In the middle of the night, I have almost like a nightmare.
I wake up and I had forgotten to nail shut the crate.
So, I go there and though it was raining...
I must have waked up the whole neighbourhood, you know?
It was not closing the box, it was nailing the coffin.
I am nailing the coffin.
I, I see it as that.
Why, why this expression?
Why this thought?
Well, maybe death is now looking...
through the, through the golden frame of this dream...
...and now reality is going to maybe choke me to death.
So, now, I am Tuesday the 6th of August.
It was tense, but we were excited.
We were eager to get going.
Everything was ready
The Secret Service did maintain surveillance.
They did so for security reasons, and I will not go beyond that.
I have never obstructed justice.
And, I think, too, that I could say that in my years of public life...
...that I welcome this kind of examination,
because people have got to know
whether or not their President is a crook.
Well, I am not a crook.
I have earned everything I have got.
Everybody was getting more and more nervous and
...finally, we were all ready and said, 'Okay, let's go'.
So, we jump in the truck
We're not going to die. We're going to... to live.
I remember the extremely tense silence in the van
Alan was absolutely sombre
Philippe extremely tense
As for me I was petrified
Very worried
I was disguised as a removal man with a helmet, a shirt...
To look American with lots of pens in my pocket
It seemed to be a very typical American detail
I was going to be on the crew in the South Tower.
We were going to go at closing time with a big hamper...
...with all the gear in it...
...and there were going to be some guys in the North Tower
dressed for business with much less gear.
An architect's tube
and I believe that was holding the bow.
Electricity in the air between Jean-Louis and Albert.
I can read it in Jean-Louis face he, he doesn't trust Albert.
I had a bad feeling there is something wrong with this guy.
He is not at all on the same track that we are.
Fear was in the air
I assumed that even in the best possible situation
that we were all going to be arrested.
There was no doubt of that.
I can't imagine how they didn't feel the same way.
I felt that the horizontality of driving through the streets of Manhattan...
...suddenly became slant. I was on the ramp.
I was being engulfed by the monster.
And Philippe said to me:
I know what is going to happen
We are going to go in, and we are going to get caught
It was suddenly not a dream anymore. It was tangible.
He could not have carried on living without having tried to
At least to conquer those towers
Because those towers had become his.
It was as if they had been built especially for him
Once upon a time...
Now, that's how you start fairytales and actually my story is a fairytale.
Here I am, young, seventeen years old, with a bad tooth
in one of those uncolourful waiting room of a French dentist,
and it's... it's really lit with a little forty watt bulb
and you have old ladies and people, you know,...
...sheepishly looking at magazines.
It's quiet and suddenly, I freeze.
Because I have opened a newspaper at a page
and I see something magnificent.
Something that inspires me, I see two towers.
And the article says, 'One day those towers will be built'.
They're not even there yet.
And when they are they will become the highest in the world.
Now, I need to have that. This little tangible start of my dream,
but everybody is watching and... but I need that page
and so what I do is under the cover of sneeze... 'aaah...
I tear the page. Put it under my jacket and go out.
Now, of course, I would have a toothache for a week,
but what's the pain in comparison that now I have acquired my dream?
Usually, when you have a dream, the object of your dream is tangible.
It's there. It's... it's quixotic,
but it's there... nagging you, you know?
Confronting you.
But the object of my dream doesn't exist yet.
I was twenty years old
And I was a very shy young girl. Very, very, shy
I was very surprised by this individual
And even more surprised when, having just met me and not knowing me,
he chased me relentlessly
Bringing me flowers, arranging dates
Send me love letters, love letters.
I was completely overwhelmed,
harpooned, it was really that
He started to introduce me to his wire
A wire set up at the end of a garden
And I spent hours watching him walk.
He did have that much experience then
He was really at the beginning of his life as a tightrope walker
We had become inseparable
And actually in his life, I completely forgot mine
and he was not worried either to know
whether I had a path of my own to follow
It was obvious that I had to follow his
Annie, who knows me better than everybody.
Annie, who was at my side during my discovery of the wire.
Whose large, green eyes move me.
When we embrace,
we look like two kids plotting our next piece of mischief.
I started as a young, self taught wire walker.
To dream of... not so much conquering the universe.
But as a poet conquering beautiful stages.
One day he said ...
'I really would like to put a wire on Notre Dame'.
And ...first... first day I thought it was a joke.
But, in the meantime I knew...
I knew that there was something a little bit real about it ...
and then we started to talk more and more about it,
and then we started to plan it.
Took about a year to find the right way to do it.
Jean louis immediately told me that it was illegal, yes
So I knew it was illegal
and that is what obviously excited me a little bit
But illegal, but not wicked or mean
In fact it was wonderful
Can you imagine, you wake up in the morning,
in the city and...
...and all of a sudden you see a high wire walker between ...
Notre Dame. It's a dream.
That's what really attracts me.
It's the challenge part of doing something
that's supposed to be impossible.
And, in the meantime, doing something that's so beautiful.
That doesn't, not only doesn't hurt anybody,
but gives something to somebody.
Then Philippe appeared on the wire
It was extraordinary
And I went in, all excited
And I found myself there, and I see, I lean over the nave
I saw that a huge ceremony was taking place in notre dame
There was a dozen priests dressed all in white, arms in a cross shape
They were lying down on the floor, their heads against the floor
I was flabbergasted, silent and the organist asked me
'But what is happening? What are you doing here?'
And I said to him 'but there is a high-rope walker,
There is a high-rope walker on the towers!'
And this man looked at me with a charming expression of wonder
And he said to me 'really a high-rope walker, it is amazing'
The van was down
We went through a first gate with security guards
There, we showed papers from the removal company with receipts,
Well, faked receipts
everything was working fine
And now we were horizontal again,...
...that we were driving in the subterranean garage
of the two towers and we were going.
I knew the plan. Ha ha.
We were going to the freight elevator of the South Tower.
It was... the whole plan was in the making.
The basic plan was very simple.
We had ID cards, so it was just a matter of
just kind of pushing our way through.
Once we'd gotten in the buildings...
