln Roberts, editing
by Jorge Justin Alex Bloomberg. Special thanks to Emily Condon,
Risky Rick Cruz, Cody Glive John Bolton, Freddie Sibley, Anna Sasnowski,
Lee Fordenberry, Tony As mccoppolis, Adam Simansky, Low Ann Leonard,
Dick Keller, Harry Simpson, Gordon Katik, Sayid T, John Thomas,
(45:16):
Blythe Terrell, Jessica of Weisberg, Devin Taylor, and Jackie Cohen.
The show was mixed by Kate Bolinsky, music by John K. Sampson,
Stephen Page and the amazing Christine Fellows. Additional music credits
for this episode can be found on our website, Gimbletmedia
dot com slash Heavyweight. Our theme song is by the
Weaker Than's courtesy of Epitaph Records, and our ad music
(45:37):
is by Hailey Shaw. You can watch the wonderful National
Film Board of Canada documentary The Devil at Your Heels
at NFB dot TA, follow us on Twitter at Heavyweight,
or email us at Heavyweight at gimletmedia dot com. We'll
have a new episode in two weeks
Speaker 5 (45:55):
Sun on in an Empty Room m HM
I have a medical related question. You know my toe ring?
I think, I think maybe yes, I do have a
toe ring. You've never had a ring. When is the
last time you saw my bare feet?
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Three years ago?
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Since then, I've gotten a toe ring. Why I was drunk.
Some people get tattoos. I don't like pain. I can't
get it off my toe. And it really is did
you not take a hippocratic oath? Fine? I know, Bye?
(00:47):
I just hung up on myself or is it hanged
up from gimblet media. I'm Jonathan Goldstein and this is
heavyweight today's episode Kenny. Like most, when I hear the
(01:18):
words tale of betrayal, I think of Judas narking on, Jesus,
Brutus icing Julius, Satan cucking the Lord. But recently I
heard a story of treachery that not only ranks among those,
it might surpass them. While those stories merely have devils,
this one has something far better. Dare devils. This story
(01:44):
of betrayal takes place in the nineteen seventies, a time
when brave men and women mounted motorcycles or got behind
the wheels of cars to jump anything in their field
of vision. Barrels chuck wagons, cement mixers, Stegmayer beer, truck
pits of rattlesnakes, and dens of mountain lions. This was
a time when jumping a shark didn't mean jumping the shark.
(02:08):
It was a time when daredeviling was not only a
viable career path, it was something your parents could be
proud of. I grew up in the nineteen seventies in
a neighborhood fully infected with daredevil fever. The older kids
would lay us younger kids down on the sidewalk and
(02:28):
jump us with our bicycles, all of us, from the
older kids with bath towels tied to their necks like capes,
to us younger kids with tire tracks across our backs.
We all wanted to be daredevils, and the daredevil we
most wanted to be was Evil Knieval. We ate from
(02:51):
Evil Canevl lunch pails and played with Evil Canevl dolls.
Evil Canievl was Elvis, Captain America and Liberachi all rolled
into one. It seemed like everyone in the world wanted
(03:12):
to be Evil Canieval, but there was one man who
wanted more than that. He wanted to surpass Evil canievel altogether.
That man's name was Ken Carter, aka the Mad Canadian.
Before he was the Mad Canadian, Ken was a grocery
boy with a grade school education. His dream to beat
(03:34):
evil Canevl at his own game is captured in a
nineteen seventies Canadian documentary called The Devil at Your Heels.
The movie opens at a local Halifax racetrack. The crowds
here to watch Ken Carter jump eighteen cars. It's nighttime,
and the crowd cheers wildly as Ken Carter barrels towards
(03:57):
a ramp in a souped up hardtop convertible. Ken doesn't
make it. Instead, he lands with a crash, flat on
top of the last car in line. A man runs
over to pool Ken from the car, I get an ambulance.
(04:21):
Crew arrives and while being carried out on a stretcher,
Ken waves to.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
His fans, okay, take me over to the microphone please.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
The paramedics carry the stretcher over to a microphone, and
while lying injured on his back, Ken makes an announcement, believe.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
Me, We'll be back here to more light.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
At eight o'clock sharp. We'll be back here to more light.
Thank you very much, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Rub on a little Ben Gay, soaked the tootsies and
Ebsen salts, and hit it again the next night, for
three nights every week. This is how Ken Carter makes
his living. But he has plans to change all that.
