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Those amateur daredevils who have been scaling the new New York Times building lately don’t have a thing on Phillippe Petit. Early one morning in the summer of 1974, the French tightrope walker, then just 24 years old, electrified the city of New York by spending forty-five minutes strolling back and forth on a cable stretched between the newly constructed twin towers of the World Trade Center. Petit had already drawn attention for previous walks between pylons of the Sydney Harbor Bridge and the towers of Notre Dame, but the unsanctioned World Trade Center stunt, later dubbed “the artistic crime of the century,” catapulted him to international recognition.

It also turned him into a lifelong New Yorker. Though he went on to walk above cities all around the world, Petit has been regularly juggling and performing magic in Washington Square Park ever since, and for more than a quarter of a century, he has been an artist-in-residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. James Marsh’s brilliant new documentary, Man on Wire, recounts the planning and execution that went into Petit’s legendary walk, as well as the way it captured the imagination of Petit’s adopted city. Petit spoke recently from his home in the Catskills, where he has lived since the early ’90s, about the film, his relationship with New York City, the walks he’d still like to do, and the magic of the wire.

Is wire-walking a good metaphor for life?
It’s more than a metaphor. It is life. If you look at a wire-walker, you will see that carrying your being on a thread is exactly what life is about. It has a beginning and an end, and you have to keep on that thread. Yes, it’s a perfect metaphor, but I would say it’s more than that—it’s an image of life.

In life and on the wire, how do you deal with contingencies, uncertainties, a gust of wind, something you didn’t expect?
In life, I’m not great at dealing with surprises, but on the wire, I have to be great at dealing with surprises. So I reduce them to zero. I have worked at that my entire life, so I am rich with the knowledge I have acquired. And I study certain things. I study the wire, and how it behaves when you walk on it, how to tighten it, how to manufacture it. And, of course, I must know the limits of the weather. If I protect myself by reducing the odds to zero, I can give myself fully to the act of appearing in the sky—to the performance.

How much of the performance is for the audience, and how much is for you? Would you still walk if there were no one to see you?
I personally would not say that I perform for the audience. In my way of thinking, it’s the opposite—if you perform for the audience, you’re on the wrong path. I think you have to perform without any goal, in a very honest and intimate way, and if the audience sees you, then they are going to react and be inspired. But if you try to have them react, if you try to inspire, if you go to the audience, like a bad actor, to receive applause and laughter, it’s artificial. So I start by completely erasing the outside world, including the audience.

What’s in your field of vision? What do you see when you’re up there?
What I see is what I decide to see. I find that it is beautiful to be completely centered on the wire, so I usually look at the place where the wire ties to the building, the anchor point. But often I lift my eyes to look at the horizon, because then I am more of a dancer. A wire walker who walked looking around because he is distracted would probably not be very inspiring. However, during forty years of practice, I created some walks where I look up and down, left and right, as if I am curious about the area—but all of that is a planned choreography, not a lack of concentration.

Does fear play a role in your life?
In the air, there is no fear for me. There is impatience, there is joy, there is elation, there is the feeling of exploring the world. On the ground, I am very human, so I have very human fears like everybody else—snakes, spiders, angry German shepherds trying to bite me. But all that could be conquered if I put my mind into it. So fear, to me, is almost a human invention. I think if you motivate yourself to discover a world, then that world is not a source of fear anymore. So if I were to start scientifically studying giant spiders, I would probably be able to have one walk on my arm.

What about death? How would you describe your relationship with death?
I never really ask myself that question. Off the top of my head, death doesn’t exist in my life, simply because death is the opposite of life, and I am interested in living, not in dying. But I am able to talk about my relation with death, and I am not afraid of it at all. I really want to get to live, to be very old, and yet also I know my profession, that of a wire walker, is framed by death. I find that to be an honorable condition, not a handicap. I believe I would look at death in the same way I look at life, which means right in the eye, in a fierce, rebellious way. If someone were to point a gun at me and say, “I’m going to kill you,” I would say, “Well, that’s interesting, can I invite you to dinner first and then you kill me?” Because, what an interesting situation! But I would not run scared from death. In one line, I would say that I am not afraid of death—but I am not looking for it!