It was pretty smooth sailing.
At that time we had to part
There was such a madness in his eyes
Such a rage
It was really: whatever happens it was the right time
He held me in his arms as if we might never see each other ever again
as if we might never see each other ever again
If I die, what a beautiful death.
To die in the... in the exercise of your passion.
We broke into the Sidney Harbor bridge pylon one night.
And er... carried all this equipment in and put a tightrope up,...
...disappeared in the morning and then sat down on the... on the street...
...and watched Philippe, walk backwards and forwards.
The fact that the wire walking activity is framed by death...
...it's great because then you have to take it very seriously.
It... it's a little half a millimeter of mistake...
...or a quarter of a second of inattention and you lose your life.
This is the Sydney Harbor Bridge and the traffic was backed up.
The police came, of course, within minutes.
When he was taken away.
I mean the first thing he did was he picked the policeman's watch.
Philippe, manages to take the guy's watch off his wrist
and hide it in his pocket.
These Twin Towers are trotting in my head, ils trot dans ma tete.
You know I'm galloping in my brain.
As I'm back to Paris, slap in the face.
'Paris Match', double page. 'The Twin Towers are built'.
But right now the picture tells me that those beams are not still covered.
The things are not painted. I see workers.
I imagine maybe for a few more months, or a year, who knows?
It's in construction and I can sneak in.
One day he showed me a picture of
two buildings on a newspaper page
And then I was a bit scared
It was inhuman to want to
go and walk up there, 450 meters high
This was becoming demonic.
So then I just wanted to say stop.
The plan was for me to bring all my equipment to the eighty-second floor.
Which was Barry's hiding place.
There was one in each tower, the same floor.
And to put all the equipment there, using the freight elevator,
saying, 'delivery for eighty-second floor'.
And Barry, will be there to receive, okay.
At the time I was an Assistant Director of Research
at The New York State Insurance Department.
We just moved in and I was on,
what was then the highest occupied floor in two World Trade Centre.
I knew there was going to be a team in each tower and er...
...that the stuff was going to be delivered to me
and then it was going to be carried up....
...would have been twenty-eight floors.
The operator of the freight elevator,
had not completely heard the foreman shouting,
'eighty-second floor'.
And it was clearly on our delivery bill and on all the package.
He asked to the group, ' What floor again?'
Right there, I think, 'this is it!'
and I said clearly, 'one-o-four!'
'Okay, whatever. Watch your hands and 'cling'.
The gate clanked shut.
Now we are in a plywood box, in a temporary freight elevator.
Going all the way up.
And it's dark, it's a... it's a.. it's travel toward heaven...
...and...and the darkness becomes grey
and I see a square of grey that becomes lighter.
I see a square of light. It is the sky.
We're getting there and we're arriving just a few floors below the roof.
With all our equipment.
And he came to my office and told me that they had by a...
a great stroke of fortune....
...gotten... gotten on the freight elevator....
...and saved themselves twenty floors of carrying up all that equipment.
Now, I find myself in a deserted floor,
one-o-four and the first thing we do is unpack and take equipment out.
Suddenly, I hear a guard coming.
I just look and I see over there a.. a tarp.
So, I just grab John-Francois and I throw him underneath
and I hear John-Francois, yell.
And this beam was over the elevator shaft
which was 400 meters deep!
What? We're going under it? Yeah, we had to hide under a tarp.
Donald starts saying, 'Hold on my leg, hold on this, where can I go?'
And I kind of like,...
...right on the spur of the moment said, 'You know what, man? I can't do this'.
And he's like, 'Okay, go ahead.'
'Go, go, quick', and I...I think
who was the more happy, was it Donald or I?
but anyway, bye bye Donald.
Unbridled glee.
I'm so happy to not have to do this.
I'm running down the stairs a hundred and ten flights.
It's like those dreams where you never touch down.
It was so beautiful.
So, here we are under the tarp, frozen to death.
I don't have to mumble... to John-Francois, 'don't move'.
He... he feels it in our body.... connection.
And now the guard comes.
Has he seen us?
Has he heard us? Has he seen the tarp move?
But the guard comes and leans against the structure....
...and he seems to be a foot away.
...and I hear the cracking of his walkie talkie
and I hear he takes a cigarette.
...and the... the sound close-up now of the lighter and of his first puff.
The burning of the extremity of the cigarette and the fu...
He seems to be almost leaning on my ear.
So, we are, I mean, frozen. We don't breathe.
We wait for six, six - six-thirty.
So, we start to climb.
We saw nobody in the stairway.
There is nobody underneath the roof. Seems pretty safe.
All of a sudden we hear somebody coming....
...from the stairway. So, we.. we scare like hell.
So we run to the hiding place and we jump in the hiding place.
We hear some steps.
We hear the walkie-talkie noise.
...and the noises were very confusing.
Sometimes, you don't hear the guy for ten minutes.
So, you think he's gone. All of a sudden you hear...
You hear him coughing or you hear a talkie-walkie noise like,...
...he's right next to the hiding place. So we, we could not talk.
We started to write little notes.
We kept saying, 'Do you think now? Yeah? Let's wait longer'.
It was uncomfortable, but I... you know?
Once you understand that you don't have a choice,
you try to settle in and... and just wait.
At that point, we're in...in suits. In business suits.
Being in a business suit with heavy equipment,...
...hiding behind a pile of boxes. I mean there is no explanation.
If we are caught at that time, that was it.
What if the guard is still around?
What if he is toying with us?
Waiting for us to make the slightest movement before he pounces on us.
We must wait.
To ease the torment, I return to my memories.
The gold and mud, years of dreaming,...
...months of organising.
I dive back into the past for a long while.
That it will indeed serve the purposes intended.
And that it will truly promote not only harmony between the states,
but harmony and communication between the nations of the world.
It was in January of nineteen-seventy-four.
I climbed on the roof of my little house and I screamed, 'I'm coming to America!'
...and the minute I got out of the subway,
climbing the steps, looking at them.
I knew that they were no dream.
I knew that it was... my dream was destroyed instantly.