Ken had been watching Evil Canevel on TV for years
(05:08):
and he wanted what Canieval had, adulation, respect, and a
lot more money. Up until this point, Canevel's biggest stunt
was over the Snake River Canyon, a distance of one
quarter mile. Ken Carter's plan was to jump the Saint
Lawrence River, a distance four times that length a full mile,
(05:35):
by applying a little Canadian elbow grease. Ken Carter was
going to drive a rocket powered Lincoln Continental offer ramp
in Canada and land in the United States, watching the
movie as a Canadian. The idea of flying through the
air in a Lincoln Continental while listening to Gordon Lightfoot
on the eight track player for one mile and landing
(05:56):
in America without so much as a Canadian passport written
attestation as to whether my rocket car contains fruits or
vegetables felt noble. This is my dream. I don't care
if I ever jump again.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
But this I'm going to do.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
This is my dream. Nobody ever jumped a car a mile.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
That's what I'm going to do.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
But right from the jump there are problems. Over and over.
A date for the super jump is set, and over
and over things go wrong. The crew building the ten
story ramp miscalculates the measurements.
Speaker 4 (06:33):
No Ken is deeply disappointed.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
He was dialed into, as he says, he was dialed
in to do it. There's an unexpected rain that turns
the ramp to mud. The crew tries to dry it
off using a helicopter. You know, I'm just coming to
the end of my rope. On another occasion, an hour
before the jump, the crew decides to strike, demanding twenty
seven thousand dollars in cash before going back to work.
(06:56):
I gotta budget here. Fuel tanks explode repeatedly.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Holy christ Man, what are we doing?
Speaker 1 (07:03):
This goes on for five years, again and again and again.
The jump is canceled. Over a million Canadian dollars are spent,
Investors back out and new investors are found. Countless problems
are allayed, doubts are assuaged, gotays are grown, and goatease
are shaved. But then Ken's luck turns, ABC's Wide World
(07:40):
of Sports wants to air Ken's super Jump on live
television for its millions of viewers. Before making the deal official,
the network needs to send an inspector over to the
jump site to report back on the stunt's viability, and
the inspector they send is none other than Evil Canievil.
(08:03):
Once Evil Knievel gives it the go ahead, ABC will
air the jump, and once ABC airs the Jump, Ken
will become an international star and kids will play with
mad Canadian action figures and carry Mad Canadian lunchboxes.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
And it reminds me of the Canyon.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
How much hires this ram another thirty. It should be
noted that while Evil Knevels sports the sideburns of an outlaw,
Ken Carter sports the goatee of an assistant professor. And
while Evil Knievel looks like a rough and tumble movie
matinee idol, Ken Carter at the moment, wearing a leather
jacket and a gold chain around this turtleneck neck, looks
(08:42):
like your best friend's weird uncle in a turtleneck.
Speaker 4 (08:46):
This looks like a dangerous jump to me, boy, you
got no elevation, You got no.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
Room for air.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Later, ABC airs Knievel's verdict. He delivers it while seated
atop a bulldozer at the jump site.
Speaker 4 (09:01):
I don't think i'd attempt to try this stunt. I
think that the time and preparation that's been put into
it is much too little. This is maybe a daredevil
stunt that might end all their devil stunts.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Evil Caneval is essentially saying that if Ken goes through
with this super jump, he'll end up killing himself live
on national television and in doing so, completely ruined the
daredeviling industry for everyone. Ken, sitting on his living room couch,
watches as Evil Canevel tears up his dream on TV.
(09:40):
I've been saying it for years. I still believe that
Evil Knievel's the second best dear devil in the world.
And I say that because I feel it.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
I'm number one.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
So I also feel that if you don't think in
terms of win.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
You do not win.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
ABC was out This was a blow, but not a betrayal.
The actual betrayal was yet to come. Without the promise
of a live televised event, Ken's investors drop out. Desperate,
(10:12):
Ken turns to a group of Hollywood producers who offered
a fund his super jump with a stipulation, a safety net,
if you will, they would distribute it as a pre
recorded special. In this way, the whole huge event would
take place without an audience, a traumatizable, blood splashable, we
want our money backable audience, which meant Ken's dream of
(10:36):
grandstands filled with cheering crowds and tables selling Ken Carter
Onesie's beer, cozies and go take homes would not come true.
