Philippe Petit ( french pronunciation : [ filip pəti ] ; born 13 August 1949 ) is a french high-wire artist who gained fame for his unauthorized high-wire walks between the towers of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris in 1971 and of Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1973, deoxyadenosine monophosphate well as between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City on the morning of 7 August 1974. [ 1 ] For his unauthorized feat 400 metres ( 1,312 feet ) above the anchor – which he referred to as “ lupus erythematosus coup d’etat ” [ 2 ] – he rigged a 200-kilogram ( 440-pound ) cable television and used a custom-made 8-metre ( 30-foot ) long, 25-kilogram ( 55-pound ) balancing perch. He performed for 45 minutes, making eight passes along the wire. Since then, Petit has lived in New York, where he has been artist-in-residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, besides a placement of other aeriform performances. He has done cable walk as part of official celebrations in New York, across the United States, and in France and other countries, arsenic well as teaching workshops on the art. In 2008, Man on Wire, a documentary directed by James Marsh about Petit ‘s walk of life between the towers, won numerous awards. He was besides the discipline of a children ‘s book and an inspire adaptation of it, released in 2005. The Walk, a film based on Petit ‘s walk, was released in September 2015, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Petit and directed by Robert Zemeckis. He besides became ace at equestrianism, juggle, fence, carpentry, rock-climbing, and bullfighting. Spurning circuses and their formulaic performances, he created his street persona on the sidewalks of Paris. In the early 1970s, he visited New York City, where he frequently juggled and worked on a slackline in Washington Square Park.
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early life [edit ]
Petit was born in Nemours, Seine-et-Marne, France ; his father Edmond Petit was an generator and an Army Pilot. At an early on historic period, Petit discovered magic and juggle. He loved to climb, and at 16, he took his first steps on a tightrope wire. He told a reporter ,
Within one class, I taught myself to do all the things you could do on a electrify. I learned the backward somersault, the front man somersault, the unicycle, the bicycle, the electric chair on the wire, jumping through hoops. But I thought, “ What is the boastfully deal here ? It looks about surly. ” So I started to discard those tricks and to reinvent my art. [ 3 ]
In June 1971, Petit secretly installed a cable between the two towers of Notre Dame de Paris. On the morning of 26 June 1971, he “ juggled balls ” and “ pranced back and forth ” as he crossed the wire on foundation to the applause of the crowd below. [ 4 ]
World Trade Center walk [edit ]
Petit became known to New Yorkers in the early 1970s for his patronize tightrope-walking performances and magic shows in the city parking lot, particularly Washington Square Park. Petit ‘s most celebrated performance was in August 1974, conducted on a electrify between the roof of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan, New York City, USA, 400 metres ( 1,312 feet ) above the land. The towers were inactive under construction and had not even been in full occupied. He performed for 45 minutes, making eight passes along the wire, during which he walked, danced, lay down on the cable, and saluted watchers from a kneel position. Office workers, construction crews and policemen cheered him on .
Planning [edit ]
Petit conceived his “ coup ” when he was 18, when he first read about the aim construction of the Twin Towers and saw drawings of the stick out in a magazine, which he read in 1968 while sitting at a dentist ‘s office. [ 5 ] Petit was seized by the estimate of performing there, and began collecting articles on the Towers whenever he could. What was called the “ aesthetic crime of the century ” took Petit six years ‘ planning. During this menstruation, he learned everything he could about the buildings and their construction. In the lapp period, he began to perform high-wire walk at early celebrated places. Rigging his wire secretly, he performed as a combination of circus act and public display. In 1971, he performed his first such walk between the towers of the cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris, [ 1 ] while priests were being ordained inside the building. In 1973, he walked a wire rigged between the two north pylons of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. [ 6 ] In planning for the Twin Towers walk, Petit had to learn how to accommodate issues such as the carry of the high towers due to wind, which was part of their design ; effects of wind instrument and weather on the wire at that acme, how to rig a 200 foot ( 61 thousand ) steel cable across the 138 foot ( 42 megabyte ) gap between the towers ( at a height of 1,368 foot ( 417 megabyte ) ), and how to gain submission with his collaborators, beginning to scope out the conditions and last, to stage the visualize. [ 2 ] They had to bring dense equipment to the rooftops. He traveled to New York on numerous occasions to make first-hand observations. [ 1 ] Since the towers were distillery under construction, Petit and one of his collaborators, New York-based photographer Jim Moore, rented a helicopter to take forward pass photograph of the buildings. [ 2 ] Two more collaborators, Jean-François and Jean-Louis, helped him practice in a plain in France, and accompanied him to take partially in the final rig of the project, vitamin a well as to photograph it. Francis Brunn, a german juggler, provided fiscal support for the proposed project and its design. [ 7 ] Petit and his crew gained entry into the towers several times and obscure in upper floors and on the ceiling of the unfinished buildings to study security measures. They besides analyzed the construction and identified places to anchor the wire and cavalletti. Using his own observations, drawings, and Moore ‘s photograph, Petit constructed a scale model of the towers to design the want rig for the wire walk. Working from the ID of an american who worked in the build, Petit made bogus identification cards for himself and his collaborators ( claiming they were contractors who were installing an electrify fence on the roof ) to gain access to the buildings. Prior to this, Petit had cautiously observed the clothes worn by construction workers and the kinds of tools they carried. He besides took note of the clothing of agency workers so that some of his collaborators could pose as white-collar workers. He observed what time the workers arrived and left, so he could determine when he would have roof access. As the aim date of his “ coup d’etat ” approached, he claimed to be a diarist with Metropolis, a french architecture magazine, so that he could gain permission to consultation the workers on the roof. The Port Authority allowed Petit to conduct the interviews, which he used as a pretext to make more observations. On the night of Tuesday, 6 August 1974, Petit and his crew had a golden break and got a ride in a freight elevator to the 104th floor with their equipment. They stored it 19 steps below the ceiling. To pass the cable across the invalidate, Petit and his crew had settled on using a bow and arrow attached to a r-2. They had to practice this many times to perfect their proficiency. They first shot across a fish line, which was attached to larger ropes, and ultimately to the 450-pound ( 200 kilogram ) steel cable. The team was delayed when the heavy cable sank excessively fast, and had to be pulled up manually for hours. Petit had already identified points at which to anchor two tiranti ( ridicule lines ) to other points to stabilize the cable and keep the rock of the wire to a minimum. [ 2 ]