Impossible. Impossible. Impossible.
It's clearly impossible.
Not only to walk across this high, I probably hardly thought of it...
...but to bring almost like a ton of equipment secretly...
..to rig a wire for hours - to guy line it.
It's clearly out of human scale.
But something in me, pulls me toward touching it.
That's when he spoke to me about his project.
He said, 'Well I want to string a wire between er...
the two World Trade Center Towers'.
I said, ' Okay, sounds wild.'
I mean, I'd never met er... a high wire walker before.
So er, I had no idea what...
...nor did I even entertain the idea at the time
of what the consequences of anything happening would be.
It just sounded like a really fun adventure to get involved in.
So I took it upon myself to say, 'Sure let's ..let's work on it.'
The first occasion we went up in the elevator...
...we basically took the elevator to the eighty-sixth floor.
When we got off there was a guard there.
He said, ' What are you doing here?', you know?
So, obviously, we couldn't continue.
So we took the elevator back down again and then we realised...
well, he actually said, 'Well, let's just walk up.'
Then we proceeded to climb up the hundred and ten flights to the top.
We are at the top of the world.
I see two slabs of concrete,
barely inhabited, with some construction.
No fence, no net, no nothing and... and I am frozen to death.
I see the other tower and I...
I imagine the void and if I were to run...
...on the slab I will just fall to another life.
...and slowly I thought, okay, now it's impossible. That's sure.
So let's start working.
We took pictures of all these things...
...thinking that perhaps,
that might be where the cable will be tied....
...or just maybe, would be a cable we could use.
He wasn't sure how he was going to rig it at that particular time.
I decided in the staircase to draw a little fresco,...
...as if I needed some tangible proof,...
...to show me that I was going through different steps and approaching...
...the impossible of actually finding myself on that wire.
I even rented a helicopter at some point
and Jim was with me taking pictures, of the roof, of the equipment there...
...for making a model, for measuring,...
...but I also wanted a little bit to see if it was possible.
He wanted to get higher than where he was going to be
when he walked on the wire.
It was a way of tricking his mind into not feeling fear, ...
...by being higher than where
he was going to be when he actually did the walk.
One day I received a post card with a 'W' - World Trade Centre.
I never heard about the WTC at that time...
...and he had drawn a little wire on top of the towers.
I thought of course, that's why these towers are there.
I mean, for Philippe.
So, now I go back to France.
The minute I arrive, I didn't even go home,
I run to Jean-Louis, ...
...my old friend, and I said, 'I have a new idea.'
This, we knew that... legally we could not do it.
I mean, nobody knew... knew Philippe Petit.
Nobody knew us, you go there and you ask,
'Can I put a wire on top of the World Trade Centre'.
They'd say, 'Get out'.
So, I tried to get some information from Philippe.
So okay, you have, been there.
You... told me you have been ten times on the top,
but what did you get as...
... what do we have as permission?
But I have pictures, look, and we can put the wire...
I don't know where to put it, but we'll find out with the pictures.
This one is without the helmet not translated in UK version
This is the best.
Arlier it was a coppers' farm
That's what you will be doing when in prison doing community service.
We will make you clean the windows of the big towers
I started to do... to... a little...
recap in my head and I found out we had nothing.
He's not driven by the impetuous feeling of dancing between the towers.
He is driven by, 'I'm going to help Philippe'
and 'I don't want to help him to kill himself' ...
...and 'I don't want to be caught there and we want to succeed',...
...'We don't want to fail'.
So, for plenty of reason that are actually noble and understandable,
He becomes almost the...
...we fighting a lot on... on.... 'You don't have enough elements,
Philippe to build up a serious plan.
So, now I go back and this is the second visit to America.
Now I spend my time spying on The Twin Towers.
With all my might. I...I go day and night.
I note things and I fill the exercise books with all those notes,
a little doodling and ...
... and er.. I look at what commercially
could go underneath for freight delivery.
I go in. I find a way at lunch time to disguise myself.
The workers seem to arrive in normal cars.
So, at some point,
I am so much into taking notes as a spy around the Towers,...
...I don't see it's a construction site.
I don't see one nail sticking out of one plank.
So, right there, the big nail goes through my sole.
Three days in bed.
So, here I am with crutches. Thinking I am incapacitated.
No, no, no, no. It's the opposite.
It's wonderful, a human being with crutches.
The Universe is his.
The guards, you know, help me,
'Can I help you?', ' Let me hold the door.'
People, you know, 'sit down, take your time'.
Nobody asked me for an ID, nobody say's, 'what are you doing here?'
I... I have this fabulous...
so, then now, even though my feet is about to be repaired,...
...I use the crutches a lot.
Okay? And, sometimes, you would see the man leaving his crutches
and running around to measure something and coming back and being with crutches.
One time we went up there, it was very, very windy...
and I.. I actually wasn't sure why we were going up there.
I barely had the courage to get out of my little trap door...
...and, Jim, hanging on, I don't know how,
managed to take a picture of me hanging on to a post
...at the very roof of the tower with my body almost horizontally.
The wind was blowing me away.
So, what if...?
That was very scary.
That was, maybe, one of the first times I realised how crazy it was up there
with that kind of condition and the height,
and what we were involved in.
What happens if I'm up there and I rig it and something happens?
I just started thinking about those things
and when we got closer to the er... actual event....
I basically said, ' No, I can't... I can't help you rig.'
I can't be part of that team that goes to the top.
Here we are, underneath the top of the World Trade Centre, under a tarp.
Each time we would hear a noise, it was very hard to tell...
...if it was a cardboard board,
flapping in the wind or a guard coming or a walkie talkie.
I drill a little hole with a paper clip...
...and I enlarged this hole in the canvass
with a conic end of a ball point pen.
...and then with one eye I was able to see
a little bit of the ambiance light...
... going onto the figure of my watch.
What time is it?
Is it dark outside?
Oh, I heard noise, let's try to go out of the tarp.
We were hum...I had his foot in my nose, he had my foot,
I don't know, in between his arms. Well, we were completely entwined
There we got to know each other very well,
We can say like I never knew a man before.