All there'd be was a lonely ramp, a small crew,
some cameras, and Ken. Months of delays follow, and finally
a new date for the super jump is set and
(10:57):
once again it rains. But the new investors don't care
about safety. They have limited funds and just want the
jump to happen. The scene opens on the jump site.
We see the ramp, a group of journalists, a man
holding out a boom mic, and then the camera moves
in on a man wearing a yellow jumpsuit and a
(11:18):
cowboy hat.
Speaker 5 (11:19):
All right, the lights are green, and let's get ready
and go.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
I want to go.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
The man in the yellow jumpsuit is not Ken Carter,
but he poses on the ramp and gives quotes to
reporters about the jump he's about to make.
Speaker 4 (11:34):
I always like to stay to New York, so I'm
sure I hope they like me when I get there.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
The man has the same goatee as ken Carter, the
same style of hair, but he's shorter, younger, and brasher.
Speaker 5 (11:45):
All right, guys, my advice to get off the ramp.
Speaker 4 (11:47):
You don't want no tar tracks on you.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
As I watch it all unfold, I grow increasingly confused.
Where's ken Carter? Had I missed something? Was some key
scene accidentally cut? Finally, the voice over informs us that
this yellow suited man is ken Carter's long time understudy,
Kenny Powers. It turns out the investors had begun to
(12:18):
suspect that ken Carter had lost his nerve, that some
excuse was always going to pop up and he would
never make the jump. So they came up with a
scheme simply put ditch ken Carter and place Kenny Powers
behind the wheel of the rocket car have him do
the jump instead. But first they had to get Ken
(12:38):
out of the way, so they invited him to a
fake business meeting at a hotel an hour from the
jump site. With Ken Carter out of the picture, Kenny
Powers steps up, and Kenny Powers really seems to be
enjoying the attention. The countdown was too long. I think
it was too long. Ten second countdown, that's all I need.
I'm not ready in ten seconds.
Speaker 6 (13:00):
I'll never be.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Ready, and I'm gonna give it heil. Kenny warns the
people of America to get ready. Staring into the camera,
he instructs them to clear off their breakfast tables because
when he crashes down on their roofs, it might rattle
the dishes. Kenny Powers gets behind the wheel of the
rocket car, the name Ken Carter emblazoned along its side,
(13:24):
and then the car blasts off, races up the ramp,
and is airborne. Let's press pause here to consider what's happening.
The idea of jumping a mile in a rocket car
is completely insane, But as the car soars into the air,
(13:46):
so soars my heart. It might only attest to what
hopeful creatures we humans are. But in this moment, as
the car reaches top velocity, it seems that Kenny Powers
that humanity might maybe, somehow possibly make it across. But
(14:08):
of course this isn't to be Almost immediately after leaving
the ramp, the car plummets into the river. Debris flies,
parachutes open, someone screams. During his nine second flight, Kenny
Powers made it a total distance of five hundred and
six feet. For our Canadian listeners, that's a lot less
(14:33):
than a mile, Jim Jam. Because the car was built
specifically for Ken Carter, Kenny Powers was too short to
reach the gas pedal, so we never gained enough speed.
Before leaving the ramp, several members of the crew trudged
(14:55):
through the water and pull Kenny Powers from the driver's seat.
As though the spinal injury has yet to be invented,
they carry him from the river atop their shoulders bar
Mitzvah boy style. How Kenny Power says, ow ow later
he'll learn he's broken eight vertebrae, cracked three ribs and
(15:18):
fractured his wrist after the jump. As Kenny Powers lay
bandaged up in a hospital bed, the film's director showed
up outside Ken Carter's hotel room door to tell him
(15:39):
what happened.
Speaker 5 (15:40):
Can what the hell you want?
Speaker 1 (15:43):
But Ken already knows I don't want to talk to you.
Speaker 5 (15:46):
Get out of here.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Eventually, Ken pulls him into the room. Why the camera
crew remains in the hallway recording audio through the hotel door.
Did you know about this fortune?
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Look at him.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
About we fade to black. Then a title card appears
on screen. It reads one year later, Ken is shown
sitting at the base of the ramp. He promises he'll
make the jump someday, and that's it. The credits role.
Some song about the power of a man in his
(16:21):
dream starts to play, and the movie ends without ever
addressing the craziest detail in this whole crazy story. As
it turns out, Kenny Powers, the man who hijack Ken's
car and his lifelong dream, wasn't just Ken Carter's understudy.