Do you remember your first successful walk?
I was learning by myself, so as you can imagine, I didn’t know what rope to use or what to tie, what tension to create. So the very first time, I was not walking on a high wire, I was practicing on a little rope. After that, I switched to a higher and tighter apparatus, and then came a cable. When I was setting my feet on a little rope, it was with a childlike impatience, and I thought there was not much to it. Then, as I persevered, I realized, “Oh, this is an infinite path.”

Has your preparation and exercise regimen changed significantly over the years?
It has evolved tremendously. When I look back before the World Trade Center, I was a rebellious teenager who was not hired by anybody, with almost no money and no time to rig the wire, and I was calling friends to help. After the World Trade Center, when the professional offers started to come, I was able to bring a crew with me, to rig the wires more perfectly, and to take time and do my homework, to study the building. I also gained experience as a rigger, and my taste in architecture and engineering also evolved.

How did you arrive upon the precise length and weight of your balancing stick?
Well, I was not born in the circus world with a balancing pole between my hands, and nobody in the circus will tell you how it's made. It's a secret. So by trial and error, I made the balancing pole myself, and now it's my secret. I arrive at the right plans and weight depending on what I'm going to do on the cable, and how stable the cable is, and how long. In Paris, I did a walk 700 yards above the ground, over the river, to the seventh floor of the Eiffel tower. For this, I had a 28-foot, 45-pound balancing pole. But if I am just crossing the street between two two-story buildings, and making more of a dancing performance, then I would need a smaller, much lighter balancing pole.

The movies have come a long way since you began your career. Do you ever feel that movie special effects have taken away any of the magic of what you’re able to do?
Ah! This almost sounds like a trick question, because I am embarking on a feature film about my walk between the towers, and this feature film will be done in motion capture by Robert Zemeckis!

Oh, really? So, like, Polar Express technology?
Yes. So if I were against that technology, I would have not said yes. I love movies, more than anything else, probably. They have been a common denominator throughout my life. I see myself as a movie-maker who has not done his first film yet. My preferred period, obviously, as a performer, is the silent movies of the great comics—Buster Keaton, Harry Langdon, W.C. Fields, Chaplin—and in this new branch of motion capture, I don’t have a long list of favorites, but I am fascinated by what it can offer. I think that it is the kind of modern movie-making of the future, and it can do justice to the fairy-tale aspect of my story.

Do you feel that you became a New Yorker when you made the walk between the towers?
Yes, absolutely. Well, first I became a New Yorker during the eight months I prepared in New York in ’74. I street juggled, even in the winter. There were a couple of feet of snow, and people were amazed to see a young guy barefoot on a walk between two lampposts, passing his hat. That made me a New Yorker, because many people knew that I juggled at a certain place at a certain time, and sometimes they would even gather and wait for my arrival. Then I did the Twin Towers in the same costume as the street juggler—all black—so people realized, “Oh, the guy I gave a quarter to yesterday is the guy who is now on the front page all over the world.” That is a New York act, and I became, probably, a folk hero of New York. Immediately after my walk, I felt the camaraderie and the boldness of New Yorkers in general, thanking me for the breath of fresh air. Then I stayed a month, a year, ten years, twenty years, and I've been a New Yorker for the past thirty years. Even though now I am living in the Catskills, I still have my office at the Cathedral St. John the Divine, where I have been an artist in residence for twenty-six years, so I am definitely a New Yorker. I love New York, and it's my home.

I know that many people asked about your feelings when the towers fell. My question is, does it disappoint you that they’re only planning a single tower for Ground Zero?
Yes, yes, it's a giant disappointment, but I have nothing much to say about that—I am not a mayor or a governor. If somebody destroys your house, you have the choice of rebuilding it the way it was, or creating a new house. There is not one way to do things. But personally I was dreaming of two towers, maybe not exact copies of the old ones, but two towers that I could have offered to walk between again, this time maybe in a dance of rebellion, or victory against doom.

How did you feel about the New Yorker cover commemorating the fifth anniversary of the towers’ fall, which referenced your walk?
Well, I didn't like the artwork as a matter of personal taste, but I was very touched by the concept, and I thought that it was a brilliant, brilliant idea. I didn't see myself on that cover as a principal player; rather, I had translated a thought, about rebellion and victory and going ahead with life. I was very, very touched to have been chosen as a symbol of those causes.