event [edit ]
shortly after 7 am local time, Petit stepped out on the electrify and started to perform. He was 1,350 feet ( 410 molarity ) above the ground. He performed for 45 minutes, making eight passes along the wire, during which he walked, danced, lay down on the wire, and knelt to salute watchers. Crowds gathered on the streets downstairs. He said belated that he could hear their grumble and cheers. When New York Police Department and Port Authority of New York police officers learned of his stunt, they came up to the roof of both buildings to try to persuade him to leave the wire. They threatened to pluck him off by helicopter. [ 2 ] Petit got off when it started to rain. [ citation needed ]
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aftermath [edit ]
There was across-the-board news coverage and public appreciation of Petit ‘s high-wire walk. The district lawyer dropped all formal charges of trespassing and early items relating to his walk [ 8 ] on circumstance that Petit give a detached forward pass show for children in Central Park. He performed on a high-wire walk in the park above Belvedere Lake ( now known as Turtle Pond ). [ 9 ] The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey gave Petit a life pass to the Twin Towers ‘ Observation Deck. He autographed a steel beam close to the distributor point where he began his walk. Petit ‘s high-wire walk is credited with bringing the Twin Towers much needed attention and even affection, as they initially had been unpopular. [ 10 ] [ 11 ] Critics such as historian Lewis Mumford had regarded them as atrocious and utilitarian in purpose, and besides large a growth for the area. The Port Authority was having disturb renting out all of the function space. [ 10 ]
representation in early media [edit ]
Petit ‘s World Trade Center stunt was the subject of Sandi Sissel ‘s 1984 half-hour objective, High Wire, which featured music from Philip Glass ‘s Glassworks. Mordicai Gerstein wrote and illustrated a children ‘s book, The Man Who Walked Between The Towers ( 2003 ), which won a Caldecott Medal for his art. It was adapted and produced as an enliven short film by the same style, directed by Michael Sporn and released in 2005, which won respective awards. The documentary film Man on Wire ( 2008 ), by UK conductor James Marsh, is about Petit and his 1974 WTC performance. It won both the World Cinema Jury and Audience awards at the Sundance Film Festival 2008. It combines historic footage with re-enactment and has the spirit of a armed robbery movie. It won awards at the 2008 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham, North Carolina, and the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 2009. On stage with Marsh to accept the Oscar award, Petit made a coin disappear in his hands while thanking the Academy “ for believing in magic trick ”. He balanced the Oscar by its drumhead on his chin to cheers from the hearing. [ 12 ] The lapp stunt was fictionalized in a biographic play entitled The Walk ( 2015 ), directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Petit. Author Colum McCann fictionalized Petit ‘s appearance above New York as a mix string throughout his 2009 novel Let the Great World Spin .
late life [edit ]
Petit has made dozens of public high-wire performances in his career. For case, in 1986 he re-enacted the crossing of the Niagara River by Blondin for an IMAX film. In 1989, to celebrate the two-hundredth anniversary of the french Revolution, mayor Jacques Chirac invited him to walk an disposed wire string from the grind at the Place du Trocadéro to the second level of the Eiffel Tower, crossing the Seine. Petit concisely headlined with the Ringling Brothers Circus, but preferred staging his own performances. During his scrimp with the circus and a rehearse walk of life, he suffered his only fall, from 45 feet ( 14 thousand ), breaking several ribs. He says he has never fallen during a performance. “ If I had, I would n’t be here talking about it. ” [ 13 ] Petit regularly gives lectures and workshops internationally on a diverseness of topics and subjects. He single-handed built a barn in the Catskill Mountains using the methods and tools of 18th-century forest framers. [ 14 ] In 2011, he published his one-eighth koran, A Square Peg. He has besides created an ebook for TED Books, entitled Cheating the Impossible: Ideas and Recipes from a Rebellious High-Wire Artist. Petit divides his time between New York City, where he is an artist in residence at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, and a hideout in the Catskill Mountains. Among those who have associated with some of his projects are such artists as Mikhail Baryshnikov, Werner Herzog, Annie Leibovitz, Miloš Forman, Volker Schlöndorff, Twyla Tharp, Peter Beard, Marcel Marceau, Paul Auster, Paul Winter, Debra Winger, Robin Williams and Sting. [ citation needed ] Director James Signorelli assisted with universe of Petit ‘s book To Reach the Clouds ( 2002 ), about the Twin Towers walk. [ 15 ] Petit not only wrote about his feat, and events that led to the operation, but besides expressed his emotions following the September 11 attacks, during which the Twin Towers were destroyed. He wrote that on that dawn, “ My towers became our towers. I saw them crumble – lunge, crushing thousands of lives. Disbelief preceded grief for the eradication of the buildings, perplexity descended before fury at the intolerable loss of life. ” [ 16 ] Petit paid tribute to those who were killed and supported rebuilding the towers, promising that “ When the towers again twin-tickle the overcast, I offer to walk again, to be the expression of the builders ‘ corporate voice. together, we will rejoice in an aerial sung of victory. ” [ 16 ] however, a unlike complex of buildings has been developed on the locate, and does not offer this opportunity.