Kenny Powers was Ken's best friend. Ken Carter and Kenny
(16:47):
Powers have both since died, So I called Bob Fortier,
the film's director, to see if I could find out more.
When I ask Bob why Kenny would betray his friend,
would ruin the dream Ken had spent so many years chasing.
Bob mentions a drinking problem and rumors that Kenny had
gotten himself into some sort of trouble down in Florida
and was desperate for a way to pay his legal
(17:09):
fees for Bob. The reason for this betrayal is as
classic as they come. Money. The backers offered Kenny a
lot of money to betray his friend, and Kenny took it.
That's just the kind of guy he was, Bob says,
someone who'd betray the guy who'd been supporting him for
ten years. Right at the last moment. After the movie wrapped,
(17:32):
Bob never spoke to Kenny Powers again. Kenny Powers, he says,
isn't the kind of guy you want to keep in
touch with. After the Jump, Kenny Powers was effectively run
out of Canada. One stuntman website even refers to him
as quote Judas in a cowboy hat, and Ken Carter
he went back to his old life of racetrack jumps.
(17:55):
About a year after the Saint Lawrence River Jump, Ken
Carter died attempts to jump a pond. He never achieved
the legacy he'd hungered, after all, because of his supposed
friend Kenny Powers. I watched the failed super Jump over
and over and I'm not the only one to be
(18:20):
transfixed by it. On YouTube. That one scene from the movie,
which has been retitled destroyed in seconds Jet Car Daredevil
has over a million hits. Before that, the jump was
immortalized in The Gruesome Faces of Death Too, a movie
composed of boxing, ring deaths and failed stunts. Ken Carter
(18:40):
had spent years training for his stunt, meticulously planning out
every last detail. As a professional stunt man, Kenny Powers
had to have known the risk of just jumping behind
the wheel like he was dipping out for drive through
chicken nuggets, even for all the money in the world.
He had to have known that trying to fly a
rock car across a mile wide river with absolutely no
(19:03):
training was a death mission. In a bid to better
understand the Daredevil psyche, I bravely jump down a rabbit
hole of Daredevil's subculture. I watched stunt video after stunt video,
and even learned the distinction between daredeviling, stunt manning and
(19:26):
thrill mastering. I read about important industry figures like Spanky
Spangler and Spanky Junior, Lucky Teeter, Calvin Scarecrow, Shirk, big
Ed Beckley, Jim crash Moreau, Stony Roberts, Daredevil, Doug Klang,
Doctor Danger, Mister Dizzy, Cory the Headache Cowl, Froggy Jasper,
the Clown, Walt King, Kovaz Bumps, Willard Risky, Rick Cruz,
(19:49):
Doug Danger, Earl, the Squirrel, Nicky Mighty, Aphrodite mc Burnett,
Don Snake, Prudome Levi, the Kamikaze Kid, Troutman, and Snooks Wenzel.
It's while watching my stunt videos that CEO and Gimblet
Media founder Alex Bloomberg sneaks up behind my desk and
asks what I'm doing research, I say, pausing a video
(20:12):
of a flaming station wagon falling from a drawbridge. I
close the browser window and open up a ted talk
on how to do business, and Alex smiles approvingly. I know, folks,
you're wondering, why do you allow Alex to walk all
over you like this? But I've got a wife and
child now, and podcasting into a chicken drumstick on a
(20:34):
Canadian breadline is the last thing I need at home
that night, a one room, cold water flat with a
screaming baby and a secondhand bassinette. I continue my research,
and somewhere around three am, I stumble upon a video
that defies explanation to.
Speaker 6 (20:55):
Auto thrill seekers across North America, The Mad Canadian and
Your Madness.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
I guess that's the way to call you.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
Well, I'll tell you what you know.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
The video was shot just a few months after the
failed super jump, and Ken Carter is back to working
race tracks. Here he is being interviewed before his stunt.
There's a lot of kids out there watching. Who look
at evil Knieval?
Speaker 6 (21:15):
Look at guys you're like yourself as heroes.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
This is where I spot something unbelievable. Strolling in the
background right behind Ken Carter is the man who betrayed him,
Kenny Powers. Kenny stops, turns to Ken and just watches him, smiling,
and then he walks out of frame and is gone.