We kept hearing more and more noise from the roof.
Like voice, like machines.
Sometimes, far away. Sometimes, very close.
But, really, like somebody was walking on the roof, or something.
Gee, they are walking at night
Well, we are stuck.
I mean, there is no chance that it will happen.
The longer we waited and the longer we hid,...
...the less time we'd have to do what we had to do to get up there.
There was tension.
I thought that we were both out of our element.
That neither of us really should have been there.
There is something that I don't trust in this guy.
He's not deeply concerned by anything. Why is he here?
When I finished university I flew to Paris...
...and I caught up with Philippe,
and he showed me this sort of extraordinary sort of diagram...
...and this photograph of this building that was being constructed in New York.
This is a big one now... and the wire, a big one.
You know, I looked at this huge tower or towers...
...and Philippe, was just so enthusiastic about doing this.
So, er... I....
...became I guess one of the first members of the team.
I intend on a giant meadow... it's a giant, giant field,...
...to reproduce not the two roof of the World Trade Center -
I don't have the money for that,...
..but just, you know, the outline and practice.
He wanted to set up a wire
the length of the gap between the two towers
To get the most practice beforehand
One, two, three. I really don't want to fall on that.
Even, even if I miss it doesn't matter. One, two...
We had a... I guess it was a little bit of a boot camp or a training camp.
Essentially we spent time there, conceiving er... designing...
...trying to work out how to make this thing work from every aspect.
Somebody had spoken to him about the elasticity of the structure
And that the towers may sway under the effects of the turbulences,
under he effects of the wind. So there was a moment of great concern
So I asked my friends to make the cable dance.
...and here is Mark, the Australian, here is Jean-Louis, Annie.
...and we would jump up and down on these wires.
We'd try and bounce Philippe, off of the wire.
The World Trade Centre was extraordinary
because it was two hundred feet between the towers.
So, how do you get a tightrope from one tower to the other?
Look, what you will see.
Do you like that?
We have to find a way to throw something.
Then you can pull a little string...
...and then a bigger string and then a rope...
...and then eventually the wire.
At some point, I mean,
I thought even of a little airplane, radio guided.
Football and baseball, yeah...
...we have to learn how to play baseball
for two months before we can do that.
No, no, no.
..and at some point Jean-Louis, come up with a really, silly idea.
I don't even let him finish the sentence.
He says, 'Philippe, what about a bow and arrow?'
Yeah. Bingo, yeah. Huh?
We drilled a very small hole in the... in the end of an arrow...
... and we attached a monofilament or a fishing line wire to the arrow.
...and the whole idea would be that Jean-Louis,
would, you know, send the arrow from one building to another.
...and then, of course, whenever we tried it...
...it just didn't work.
Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.
In the end we designed a...
a spool that had a conical shape on it...
...so that the... the monofilament would unravel
and go very freely through the air.
Here we are.
Hey, just right. Exactly.
As a child I loved to climb everywhere.
I let the psychiatrist decide why.
Maybe I wanted to escape my time.
Maybe I wanted to see the world from a different perspective
and I was an explorer at heart.
Who knows and who cares, but I was a little climber...
...and nobody, not my parents, not the teachers, nobody could stop me.
I heard about wire walkers.
I was described how they are magnificent men
and women walking in thin air.
And I thought. 'well, that's nothing. With my ropes, I do that'.
There always was and there still is
a bad boy side to Philippe's character.
He had a very strict upbringing
So he will never stray too far down the illegal road
But it is for him a pleasure,
a huge pleasure to allow himself some of those liberties.
He is so excessive, so creative,
That each day is like a work of art for him.
For him, what excited him most about this adventure
Was, apart from being a really beautiful show
Was that it was like a bank robbery
and that gave him great pleasure
Oh, no.
... 'cause it's not...
Eventually things became progressively more serious
Because a proper plan had to be worked out
And the arguments between jean Louis and Philippe really got started.
Mark said, if ...somebody opened the door in the stairs...
Yeah.
and see a very serious man, dark, taking big... this is no good.
-Yeah, no, no, no. Not, not. -Now listen, now listen.
In the stairway, we can be discovered by anyone.
Now, so we have to be a combination of a workman and an office man.
I think this is perfect. This is perfect and this is no good.
Ok, ok so we get through the gate at the bottom one way or another,
anywhere downstairs.
Where it is going to be decisive is upstairs,
When we are going to go from the elevator to the thing
At that point we need to be more or less well dressed.
Oh no, I would have said dressed as workmen
Wait let me finish
It was impossible to imagine them getting
into the towers clandestinely
They didn't even know what their plan was to get in
And I think that jean-Louis felt a huge responsibility, from the start
He didn't want to let Philippe know of the problems.
Maybe a lack of realism on Philippe's side.
Well I thought about leaving from downstairs.
This is really stupid because we have got the elevator for free
But no, we are being idiots. Of course we are like idiots.
Jean-Louis knew I was on his side
And Philippe also knew that often I was taking jean-Louis' side
An eighty kilos object, why not do it?
Since long before Barry,
Annie has been angling for an invitation to New York.
Using tenderness, blackmail, threats, insults and tears.
But I need absolute detachment. Complete freedom.
I must be a cast away on a desert island of my dreams.
Philippe and I travelled to New York, together.
I remember looking out through this hazy airplane window
and seeing in the far distance the Twin Towers.
We'd come all of this way and...
and this was our... this is what we're here for.
Metropolis, France's number one journal of urban planning.
We are preparing a feature profile of the workers
who are presently constructing the World Trade Centre in New York.
Our credentials reporter, Philippe Petit...
...kindly requests your co-operation for this article.
He told me he was a French journalist.
...and it was just not normal for me to say,
'show me your credentials, if you would?'
He was going to write a story about The World Trade Center,
for the French newspapers...
...and he had two photographers with him and...
I thought that was pretty good publicity.
Do you completely trust the building yourself?
Is it safe up there? What you mean like tumbling down,
falling down or something?
-Yeah. -No, no it's safe.
Here was this sort of long haired Australian...
