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Philippe Petit and James Marsh: Men on WireStanding on top of the world with the director and subject of a remarkable new documentaryBy Robert KoehlerPublished on August 06, 2008 at 6:03pmIl nous faut de l’audace, encore de l’audace, toujours de l’audace ... —Georges Jacques Danton
JAMES MARSH: I would say that this is the ideal response, certainly. The story is so lyrical that it places a big responsibility on the filmmaker to convey this onscreen and to approximate the astonishing nature of the act itself. The tale really has layers to it, since there’s also a mythical dimension. PHILIPPE PETIT: That reminds me of the advice that my friend Werner Herzog gave me that I placed at the front of my book about the coup, To Reach the Clouds. He said, “Philippe, you are not a coward — so what I want to hear from you is the ecstatic truth about the Twin Towers.”
PETIT: This is something you encounter when you study the history of art, [that place] where an artist ventures into risky territory and where that may tilt into madness. I love to explore that area, because I think there should be some madness in creation, some explosion, some refusal of rules.
MARSH: Exactly. He’s a rebel thinker, when you consider how crazy it all was. The logistical demands to get the proper equipment to the top of the towers alone was borderline crazy. PETIT: I have this childlike rebellion against those who say that I can’t do something, which is something that I felt very early in my life. I have more wisdom now than I did at the time, but when most of the world tells you that you cannot do something, what an incentive to prove them wrong.
PETIT: I don’t believe that at all. I think you are born with fingers to become a concert violinist, but why do you put your hands on the instrument and start playing it? Why did I put my feet on the rope? I think there’s an early chemistry, yes, but it’s a chemistry of passion, of rebellion, and maybe some arrogance, with a capital “A.” I knew I was an individual from the very beginning.
MARSH: The structure of Man on Wire is like a heist film, say, like The Killing, with rewinding timelines. When I saw how Philippe’s team had to get phony IDs and arrange all of this cloak-and-dagger business, I had an early insight of doing restaged sequences in the style of a heist movie, in black and white. I also derived this from Philippe’s book, not only its structure but its reflective tone. And yet this is real life, so it’s also poignant and sad and comic, and the ending is quite messy. I absolutely embrace that messiness, because it’s more interesting than being pat.
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