The Freedom Tower

It still seems like yesterday. I worked the Local Desk for United Press International when the police wire announced there was a man walking across a wire between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. It was a bulletin that was heard around the world. The man was Philippe Petit, a tight rope walker. A new film called ‘Man on Wire” about those days in the 1970s when Petit made his now famous walk is out and the New York Sun calls the film an “upside-down documentary. But, the newspaper says the film is so riveting in its setup and exposition that the climax arrives almost as an afterthought. The man of the title — the famed French tightrope walker Philippe Petit — is ultimately less interesting than the drama surrounding his wire, a tightrope strung between the newly completed World Trade Center towers in August 1974. And rather than tease the audience through to a rousing finale, the director, James Marsh (”Wisconsin Death Trip”), seems to embrace the pure drama of the concept — the methodical, grueling, and illegal preparations that went into making Mr. Petit’s artistic daydream a reality.

NO TURNING BACK Philippe Petit halfway between Tower I and Tower II on August 7, 1974.
Much like the documentary “The Gates,” which made its premiere at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival and captured not only the magic of an orange-clad Central Park but the daunting year-by-year fight that pitted artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude against their critics in a very public political brawl, “Man on Wire” matches the spectacle with the behind-the-scenes struggle. Just as New York City was initially hesitant to put up all those orange panels, so was the security at the World Trade Center unlikely to grant Mr. Petit approval to ascend the structures and walk between them without a safety net. So he tackled that problem in inspired fashion: He didn’t bother asking for permission.”
Those were the days. Petit was fined by a New York judge with a sense of humor and he sentenced the Frenchman to come back to the city a few months later and entertain New Yorkers with his dare-devil antics… so he walked his tightrope once again in Central Park to the thrill of thousands of cheering New Yorkers who, like me, had become Petit.