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Lyons Township man enjoys both of his dangerous careers

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Photo by Terry Mayer

Mark Harper, part-time stunt man, smiles with Bruce Wayne’s Bid, one of the horses at his home in Lyons Township. Both Harper and the horse appeared in the 2005 movie “Batman Begins.”

Mark Harper, part-time stunt man and Lyons resident dangles last on the rope in a scene from "The Dark Knight." Stephen Vaughan/Warner Bros.

Watch stunt video from "The Dark Knight" HERE.

LYONS TOWNSHIP -- Lots of people have second jobs, but most don’t have to fall out of a Chicago high-rise to make some extra cash.

Then again, most people with second jobs aren’t stunt performers.

Mark Harper of Lyons Township has been a firefighter for the past 29 years and a stuntman and stunt rigger for the past 20.

In addition to working full-time as a fire captain in northern Illinois, Harper averages two motion pictures per year. He’s also done a number of TV series and commercial spots.

Maybe you saw him fall out of a bus for Alaskan Airlines, or maybe you saw him save that old lady by rappelling into a burning building on “Early Edition,” a TV series, featuring actor Kyle Chandler.

If you catch the remake of “Nightmare on Elm Street” in theaters this spring, you won’t see him. But when Freddy Krueger’s face is fully engulfed in flames, he’ll be right next to him, just out of the frame.

“I put Freddie’s fire out,” Harper said. “I did some car chases, too.”

But the crowning piece in Harper’s stable of stunts was his work on “The Dark Knight.”

In a climactic scene, five SWAT team members are yanked off the 42nd floor of an under-construction skyscraper with help from the Caped Crusader.

Watch it in slow motion and you’ll see Harper. He’s the last guy to fall.

“I was the fattest, oldest, most disposable guy so I had to be last,” Harper said, adding that for reasons of physics, the five stuntmen left the building in weight order.

Read the full story in the Nov. 15 e-edition of Walworth County Sunday, HERE.