I just saw the excellent documentary Man on Wire last weekend about Philippe Petit’s daring tight-rope walk between the two towers of the World Trade Center in 1974. Petit, a Parisian street performer, juggler, and high-wire artist, obsessed for six years on his dream to rig a wire between the roofs of the two buildings almost 1/4 mile above the street and walk across it. With the elaborate planning of a bank heist, he studied the towers, devised a method to rig the wire, and sneak his team and equipment into place. And then he did it. And it was spectacular.
We are drawn to people with the vision, determination, and skill to accomplish great things. Petit is a Howard Roark… or a Howard Hughes. But like Roark and Hughes, Petit also comes off as crazy and narcissistic. Does great achievement require some amount of insanity? The right amount of obsessive compulsive disorder might help provide the focus and drive to do something extraordinary.
And like Roark and Hughes, people might doubt the true worth of Petit’s accomplishments. In the movie he’s asked why he went to all this effort to walk on a tight-rope between the twin towers. “There is no why,” he replies. At other times he would answer: “When I see three oranges, I juggle; when I see two towers, I walk.”
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Philippe Petit’s walk between the towers was also a major theme in the last episode of Ric Burns’ Documentary on New York City. I highly recommend the whole series as well. And yes that is Ric Burns and not Ken Burns.
Saw this a few months ago — lots of fun. My only problem with the documentry is that I thought they flubbed the ending. It is clear that there was a falling out between him and his team, and it is hinted that this was because the fame went to his head — but I felt cheated that they didn’t really get into the details of why those relationships ended up failing.
At least the relationships didn’t end up falling.