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Kenny Powers: Wrong Man, Right Time
The search for Kenny Powers, the man who attempted to jump the St. Lawrence Seaway in a rocket-powered Lincoln.
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THE PRODUCER
Adam Symansky
“This was a long time ago,” Adam Symansky says when I ask him about The Devil at Your Heels. Symansky is still a producer at the National Film Board of Canada. Even though he is mired in postproduction for a film, he takes the time to call from Montreal to talk about the Super Jump, sometimes speaking at a frenetic pace.
“The director was following Ken Carter for seven years,” Symansky says. “I was brought in by the Film Board four years into the production, mainly to finish it, but the footage was too interesting.” He says it’s still one of his favorite projects at the Film Board. “Most of the work we do is serious,” he says. “That’s one of the reasons they wanted to get this movie finished. The
Film Board didn’t think we should be doing this film anyway.”
There were several false starts and delays on the stunt, mostly in the construction of the ramp and the rocket-powered car, which pushed the stunt back by months and years each time. But at the start of October 1979, everything seemed to be in order for Carter to make the jump. Then the financial backers ran out of money to pay for the rocket fuel needed for the Continental. Production halted on the very day of the stunt, as Carter waited for money to arrive.
“The sky got darker and darker,” Symansky explains. “The Montreal police had blocked off that section of the St. Lawrence Seaway. There were usually cargo ships that went through that area. We had helicopters. But then night fell, and we packed up and went home. And I thought that was it.”
But that night, Symansky got a call: The jump was back on. However, when he arrived for the shoot the next day, Carter wasn’t there—Powers was.
“Who exactly is Kenny Powers?” I ask. There is barely any record of him, other than the YouTube video and a couple of stories about the stunt in The New York Times, which dates the actual jump on October 5, 1979. Symansky tells me that Powers “was part of the Carter entourage. Kenny was there the whole time. He was sort of an understudy.”
Symansky asks me to verify the following story: “Ken Carter had chickened out. The promoters didn’t think he would ever do the jump. And Powers was up on manslaughter charges in Florida, I think. As the story goes, the backers had underworld connections, and they told Kenny Powers that they would pay for all hospital bills and help him out with the charges in Florida—they may have been assault charges. Anyway, he had stabbed someone.”
The story was getting even more interesting. Symansky explains why the jump failed. “The ramp was very bumpy,” he says. “That was why Carter was nervous. He was afraid the ramp would shake the car apart. And that’s the reason why the backers thought Carter would never do the jump. It was a bumpy ramp. If you look at the movie, Powers goes to the top of the ramp, and he’s barely 100 feet off it when the car comes apart. The parachutes come out.
“The thing was the car was designed to fit Carter’s body,” Symansky continues. “It’s like a racecar. Carter was significantly taller than Powers. Powers couldn’t keep his foot on the gas pedal. The car landed on the mudflats on the banks of the river. Powers broke some vertebrae,” Symansky says, adding the backers lived up to their word—they paid for the hospital bills. “That was the last I heard of Kenny Powers.”
Thats a really cool story...keep on it!
Cool...and whacky. NFB has many (all?) of their films available online. http://www.nfb.ca/film/devil_at_your_heels/
Great video, cool concept, terrible engineering.
A real Kenny Powers who was into cars. Love it.
Kenny Powers died in 2009. http://www.tptrash.com/regal/viewtopic.php?p=72982&sid=8181544cde4292a2c9099f58fe9e23fe
I tried for years to contact Kenny Powers, and called different race tracks in the south. I came close but never did have a chance to talk to him. I did however talk in length to Jim Deist (parachute safety) and he said the whole thing was a "scary sitiuation". I have a bunch of Ken Carter collectables and like the author says many cold leads.
Hi Andrew, I'm doing some research about Ken Carter and would love to know what kind of collectibles you have? If you happen upon this, please contact me! Bookerthe4th@gmail.com
My nickname is Butch and I am the brother of Ken Carter. I'll talk to ya. 514-895-7045
The car should have been tested in a wind tunnel. Iwas in the Air force, and setting "trim" on an airplane is very precise. There's all kinds of aerodynamic things that can go wrong, even the rotating engine and wheels can cause gyroscopic inertial effects (that's why motorcycles stay upright, because of the spinning wheels). We spend years designing and testing new jet planes, and even then lots of things go wrong before the bugs are worked out. The car seemed to "pitch up" as it left the ramp due to the force of air beneath the undercarriage. It was not designed to fly, you'd need computerized, movable wind vanes or fins to stabilize it during flight, like they have on the B-2 bomber. Just make a simple paper airplane and try to throw it straight--you'd have to bend the paper here and there through trial and error to set it's trim before it flies straight and level. Yeah, we need flying cars.
ha! thats my hometown!
[...] How Kenny ended up on the ramp is cooler than the video. It’s a 3 minute read that I linked for you here. [...]
i have the video "the devil at your heels". it was shown on australian abc television back in about 91. they also released the video for purchase which i bought. it was actually shown on a comedy programme late at night. the guys hosting the show were looking for really bad movies and documentaries for a laugh . this was so funny they bought the rights so they could show it. you could see that the makers of the movie were taking the piss out of him even asking him at one stage "ken do you think your sane". the way he always talked about himself in the second third and fourth persons. every time some one tries to use an "idiom" to make an impressive point always get them completely wrong. i loved how slamin sammy miller was more focused on the backers money than safety. he wanted ken carter off that ramp as soon as he could he didnt seem to care if he died. ken carter loses his nerve so much that all you could hear toward the end of the film when he was training and visualising for the jump was "i'm listening for the word ABORT". the guys who were putting the car together tested the fuel tank on the car and blew the front end off. then attempting another two times to get the fuel tank to work (both times exploding) they do a runner. i love the interview for the wide world of sport when ken's talking to evel. it seems someone calling a person evel. the list goes on. there is so many golden comedy moments in this film, its too good you couldnt write this stuff. ken carter is one of my greatest heros because it shows you even a complete #$ck up can rob the rich on this hair brained scheme.