A Hollywood stuntman who will perform at the Al Ain Aerobatic Show this month has cautioned aspiring UAE stunt drivers he had seen on the video-sharing website YouTube. While Mark Hager said he had been very impressed by the videos and would like to see the drivers perform professionally, they should not be doing it on major motorways. "We love it. Not that we encourage them to be doing it on the motorway, but we love the passion for driving excellence," said Hager, one of the first stunt drivers to take explosions and car jumps to air shows. "We should be hiring these guys here in the USA."
He said the talent and passion for risky car driving is clearly present, but local drivers who were uploading clips of "drifting" needed a place to hone their skills professionally and safely. "People have to learn that this is a job," Hager said. "You don't do it for kicks and a laugh. If people there have the skill set then they can learn to do it in a professional manner, without risking their lives." Hager will be performing car jumps and staged police chases amid pyrotechnics at Al Ain International Airport from Jan 28 to 31.
This will be the first time he has performed in the Middle East. "This is an incredible career. What a privilege it is to go to the UAE and show people who might never have seen this kind of stuff." Hager performs as part of a six-man stunt group that includes two car drivers, two motorcyclists and two pyrotechnic specialists. While Hager is vocal about his love of stunt work, he is also a keen advocate of safety. In his 20-year career, he has had six accidents. In 2007, he was nearly killed in a stunt that went wrong.
A section of ground had not been prepared properly and when his car revved up and on to a ramp, it swerved out of control. Hager landed directly on the ground, rather than a "cushion" of discarded cars. He survived because his stunt car had a reinforced steel body and was equipped with a special seat and seat belts, but the impact broke his back and doctors gave him a five per cent chance of walking again. "When you work as a professional stuntman, you are always pushing beyond your boundaries and sometimes accidents can and do happen," Hager said.
"It was like taking a step from a five-storey building and landing straight on the ground. "It was one of those things, that you think you've crossed every 't' and dotted every 'i', and one thing like a bump in the road and an accident happens." Hager said he did not work for more than a year after that accident as he learnt how to walk all over again. Afterwards he started doing professional driving in commercials for Honda, Toyota and Lincoln Mercury. "I retired from doing car crashes. That was hard because it was my passion. "I've wrecked over 800 cars in my years. Now we're about pushing cars to their limits, without destroying them." But Hager said he had not refrained from using all of the show-stoppers. The show in Al Ain will be entirely new and he said he hoped the audience would appreciate the work, which will include a head-on stunt with an aircraft, drifting and, "we will definitely blow stuff up." jgerson@thenational.ae