from magnolia pictures: On August 7th 1974, a young Frenchman named Philippe Petit stepped out on a wire illegally rigged between New York's twin towers, then the world's tallest buildings. After nearly an hour dancing on the wire, he was arrested, taken for psychological evaluation, and brought to jail before he was finally released.
Following six and a half years of dreaming of the towers, Petit spent eight months in New York City planning the execution of the coup. Aided by a team of friends and accomplices, Petit was faced with numerous extraordinary challenges: he had to find a way to bypass the WTC's security; smuggle the heavy steel cable and rigging equipment into the towers; pass the wire between the two rooftops; anchor the wire and tension it to withstand the winds and the swaying of the buildings. The rigging was done by night in complete secrecy. At 7:15 AM, Philippe took his first step on the high wire 1,350 feet above the sidewalks of Manhattan...
James Marsh's documentary brings Petit's extraordinary adventure to life through the testimony of Philippe himself, and some of the co-conspirators who helped him create the unique and magnificent spectacle that became known as "the artistic crime of the century."
'man on wire' omits 9/11 tragedy
from bbc: The director of a film about the Frenchman who wire-walked between the Twin Towers in 1974 explains why 9/11 plays no part in his documentary. French tightrope walker Philippe Petit audaciously crossed from one tower to the other on the morning of 7 August, 1974. That never-to-be-repeated feat has now inspired a feature-length documentary, Man on Wire, in which Petit and his co-conspirators detail the planning and execution of their remarkable coup. One thing absent from the film, though, is the World Trade Center's eventual fate, destroyed by hijacked planes in a terrorist attack on on 11 September, 2001. But it was a move the film's British director James Marsh calls "an easy choice to make"."What Philippe did was incredibly beautiful," he explains. "It may have been illegal, but it was not in any way destructive. It would be unfair and wrong to infect his story with any mention, discussion or imagery of the Towers being destroyed."
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