(21:46):
I rewind the moment several times.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Who look at evil Knieval, look at guys who look
at evil Knieval, look at guys who look at evil,
look at guys.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
And there Kenny is, as clear as day, a warm
smile on his face, watching Ken Carter admiringly. By all measures,
Ken Carter should have hated Kenny Powers, should have been
trying to hunt him down and beat him up. But
there they were, happily spending a day together at the speedway,
A betrayal as grand as the one we see at
(22:15):
the end of the documentary isn't the kind of thing
you get over, especially not after a couple months, And
so I hop down a new rabbit hole and search
for whatever information I can find about Kenny Powers. According
to the Internet, Ken and Kenny remain friends after the jump.
(22:36):
Not only that, but to quote the Internet, Kenny Powers
carried around an eight x ten photograph of Ken Carter,
taking it everywhere he went, right up until the very
end of his life. Why would Kenny Powers carry around
a photograph of Ken Carter, the man he betrayed. I
promise to answer this question and possibly other questions, if
(23:00):
you promise to patiently sit through these messages from our sponsors.
Speaker 6 (23:17):
Steve Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
To help make sense of Ken and Kenny's relationship, I
reach out to Steve Beelock. Steve knew Ken Carter and
Kenny Powers from the very beginning. For years, he spent
countless hours with them on the road. You're in your
car right now.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
It's all hands free, so I'm good.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Steve also toured in the Mad Canadian Stunt Show as
a mechanic. Back then, he went by the nickname Super Wrench,
named after I assume the tool that professional mechanics use
and not the feeling of sadness caused by a painful
parting because I had limited time for our phone call
and wasn't looking for drama at first.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
It was just me and Cat for the first two years,
going around the country jumping rapped the ramp, and he
was stubborn. He was fair, but he was stubborn.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Steve proceeds to pull back the curtain on the version
of Ken Carter we see in the movie. According to Steve,
he put a lot of pressure on his crew, often
requiring everyone to sleep in the same school bus as
they jumped over. He aggressively booked shows miles apart, and
while his team was forced to drive for days on end,
Ken would fly ahead, arriving at the events in a helicopter.
(24:36):
But in spite of the cushy travel arrangements and his
mister Macho man image, things were getting tougher for Ken.
He was only in his late thirties, but in daredevil years,
Ken was old, his bones more brittle. With each passing year.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
Ken fractured his ankles several several times. That's why I
walk funny. One jump in Tulsa, he landed past the
ramp and split a sternament too when he gets a column,
(25:11):
and when Ken was really hurt, it was when Kenny
Powers would step in.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
When Kenny Powers joined the show, he was a young
guy in his twenties, so as Ken spent more and
more time laid up with injuries, Kenny would step in
to perform for him, to the point where he was
doing more jumps than Ken, but still getting none of
the credit. I wondered if on the day that Kenny
got behind the wheel of that rocket car, he saw
it as a chance to emerge from Ken's shadow and
(25:40):
show the world that he was the better stuntman, because
Steve says, even when Ken was in top form for
a stuntman, he was surprisingly cowardly.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
Ken Carter was never really into speed. Okay, he did
not like going fast.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
Yeah, you know, there's a scene in the in the
documentary where he's taken into that rocket car for the
first time, and when he steps out of the car,
you could see that he kind of has his his
stomach is just in his throat.
Speaker 3 (26:15):
He probably had to change his underwear. I don't know
if you can say that on radio, but lucky.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
For us, we're not on the radio. We're on a podcast,
and so we could do all the cussing and the
fuss and we like butter tart, liking sugarcrotch, kicking spam,
dagger dorkin squacker, poo poo platter with a henous that's right,
rhymes with anus case of the trots. That's just a
few of the things I can say here at Gimlet Media.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
He probably should his pants tell you the truth. He
was scared. I mean, there's no doubt in my mind.
Even when we were in the ramp truck together, he
did not want me driving all over the speed linder whatsoever.
He just not like to go fast.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
You'd think that a need for only the legally acceptable
amount of speed would be a liability for a daredevil.
Not only that, but according to Steve, Ken was even
scared of water. He never learned to swim, so driving
off a ramp at almost three hundred miles per hour
over a deep, fast moving river seemed like an odd
(27:24):
career move.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
I don't think Carter had the cohones to do it.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
So you think that that Kenny Powers had had more
cahonys I do. Steve says that Ken Carter was never
going to attempt that jump, that it was all in act,
nothing more than showmanship.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
I can't believe any other way, only because of being
in the same hotel room with Ken Carter for three
and a half years, knowing the promoting that he did,
knowing him as well as I did, I just don't
think it was his intention to get into that Lincoln.
