Man On Wire

Have you ever witnessed something so crazy, so insane, that you just can’t look away, even though you’re convinced, absolutely convinced that it can only end in disaster of the life threatening kind? In my home town, we once had a guy swallowing knives in an attempt to get into the Guinness Book of World Records, and I saw it on the news. He cut himself pretty badly, and I found myself yelling at the television, “what the hell did you think was going to happen?”

I used to watch the Guinness World Record television show (I’m not sure it’s on tv anymore, or at least I haven’t seen it in a few years), and it was just like they advertised—“We wrote the book on Reality TV”. Every time my husband was flicking and we came across this show, I made him stop and we would watch the feats of craziness. I cringed and gasped and kept expecting tragedy to strike these people who dared so much. But the amazing part was that very often these stunts didn’t end in disaster. They may not have broken records every time, but they succeeded in not killing themselves.

So what would be the ultimate test of insanity, the ultimate Guinness feat? Well, on a misty, overcast morning on August 7, 1974, Philippe Petit spent 45 minutes walking, kneeling and even laying on wire strung between the top of the World Trade Center towers. At one point he laid down on his back on the wire and had a conversation with a seagull.

It took Phillipe and his crew six-months of meticulous planning to get the operation together. Using fake ID’s, disguises, and even getting a couple of ‘inside men’ that worked in the Trade Towers to help, setting this stunt up was almost as much of an accomplishment as the wire-walk itself.

Of course, that's because it was supremely illegal. This 'artistic crime of the century' took six years of planning, during which Petit learned everything he could about the buildings, taking into account such problems as the swaying of the towers because of wind and how to get the walking cable across the 140-foot gap between the towers. Petit and his crew rode a freight elevator to the 104th floor of one of the towers with their equipment the day before and stored it there. In order to pass the cable across the void, they used a bow and arrow, first shooting across a fishing line, and then passing larger and larger ropes over the space between the towers until they were able to send the 450-pound steel cable across. Cavalettis (tensioned cables) were used to stabilize the cable and keep the swaying of the wire to a minimum.

When all was ready, Philippe Petit took his first step out onto the wire strung high in the air between the two towers. He made it all the way across. His performance made headlines around the world. When asked why he did it, he would say "When I see three oranges, I juggle; when I see two towers, I walk."

What lengths will you go to immortalize yourself?

MAN ON WIRE