...and this sort of very volatile Frenchman
who couldn't speak great English.
Saying we were journalists and we enlisted Jim Moore
and he was the cameraman.
It was er... it was interesting, because er... you know?
Here we are disguising ourselves as someone who we're not and er...
perfectly getting away with it...
...and it was wonderful.
When you are working here and when the weather changed, you...
you... you stop because just ... you cannot work anymore?
We start doing a day up here and all of a sudden the weather gets bad.
-Yeah. -Well, we have to finish the day.
-Oh, yeah? -Oh, yeah.
So, it happens in life,
to work there on the top with very bad conditions?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, and you get a little bit scared of that?
No, not really.
I remember Jim, would act like
he was taking a photograph of a worker.
Then at the same time he'd put the camera down
and he'd take a photograph of a pylon...
...or an anchor point or something like that.
The towers were not corners facing corners.
They were askew.
Which was a problem for me to decide where to put my wire.
So in principle, that's a cable across the two roofs.
I decided to attach the cable to what
I believe were the strongest beam at the top of the roof,
...and then I'm going to tie the wire to...
...here, on the South Tower.
A cable between two buildings - a very long length - it sways.
It goes up and down
and there is almost an invisible move which is a torsion on itself.
So, what we devise is a ... it's...
it's called a cavalety in the circus parlance.
It's actually a guy line.
That is perpendicular to the axis of the wire
and it goes down to the ground.
Even with permission,
we couldn't go a quarter of a mile to the ground.
Plus I needed a pair.
Here's one and here's two.
We know they cannot go down.
So the solution was asymmetric rigging.
Which is like this.
Here's the first attachment.
Each cavalety had two legs a short one and a long one.
So, this is what I decided was the best for the situation.
And now I am preparing for le coup.
We are going to do it.
I arrived Saturday and le coup is due on Monday.
He is more and more ready for the coup
But the coup itself is not ready.
...and I was very frustrated about that.
I knew we had to act quickly and I knew we had nothing.
Jean-Louis, wants to know.
So, 'Have you done this like I asked you to do...
...and what is my answer about when the guard and...?'
and I don't satisfy him with my answer.
So he attacks my non preparations,
when actually I feel that I have prepared immensely.
I think the longer we were there,
the longer I was cognizant of the fact that....
...it was a very ambitious pursuit, what we were doing.
We have to mount everything.
We just weren't ready.
Er.... means, more suede we must put the screw...
I never doubted Philippe's, talent, his prowess on the wire.
It was the unforeseen things that really worried me.
If, I need the cavalities or not.
You know, America's, a very litigious society and er...
...you know, involuntary manslaughter, assisted suicide.
...a little bit. Then we put everything down.
I didn't want to be liable for the death of a friend.
Well, he could clearly see that we were not ready.
Everybody could see it, but Philippe and...
at the time I gave up.
Obviously, with the Australian not there.
With the...obviously the...
the whole thing is... is a total debacle.
...and I told him....'okay, so Philippe, what do you think now?'
'It's ...May thirtieth, we're supposed to go,
to do the coup today'.
'Do you think we can do it like that?'
...and he said, 'No'.
He said, 'No, it's clear that it's impossible' and I said, '
No, it's not impossible.
It is possible, I mean we are very close to it.'
If you want something, nothing is impossible.
We kept repeating, 'I'll be back, I'll be back'.
We'll prepare it and we'll do it.
The first attempt had failed
And he called me. I had to go over urgently.
Obviously my role was to keep his moral up and to give him courage back.
And so it was always a matter of
understanding what was happening in his head,
Encouraging, er... I had this role and it was very tiring.
He used to watch television sometimes halfway through the night.
He was only watching police shows,
bank robberies, stories of policemen and thieves.
I am convinced he was getting into shape with this.
Looking for the strength
To break into these towers...
So we were going back over and over again
to the world trade center, to the main entrance hall
And Philippe was observing how people were getting in.
They were showing passes.
He was observing as many things as possible.
I saw him in...in...
in the lobby and it was just somebody that didn't belong there,...
...like someone who had come out... it was just...it was just er...
...a wrong juxtaposition. It just was very, very odd.
'Philippe, it's...it's wonderful to see you' and his...his name is Barry...
...and he has seen me street juggling in Paris.
Well, he started talking and telling me all this wire walking that he did.
...and I think I said at some point,
'If you're thinking of doing The World Trade Center forget it.'
But he er... he sort of draws you in to ...
his world...
...and I guess I was the kind of guy who was not
averse to doing things that were slightly er....
...er...you know? Not, not totally legal.
Barry, calls me and says, ' Philippe, ...
I'm sorry to tell you, but the security around
The World Trade Center in general, has changed...
...and now we all are forced to carry an ID.'
'But I happen to have mine freshly unsealed from the envelope
.... and it will not be too much trouble
to abandon it in your hands for a few hours.'
He did this incredibly artistic, perfect job of copying it and...
...getting an ID card with his own picture on it.
One day he called me and he said,...
...'Well, I've found two or three American guys....
...They are crazy, they are great and they are ready to help.'
I meet two American... young men, Donald and Chester.
We met with Petit and I had a friend named Alan Wellman,
who I went to High School with.
He was always up for an adventure. Always.
I think that Petit, knew also that this guy was a quality guy.
Certainly, smart.
Certainly, aware of himself and knowing his limits.
The ideal accomplice.
He was pitching it. He was presenting it.
He was desperately, sort of, proposing it,...
...in a way that you would, you know, sell a time share or something.
I knew he was a nut or a con man or something,
but he seemed harmless enough.
I didn't really take it seriously at that point.
I need to practice a little bit on the wire ...
...and I need mostly to show my two,
three American friends how to hook the cable,
how to help Jean-Louis.
That's when I saw him on a cable.
I had never seen concentration like that.
...and I think I never have to this day.
...and his face became this...
...ageless mask of concentration. I mean, he became like a sphinx.
It was amazing.
He did it beautifully and calmly and er...
....he just did it in fact, literally with his eyes closed.
It was just what he does.
Everything he told me was true.
I was worried. I was worried.