I don't think it was.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
According to Steve, Ken must have asked Kenny to do
the jump for him, knowing that Kenny would do whatever
Ken told him to, just like he always did. So
to my question of how is it possible that Ken
and Kenny made up and became friends again, Steve's answer
is simple, they were never not friends in the first place.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
And I can just see the conversation going on. Ken's
standing there, going Kenny, you're going to sit in that seat?
Do you think you can do it? And Kenny saying yes,
I think I can. And I truly believe that Kenny
powers did this just out of the love of his
(28:55):
heart for Ken.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
The idea that Kenny had attempted the sun not out
of hatred, but out of love explains everything. Is what
I thought for all of two minutes before realizing it
made no sense at all. Don't get me wrong, I
believe in love and have plenty of it. If a
friend asks me to pick him up at the airport,
while I never do it, I do make a point
(29:19):
of apologizing profusely, really scrunching up my face, as though
my refusal is causing me as much agony as it
is them. I'd even go so far as to say
that this is because my Mama raised me right, but
we all know she hasn't. But even if she had,
going off a ten story ramp only to plummet to
my death because I wanted to do a pal a
(29:41):
solid for that, I'm afraid my heart as well as
my cajones, are far too petit. When I ask Steve
about the photo of Ken that Kenny carried around with him,
he didn't know anything about it, but he says that
Daredevil share a special bond. Well, I could, of course
(30:02):
imagine the love that unites a Spanky Spangler and a
Spanky Jr. Or even Evil Canievel at his Laverda Eagle motorcycle.
This fell deeper, somehow, and more complicated. Kenny nearly died
for Ken. What was the power that Ken exerted over Kenny.
What made Kenny so loyal that he was willing to
speed off a ramp and into oblivion just because he'd
(30:24):
been asked to? To find out, I phoned Beverly powers.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Let me give you the landline where I am because
I'm in the mountains right now.
Speaker 6 (30:34):
Oh sorry, after break speak, the next.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
A love break.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
Hello, Beverly, Yes, let me turn off the television. Oh great, okay,
and the television is all.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
Beverly is Kenny's widow. She grew up in the same
South Carolina town as Kenny. I knew him back when
he was the star halfback on the school football team
when I was in.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
The sixth grade. Kenny was a senior in high school,
and I had a crush on him then, But you know,
he didn't know I existed.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
Years later, after Kenny had already been married seven possibly
eight times, No one seems to be too sure, they
found each other again. Kenny asked Beverly for a ride
home one day and then asked her if she wanted
to stay for Jumbalaya.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
Oh. He was a wonderful cook, and he was a
barber in the Navy. He cut my hair better than
anybody has ever cut my hair in my life. He
should have just stuck to barber and instead of the
stunt man.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
If he had, says Beverly, he'd have avoided all the
pain of the super jump.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
That he received a compensation for his jump was his
paid medical bills.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
And that was it. There was no there was no profit.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
No, Kenny didn't make anythink.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
No, why do you think like he chose to remain
relatively in the background with Ken Carter as the.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
Mean that has always been a mystery to me, because
Kenny had a tape personality that was totally out of
character for Kenny to stay in the background.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
Well, there's a lot Beverly still doesn't understand about Kenny.
Like Steve the mechanic, She's certain that Kenny attempted the
jump not to betray Ken, but to protect him. In
Beverly's telling, the investors were out of money and they
were getting threatening.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Kenny and Ken should have never become involved with these men.
Speaker 6 (32:54):
But what do you mean, I can't.
Speaker 2 (32:56):
It's not something over the final that I could discuss.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
You'd think about that for a while, and so I
thought about it for a while. You're talking about if
I can say over the telephone the mob Oh, so
you're wrong. So Kenny Powers knew someone had to make
that jump, and he also knew that, because of his
(33:25):
youth and physical condition, he stood a better chance of
surviving it than Ken. That's why, according to Beverly, Kenny
decided to step up. But unlike Steve the Mechanics version
of the story, Beverly says there was no secret plan,
no plan at all, just Kenny deciding on his own
spur the moment to help his friend. And if that's true,
(33:49):
Ken's getting angry back at the hotel might have been
less about having the jump stolen out from under him
and more about being scared for Kenny and angry that
Kenny would just up and try something so impetuous. In
the documentary, when we first see Kenny posing beside the ramp,
the voiceover explains that Kenny always wears his back brace
(34:09):
when making jumps, but that day he'd left it behind.
