Man on Wire

On the morning of August 7th 1974, the French tightrope walker Philippe Petit rigged a 7/8" cable between the two towers of the World Trade Center using a high-powered crossbow and began his first of eight one hundred-story crossings. Petit and the friend who helped him rig the apparatus were soon escorted back down the WTC's winding one thousand foot starewell by a peeved pair of New York City police officers. Man on Wire, a recent documentary film, reassembles the story behind this marvelous feat and the ensuing controversy. If the police had a hard time coaxing Petit back to the building's edge, it wasn't necessarily because the high wire artist was afraid of being incarcerated (footage of him at the police station shows him goofing off with circus clown gags, such as balancing his black bowler hat on his nose--a picturesque image in black and white). No, Petit had "fallen in love" with the buildings, as he passionately discloses to Kurt Anderson in a recent interview featured on Studio 360.