The team was made of people completely unreliable
I don't remember right now when we fixed the date,
but we had fixed the date for August seven.
Jean Louis reminded me of Notre dame
and he said it was more or less the same.
That it was the same adventure but in New York at the world trade center.
But he has not told me anymore.
He only asked me if I wanted to come or not? That's all.
Jean-Louis arrives and I go
and pick him up at the airport and he's...
He's with Jean-Francois and of course I remember Jean-Francois.
He's an adorable, little apparition and he's all smiles.
He doesn't have any questions.
He's just will follow. He's here to help.
It is only when I arrived in New York, Coming out of the train from Boston,
At some point we went pass the empire state building.
And there I looked up,
I watched the height of the empire state building
And I was petrified.
My knees started shaking, it was frightening
Knowing that the world trade center was even taller.
I kept everything to myself. I did not say anything. I was petrified.
When I was a boy
I dreamed of Philip Marlowe
He took me as his partner.
When Jean-Louis came back the tension rose enormously
It had become unbearable.
The problem was the team.
Gave me shot gun fever.
I met the first two guys...
...and one of them was musician, the other one,
I think was a carpenter. I don't know what.
...and ...they really looked liked losers.
I mean, I'm sorry, but like...
When I saw these guys I thought, 'Oh, my God'.
...loves me
The night before the coup, they came in the flat
In a deplorable state.
One of them had been smoking.
He was completely gone, lost in a haze of smoke.
Jean-Louis was absolutely dismayed. So was Philippe.
It's likely I was... probably had been smoking pot.
Yeah, likely as all hell.
I smoked pot every day for thirty-five years.
There's no reason to think I didn't smoke that day.
...and when Jean-Louis, meet Albert, he has a little intuition.
I can read it in Jean-Louis' face.
He doesn't trust Albert.
You know you have this feeling with people and...
...sometimes it's wrong, but...but you can't help it anyway.
We shook hands, said 'hello'.
They didn't speak English, I spoke no French.
So, there wasn't too much...to say.
Just...'Nice to meet you, good luck, let's do what we have to do.'
When I felt that the whole floor finally
was silent and the darkness is there,...
...I venture out.
Imagine staying three hours on a beam, you cannot walk.
You need re-education.
A normal human being staying completely unmoving on a beam
for three hours cannot walk.
After a while I said, 'We cannot wait anymore.'
I told Albert,
'You know what you should go, because if I go if I'm caught...
there is no way we can do the rigging,...
...because I'm the only one who knows
about Philippe's habit and how to do it.'
So he goes on the top and comes back five minutes later.
I'm sure I just said,
' Okay, let's go. Let's just get this done.'
So, he said, 'Great, we don't know what this noise comes from,
but let's go...'
...and now we moved and we go for the most important equipment.
I mean a wire walker needs a cable to walk on.
Now we are walking toward
a tiny little construction staircase, very narrow.
...and he's in front and I'm in the back.
I see a nightmare.
A policeman and the policeman has his eyes open and he's looking at me.
There was someone that we had not expected,
Sitting at a desk, with a little light.
I decide to hold him.
...but hold on, he is pushing me.
The same way I am holding him, the same way he is pushing me.
What is happening?
There is no way I can get Jean-Francois to turn around.
So, let's play his game. Let's follow.
We were very silent because we didn't have shoes on...
...and when we arrived on the top, I whispered, ' Did you see the guard?'
He said, ' Of course I saw the guard
and I was trying to alert you by pushing you,
but why did you resist?'
I said, ' Well I was trying to resist,
to have you turn around and for me to explain without words and....
I remember very well the vastness of New York, the height,
The tiny size of the statue of liberty, The un building so tiny.
The noises, they were noises of police sirens
all night long and it was amazing.
It is really lively. In fact it was really lively.
We were the kings.
The most beautiful moment is when I see a shape.
Actually, two silhouettes on the other tower.
...and I recognise immediately in the darkness,
it is the silhouette of Jean-Louis and the silhouette of Albert.
They made it.
When I saw them on the roof, I was so happy.
...and the impression I got... I remember that all the time, it's...
...you go on the roof,
it's all dark and there is this red light for the planes, you know,
That's turning and that's like a... like a metronome,...
...giving you an idea of time going by.
There was peace and immensity and I..
I... in the middle of all this madness...
...I suddenly had hope and joy.
So, I put, like a bat, actually...
I put Jean-Francois,
upside down in that little staircase opening.
Just his head showing.
So imagine what the guard must have seen if he were awake.
He would have seen a human being head, looking at him upside down.
First thing I did, I prepared my bow.
Prepare the arrow and prepare the fishing line and wait for them.
So, there was this signal for Jean-Louis,
to say, 'I am ready to shoot'...
...and there was a signal for me to say,
'I saw your signal. I am ready'
...and I'm going to count till ten and then he will shoot...
...but there were no signal for 'I am not ready'.
I hadn't thought of that and I was not ready.
Finally, they...they ...give this big signal.
I am ready.
I have been waiting for so long, that when he finally...
...gives a signal, instinctively, I took the...the bow
I aim and I aim at him.
And he was almost at the edge of the... of the building.
I go hunting for the arrow.
Nothing!
Out of frustration, I take all my clothes off
and I think that, the line, I will feel...
the line on my naked...skin.
With a defeated heart, I climb down to the edge...
...and I feel a dancing, fishing line caressing my thigh.
The arrow was actually balancing...
... precariously on the very edge of the building's corner.
A... a little fu...
a little blow, and it was breezy, would have simply made it fall.
The first thing we did after a few ordinares....
a few little ropes getting bigger and bigger and stronger,
was to bring a burlap bag.
And this bag was carrying
the very important item of the communication.
The interphone.
A little tinny, toy intercom is connected.
...and we hear Philippe's voice on the other end
and that was an important moment.
Now the four of us are together, work is truly going to begin.
The guard leaves.
So Francois is...hardly can talk,
his head has been upside down for so long.
...but we go back. We rush. We get our shoes...
...and now we bring the equipment like mad people...
...and I put a little trap in the staircase.