When I first saw the movie, I chalked it up
to vanity that as he enjoyed his moment in the spotlight,
he wouldn't want the brace visible under his tight jumpsuit.
But thinking on it now, how last second. The whole
thing was he probably didn't even have time to put
it on ten second countdown.
Speaker 5 (34:32):
That's all I need.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
I'm not ready in ten seconds.
Speaker 5 (34:35):
I'll never be ready.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
If Kenny had taken any time to consider the insanity
of the jump, he probably wouldn't have been able to
do it. Kenny Powers, standing alone on the ramp in
his yellow jumpsuit and cowboy hat must have been terrified.
Beverly says that Kenny's relationship with Ken was more complicated
(34:59):
than just a special bond between stuntmen. For Kenny, she says,
the story begins much earlier.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
He was always an injured soul because of his abusive upbringing.
He never could escape that as his father was a
binge drinker and his father was often very abusive to him.
He talked about his father swinging around by his testicles,
walks through the air. I think at one instant was
(35:31):
pretty traumatic for him.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
Do you know how old he was.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
It must have been before he was eight years old.
I think he might have gotten things from Ken Carter
that he never got from his father and that he
really needed emotionally, just spending time with him is showing
him affirmation and teaching him things and helping him to
(36:02):
grow is a person and it's professional and making Kenny
feel good about himself. When the car was floating in
the water, even with a broken vertebrae, he was getting
his self out And the first thing that he said,
(36:24):
did I do well? Are you pleased? He wanted to
please people.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
Beverly says that after the failed jump, Ken visited Kenny
in the hospital and that they made amends. And the
thing about the photograph that Kenny carried around in an
eight by ten picture of Ken for the rest of
his life, Beverly says that not only is it true,
but that she gave Kenny a special leather portfolio that
he used to carry it around in everywhere he went.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
He had a briefcase before the end, and he used it,
but he started using another portfolio.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
Were there were there other photos in there that he
had no just Ken Carter's Yes? Why why do you
think that was?
Speaker 2 (37:19):
I guess true love forgives King. He never quit loving Ken.
I who love Ken?
Speaker 1 (37:33):
But in the end, all that love got Kenny powers
was the role of Judas in the Ken Carter life story.
But while most stories of betrayal begin as love stories.
This is the rare tale that ends as one. It
takes guts to risk your life for glory, but it
takes even more guts to risk your life for someone else,
knowing that risk will only lead to obscurity and shame.
(37:57):
A jump that big needs to be fueled by something
bigger than money or the spotlight. The greatest leaps always do.
After the failed super jump, Kenny continued performing stunts on
his own, but he never achieved even a fraction of
(38:19):
the fame and respect that Ken Carter had. In two
thousand and nine, Kenny died and Beverly planned his funeral.
Everyone ate hot dogs and watched videos of Kenny stunts,
and of course they traded their craziest Kenny Power stories.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
Kenny could be hilarious. You never knew what Kenny was
going to do. Kenny had a loaded down mote and
he drove up into a horse barn of one of
his friends and they maybe get it out real quick.
He just never knew what Kenny was going to do.
(38:58):
He had to be there.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
A lot of Kenny Power stories end this way. You
just had to be there. For the time he snuck
up behind a friend at the urinal and kissed him
on the lips, or the time he wore his best
suit to visit the dogs at the town dump. It's
while listening to one after another of these stories that
something occurs to me. It's a crazy thought, but when
I'm compelled to share with Beverly. Did you ever? Did
(39:23):
you ever see this TV show called Eastbound and Down?
Speaker 2 (39:27):
I did? And this is interesting, you asked me. You
cannot tell me the writers did not know my Kini Powers.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
East Bound and Down was a comedy series on HBO.
The main character is a brash, foul mouthed, and washed
up athlete from the South and his name Kenny Powers.
Speaker 5 (39:52):
Come on raising up? Who come on?
Speaker 2 (39:55):
Go too?
Speaker 5 (39:56):
Look at your fucking ball?
Speaker 2 (39:58):
WHI okay, okay? Where he's going to fuck up?
Speaker 1 (40:04):
But it's not just that his name is Kenny Powers.
The TV Kenny Powers macho swagger is eerily similar to
the real Kenny Powers, and so is his physical style,
right down to the goatee.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
There's so many things that he said in that is
just exactly verbatim what Kenny used to say.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
Do you remember what those moments were in the show?
