We meet Philippe Petit, a French wire-walker, magician, unicyclist and street performer, who tells us he was sitting in a dentist's office when …show more content…
Marsh is dealing with an event almost 30 years old, and when he shows the same people at two stages of their lives, I assume either the younger or the older one is the actor, but I couldn't always be sure which. Philippe Petit is himself, both now and then, speaking fluent English, excited, passionate, voluble.
Even as a child, he liked to climb things. No telling why. He taught himself to walk on a wire, practiced endlessly, dreamed of conquering the clouds. He rehearsed on wire strung up in country fields. His first great feat was to walk on a wire between the two bell towers of Notre Dame. Then he walked between the towers of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in Australia. As the World Trade Center was growing, so were his ambitions.
He never just "walked" on a wire. He lay down, knelt, juggled, ran. Every wire presented its own problems, and in rehearsing for the WTC, he built a wire the same distance in France. To simulate the winds, the movements of the buildings and the torsion of the wire, he had friends jiggle his wire, trying to toss him off. His balance was flawless. He explains how a wire can move: Up and down, sideways, laterally, and it also can sometimes