...and that will be like an alarm clock.
We'll be, ' ah, somebody's getting on your roof'.
By the time everything was perfect.
I mean, it was...not even midnight.
It was... normal rigging that means within
three hours everything would have been perfect.
Now we are ready to pull the wire.
Philippe, has a wire ready.
The nylon rope is.... in our hand.
We are ready.
At some point, I... gave probably too much cable.
..and all of a sudden I see the wire going...
...a tremendous noise.
I thought, 'my God, what's going on?'
We almost lost the wire.
So, I called Philippe, 'What's going on?'
He said, ' Yeah, we could not hold it.'
Which was very unfortunate.
The fact that I didn't speak French.
So, I couldn't hear the details of what was going wrong,
was probably just as well.
So, we had to pull .....
...probably more than a hundred metres of wire plus rope.
I don't remember how much we gained with each attempt.
Maybe we worked hard for one minute,
two minutes, three minutes, four minutes...
...and got a tiny bit of this endless cable up there.
Within, I don't know, half an hour it became almost impossible.
Here we are in big trouble.
Somebody is coming on the roof
Jean- Francois, hears also and he hides immediately.
...and I see him, he's like a dead animal.
As a child, have you ever played 'hide and seek', in a park...
...and take refuge behind a giant tree trunk?
...and then a policeman comes to the roof.
...and then your companion comes. Circles the trunk, he walks, you walk.
He stops, you stop.
The man starts turning around this obstacle
in the centre of my tower...
...and I turn around on the side, diametrically opposed.
This little pas de deux, could go on forever.
Until one of you turn around and bump into each other.
Well, this is exactly what happened.
He turns, I turn. He stops, I stop. He go on, I go on.
Now, of course, if he would have turned around, oops!
Hide and seek.
Albert was starting to...
to give up, to argue, to say,
'No, I don't want to do his anymore.
It's not possible. We are not going to do it'.
It was clear we weren't going to get this job done...
...but there was no arguing with him.
There was just...you know? It was useless.
He was just going to go ahead, regardless.
It's impossible.
Impossible, that he thought we were
going to be able to rig this before daylight.
Imagine being... after these months of preparation.
These months of all that and finally being on the roof.
On the roof and having to stop because the wire is like that.
I mean, fu...
At dawn, I assumed well the jig is up, you know?
We, we did the best and now, you know, let's get out of here.
The streets were deserted
And I found a taxi willing to take me there.
So I waited with the others Other people came to join us,
others from the team
And our eyes were absolutely glued...
...To the towers.
I was looking out for the slightest movement
but we couldn't see anything.
It was absolutely terrifying.
It was a misty day and I thought 'ee, that sucks'.
...and it wasn't windless either.
There was a little bit of air that morning.
...and you could see when the er...
when the... when the cable was up there...
...and it looked very, very slack.
I pulled like crazy, like crazy, like crazy.
Finally, I got the wire.
For some reason, the last metre was the one that came the easiest.
Despite the abandon of... of his co-accomplice.
Jean-Louis has his last communication almost was,
'Philippe, I did it, I did it. I've got two clamps.
We did it, the cable is anchored.'
All of a sudden we see this black spot, coming down off the top of the towers...
..and we didn't know what... what the hell it was.
I was like, 'Oh my god, what the is that?' You know?
We saw something, a shape, a shape, a second, falling down from up there.
I saw this thing falling down...
...and I... I couldn't believe it and I said to myself,...
...'That's it, you've been fooling yourself this whole time.
He went straight down with the first step off the roof. He might me dead.'
We all had a huge cry of relief. It was only a piece of clothing.
We thought ' he dropped something. It is not too bad.
On the top of...Philippe's roof,
there was a big wheel of the... the machines.
So as soon as the elevator would move,
we would see the wheel starting to...to turn.
I scream, 'La roue, la roue!', to Jean-Francois.
'The wheel, the wheel!'
Because I see the giant wheel starting in motion
...and I know my fate has been written now.
Time is no longer smiling at me.
At that time I was really worried.
I think, the first time I was really scared.
Oh, my God, he's... he's exhausted like I am.
Maybe not as much, but for what he has to do...
It's really not a good thing. The wire is the worst wire we ever....
...did and... I was really scared.
We all thought that obviously he could fall
We all thought about it but we could not believe it.
We thought about it but we could not believe it.
...and I had to make a decision...
...of shifting my weight from one foot anchored to the building,
to the foot anchored on the wire.
This is probably, I don't know...
probably the end of my life... to step on that wire...
...and on the other hand, something that I could not resist...
...and I didn't make any effort to resist
called me upon that cable...
...and death is very close.
I start walking as a wire walker who is studying his cable.
...and instead of doing an entire study of the cable for the whole length.
Seeing the first cavality and keep walking.
Seeing the middle which is so soft and treacherous.
Seeing the second cavality how it is, no.
I do only go to the first cavality and I know enough.
Now, I'm going to perform.
I saw his face changing.
He was very tense and all of a sudden there was something...
like a relief in him.
...and from that time I thought, that's it.
He is secure. It's good.
...and wow, that's...
I saw Philippe.
I saw Philippe, up there. It was extraordinary.
It was so, so beautiful.
It was as if he was walking on a cloud
And there was some amazing moments; he lay down.
And it was amazing to see this picture of Philippe laying down up there.
And then the other very very strong moment was when he erm...
He is so high on these lines. It was so beautiful
And when he knelt down
There was a moment when he knelt down and saluted,
And so I was shouting 'look, look' people started to gather around
but no one could see him.
They said to me 'but what are you looking at?'
I said to them a wirewalker,
Look a wirewalker and he is walking and walking.
I sit down on the wire in one of my crossing
and I did something that amazed people.
I actually looked all the way down,
to look at something that I will never in my life see again.
So, I can tell you - and just,
probably it's a lie, but to me it's not...
I heard the crowd. I saw the crowd.
I hear them murmur.
Beyond anything you could ever imagine, It's just mind boggling.
The awe of the event...
...and the overwhelming largeness of the scale of the situation,...