Speaker 2 (40:28):
I don't think I can repeat it.
Speaker 1 (40:30):
Oh, please go ahead, After all, it is a butter
Tartan podcast.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
Oh I don't talk this way, I can. He's say,
Kenny motherfucking Powers. This example, Kenny could use a F
word as a noun, verb, adverb, conjunction, adjective, all in
one sentence, in every sentence of the paragraph, quite effectively.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
I'm not kidding, I'm fucking in and you're fucking out.
I get the fuck out of my chair.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
But just after Kenny did, Yeah, my son and I
used to sit and watch it and laugh it with
just like Kenny Kenny. It was hilarious. It really about comfort.
Speaker 5 (41:14):
To me, the.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
Idea of Beverly sitting on a couch in the days
after Kenny's death and taking solace in the antics of
possibly one of the crudest, most offensive characters in the
history of television was enough to warm my heart and
my researching fingers. I'm looking at the Wikipedia page for
Kenny Powers, the character from Eastbndon Down. Okay, yeah, it
(41:39):
has all of his nicknames here, the Peopil's Champion, the
Shelby Sensation, the man with the Golden d c k
uh doctor. Okay, some of these I can't even I
can't even say something. Even a podcast has its limits.
But as I continue to read, I see that Wikipedia
(41:59):
support it's our theory. The name Kenny Powers, it says,
was inspired by a real life American automotive stuntman in
the nineteen seventies by the same name. But there's no citation,
no way to confirm whether it's true. So before getting
off the phone with Beverly, I promise her I'll deploy
all of my journalistic learnings and all of Alex Bloomberg's
(42:21):
bitcoins to track down the truth. Eventually, I get a
hold of an executive at the production house that makes
eastbounden Down. He forwards my question about the Kenny Powers
character onto the show's creator and star, Danny McBride. The
executive says that mister McBride quote wants to take the
(42:45):
time to formulate a good answer for the next few weeks.
I send emails checking in to see if there's anything
I can report back to Beverly. Even a simple yes
or no would be fine, I say, but I never
get an answer. In the end, I decided to take
mister McBride's unusual response to mean that the real Kenny
(43:05):
Powers did receive a legacy, after all, For what greater
homage can a person be paid than to be immortalized
in a hit TV show in such a way that
there's just enough ambiguity to avoid possible litigation over the
non consensual use of their identity and or likeness.
Speaker 2 (43:25):
I'm Jenny Powers. I don't mean a benu.
Speaker 5 (43:27):
Wayne.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
You have fucking pissed me off, So I'm gonna go
ahead and go. But I'm not gonna stop yelling, because
then that'll mean I lost the fight. I love y'all
very much. Pains out. So maybe, somehow, possibly Kenny Powers
did land that jump into America after all.
Speaker 5 (44:19):
Now that the furnitures returning to its goodwill home, now
that the last month's rent is skeeding with the damage
to poss take this moment to dissolve.
Speaker 6 (44:39):
If we meant it, if we.
Speaker 1 (44:40):
Tried, were felt around for far too.
Speaker 2 (44:47):
Empty from things that accidentally Talk.
Speaker 1 (44:54):
Heavyweight is hosted and produced by me Jonathan Goldstein along
with Khalila Holt. The senior producer is Aitln Roberts, editing
by Jorge Justin Alex Bloomberg. Special thanks to Emily Condon,
Risky Rick Cruz, Cody Glive John Bolton, Freddie Sibley, Anna Sasnowski,
Lee Fordenberry, Tony As mccoppolis, Adam Simansky, Low Ann Leonard,
Dick Keller, Harry Simpson, Gordon Katik, Sayid T, John Thomas,
(45:16):
Blythe Terrell, Jessica of Weisberg, Devin Taylor, and Jackie Cohen.
The show was mixed by Kate Bolinsky, music by John K. Sampson,
Stephen Page and the amazing Christine Fellows. Additional music credits
for this episode can be found on our website, Gimbletmedia
dot com slash Heavyweight. Our theme song is by the
Weaker Than's courtesy of Epitaph Records, and our ad music
(45:37):
is by Hailey Shaw. You can watch the wonderful National
Film Board of Canada documentary The Devil at Your Heels
at NFB dot TA, follow us on Twitter at Heavyweight,
or email us at Heavyweight at gimletmedia dot com. We'll
have a new episode in two weeks
Speaker 5 (45:55):
Sun on in an Empty Room m HM
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