Does it ever bother you that people tend to treat the 1974 World Trade Center walk as your career’s defining moment?
See, that's what people say, but for me—well, first, I don't have a career. I have a very messy life made of many entangling passions, and wire-walking is one of them, but it's not the only one. And secondly, I do not see the walk I did at the World Trade Center as my representative walk. I have done seventy-eight walks in the past forty-five years, and since I do not try to collect the gigantic, the biggest walk of them all is not the only walk for me. I mean, I could talk at length about quite a few of the walks. Some were very intimate and small, but to me they were of equal importance to the World Trade Center.

What are some of those other entangling passions?
I started as a magician at 6 years old, and I am still a magician. Then I learned juggling. I am still a juggler, and a street juggler. I do that less often than in the past, but still, every year I appear. Just a few weeks ago I was in Washington Square Park passing my hat—

Do you still get arrested for that?
Not often, but yes, I still look at the police knowing that they could come in the middle of my act and arrest me, of course. I also do drawings. The actress Deborah Winger just published a book illustrated by ten of my drawings. I also continue to write. I have written seven books, and I am working on my eighth. I continue to do lectures—I am going in a few weeks to Prague to do a lecture on creativity and motivation. The list continues, but these are my major professions.

Deborah Winger also tried to help set up a walk for you across the Grand Canyon.
Yes, the walk over the Grand Canyon was a dream of mine. It still is, but it’s really not an active project, it's a project that needs angels to revive it. I have another dream that is more easy to start, to do a walk between Easter Island, between the moai [the island’s giant stones] and the volcano. That project is alive, but again we are awaiting financial angels, as I call them. Sometimes, these dreams can seem more like nightmares when you realize how difficult it is to get permissions or money.

Have you ever met Christo and Jean Claude? Like your work, their projects are artistic events that capture the imagination of cities, and which require extensive planning and money.
Yes, yes, I have thought of that, and I have met them a few times. It is true that our professions are very similar, except I am not selling my little sketches at $250,000. But there are similarities in the way we prepare, in the way sometimes some of my projects take two, three, five years of preparation and cost one, two, three million dollars. The difficulty of my profession is that it’s time-consuming and costs money to do a performance over a city that is ephemeral. Except that what I do is probably worth it because it will remain in the minds of people and will inspire them for years and years, so you can’t put a sum on that.

How did Man on Wire come to be made?
Well, the producer proposed to make a documentary based on my book, To Reach the Clouds, about my adventure between the towers. When I said yes, I had the approval of the movie-makers, so I started looking at directors. When I talked and met James Marsh, I instantly knew that it could happen with him. We shook hands and the adventure of making the film started.

Do you have a sense in going to festivals and talking to people that you’ve connected with a younger generation as a result of the film?
No, I’ve been to quite a few festivals helping this film, and each time, I’ve met all kinds of people of all ages, so I’m not sure what you mean by young people.

Well, perhaps people who weren’t alive in 1974.
Oh, yes, yes! It’s actually a strange thing to address a teenager or young person and say, “Oh, you were not even born when I did that,” and some never saw the towers because the towers are no longer there. Yes, that adds to the mystery of my story. I like to talk to people who have never seen the towers and who were not born when I walked as much as I like to talk to people who were there looking up. I am interested to talk to all people who were touched by my adventure through the film, and also, I am interested to see how they react. Very often, I sneak in the theater to hear how the people react before I appear on stage and answer questions.

And what have you been hearing?
Well, I have been hearing a tremendous joy and tremendous inspiration. I get standing ovations all the time when I appear to answer questions, and I don't think the ovations are directed only to me. I think they’re directed to what I have done, and to the joy of looking at the towers in a different way, because now when you refer to them, it’s about the drama and the disaster. Some people have said, “You know, I didn’t want to come because I lost somebody in the disaster, but I came anyway, and I’m so glad I came because actually it helps me put things in perspective.” I think people are relieved to be able to look at the towers and giggle and applaud—and feel joyful.