...took my mind into a place where I really wasn't that concerned about him.
It just...it was...magical. It was just....it was just profound.
Officer Meyers and I,
observed the er...tight rope dancer,
because you couldn't call him a walker...
er.. approximately half way between the two towers...
...and...upon seeing us, he started to smile and laugh.
They don't know how to react to a day- dreaming,
wire walker, laying down and dialoguing with a seagull.
So, they were really mad.
Philippe did progress because that is his work and besides it is his,
it is his character.
Actually he would come close to the guards
who were trying to grab him or the police.
I can't remember if it was the police.
And then he would turn around and be out of their reach
The guards weren't about to get on the wire.
When he got to the building,
we'd ask him to get off the high wire,...
...but instead he turned around and ran back out into the middle.
Everybody was spellbound in the watching of it.
When we observed to the fact that he wasn't about to come in
because he seemed to be enjoying it so much...
we mentioned the fact to his associate,
that if he did not come in we would
have a helicopter pluck him up off of the wire.
At which time, his er... associate spoke to him in French...
er.. being that he's a Frenchman.
'Philippe!'...You know?
..and he said, 'The police are going to dislodge you.
Well, you should stop...'
...and I was...I was madly... enraged by that,
but also it saved my life.
Hey, there's somebody out there on a tightrope walk,
between the two towers of The World Trade Center.
Right at the tippy-top.
I personally figured I was watching something
that somebody else would never see again in the world.
Thought is was once in a lifetime.
I had no reason to stay on that wire any more...
and also I felt, huh.. the humidity in the air and the wind growing.
My friends later told me,
' You spent forty-five minutes'.
They said, 'you know you did eight crossings?'
They grabbed me and they grounded me,
hand cuffed, actually, hands in the back.
I was thrown down the staircase...
the most dangerous part of this whole adventure,
I almost break my head on a narrow staircase
that lead to the elevator.
Well, we got it from the Port Authority,
that they took about three days to rig it up.
I'd say it's about a thousand dollars worth of cable.
...and the rigging outfit itself, it's magnificent the way he did it.
Did he say anything about why he was doing it?
No.
Why did you do it?
I will...I will explain. I haven't got the time, this sec.
You know? Why? Why? ...and that was a very...
again, in my way of seeing America
...a very American finger-snapping question.
I did something magnificent
and mysterious and I got a practical, 'why?'
...and the beauty of it is, that I didn't have any 'why'.
Why did you do this?
Oh, that's the thousand 'why', in this morning. There is no 'why'.
I was then taken for a psychiatric examination by a psychiatrist.
It was a sort of big scientific area
Where the lunatics were circulating around
And it was, it is always the same, that is we were amongst real psychotics
And we were not crazy. We were stars.
I keep asking for water...
I was so dehydrated and he said, 'When was the last time you drank?'
...and I say, 'are you crazy? You're mad?'
I mean, do you know what I did?
I danced at the top of the world....
...I am in the front page of all the world....
...Three hundred journalists are waiting to talk to me
and you're asking me when was the last time I..I drunk?
You're completely mad.'
So, he wrote, you know,
'the guy is completely normal and he's just very thirsty'.
The police took a humourless view of the act.
They took Petit and a companion into custody...
and finally decided to charge them with.
'trespassing and disorderly conduct'.
The District Attorney offered me a deal...
...and he said 'Philippe, if you agree to do a little show,
...but, you know, like juggling three oranges...
in front of four kids but on camera,
...The New York News and all that... then...then we'll drop all the charges.'
So, I say, ' Sure'.
And now I climb down the steps of the Palais De Justice.
I saw in the crowd, an admirer.
She was smiling beautifully and she came to me...
...and she put her hands on my neck in a loving way
and she amorously said,...
...'Philippe, I would like to be the first new person to...
...to welcome you and to, you know, to celebrate with you and....
...let's go... I can follow you anywhere.'
So, yes, it did end up on a... on a water bed in a loft somewhere.
...but here I went for a very short, little moment of...
...of...of...of I don't know... of...
of pleasure of the flesh, how disgusting....
...but...but...but I am sorry, how beautiful too.
I mean, my friends were waiting for me.
Annie, my girlfriend. It was a betrayal of my friends.
I remember, I call and say,
'Well, no, I have many interview to do so I'll see you soon.'
I had this magnificent explosion of pleasure, let's say it...
...and then I went back, oh... frightened to death.
You know, to my friends, thinking I'm really...
I'm really, I'm really a guilty guy.
I saw Philippe discover what fame was.
To be recognised, to be recognized with expressions of friendliness,
expressions of enthusiasm.
People would cross the street to tell him
'oh you gave us such a gift!'
It was so beautiful!
It was a breath of fresh air. Thank you!'
It was extraordinary and I think
in Philippe's mind many things were changing.
I am a celebrity in New York.
People say, ' Are you the guy who walked between the Twin Towers?'
I say, ' Yeah, yeah, it's me'.... this is incredible.
And then some people say,
'Are you the guy who?' I say,' Yeah, yeah, yeah.'
...and then people say, 'Are you the guy?'
I say ' Yeah, Yeah, it's me.'
So the judge's sentence was I thought pretty harsh,
I was expelled from the united states. I was condemned to expulsion.
We talked about it in the plane.
Jean-Francois, he's so happy. He said, ' Well, I'm ready for the next time.'
I said, ' No, there will... there will not be any more...
any more story like that'.
There was something broken, probably, in...in this friendship.
Doesn't matter, because...
...well basically, because we did it and .....
basically...
I mean you cannot take away what happened and....
...yeah, what happened is that....
There was a love story.
It was obvious that for Philippe
an incredible stage of his life was over.
And he was starting something else, an other life.
And strangely, so did I.
Our adventure had come to an end
And it was beautiful like that.
To me, it's...it's really.... it's so simple....
that life should be lived on... on the edge of life.
You have to exercise rebellion.
To refuse to... taper yourself to rules.
To refuse your own success.
To refuse to repeat yourself,
to see every day, every year, every...
every idea as a...as a true challenge
and then you are going to live your life on a tight rope.