Man On Wire Interview - Edinburgh Film Festival

How did you first hear about Philippe and how did you come to be involved in making the film?

Everyone in New York knows about it in some shape or form, it’s one of those folk memories that people have. I've lived there for 14 years and it’s just one of those stories you hear about. More specifically, a producer in London called Simon Chinn was trying to option Philippe’s book and asked me to read it. I read it, thought it was amazing and knew I had to do it. It’s such a gripping read that immediately gives you the idea that you should make it as some kind of heist film, as opposed to a conventional documentary or biography. It was like a genre film and it should be confined to this one event and how it happened. So after reading the book I had to convince Philippe that I was the right person – we weren’t the first to approach him about making a film. The film was obviously influenced by discussions with him; it’s his story and he tells it so beautifully. So that was the second element, convincing him that I was the right person to do it.

 

Did you always intend for it to be a documentary, or could it have been filmed as a drama?

Not for me. I'm sure it could and will be, but for me it presented itself so clearly as a true life story that it could never be improved, at least by me as a director, by fictionalising it or dramatising it. Of course, what I did do was take the unfolding of the break-in story of the night they're in the Towers and I dramatised that in a fairly expressive and comic way; it’s not supposed to be archive.

 

Why did it take so long to bring the story to the screen?

Philippe had resisted having the story told. He wanted a certain amount of influence on it. And after the Towers were destroyed, the story took on this whole other meaning which we don’t really address in the film but which is implicit for anyone watching. And it felt to me, having lived in New York for a long time, like a good time to do this film and to use the buildings around this wonderful story as a backdrop, as a canvas for playing out this brilliant story.

 

Why did you choose to make no mention whatsoever of the fact that the Twin Towers are no longer there?

For me it was a really easy choice because the two events had nothing in common, even though obviously they really do. One happened in 1974 and the Towers had just been built, which was one of the reasons Philippe wanted to do the walk. But it seemed that it was a really wonderful story and why confuse that by adding some sort of sentimental, crass, stupid interpretation of the event in light of what then happened? But the point is more that you trust the audience to do that for you – you don’t need to make anything overt. You look at the archive of the buildings and you have those feelings and you know their fate, but it just seemed a dimension best left unspoken and to allow the audience to engage with that to whatever degree it wants to.

 

How did you go about getting the footage of the Towers being built?

That was actually really hard because the archive of the Port Authority was kept in one of the Towers, so it was all destroyed, so we had to ring around and track down the bits here and there to put together. They actually shot the whole construction so the film was really great but it had all been lost so we had to piece it together from other documentary filmmakers and news organisations, then use it to show the parallel of Philippe’s ambition to do this, which pre-dates the building of the Towers, and allowed us to build them up again, which was a very beautiful thing to do in a film.

 

The amount of home movie footage that Philippe and his associates took must have come in handy....

That was a real gift. The best of it was the stuff they shot in France on very nice 16mm stock, which shows you some of the obstacles they had to overcome, like how to get the line from one tower to the other, which was a major undertaking. So you see them worrying away at these very specific problems but more importantly you see the spirit of the whole thing – a young Frenchman and an Australian gambolling in the fields, and it’s all very fun and it doesn’t feel very serious. But then you have this sort of frisson where they're rehearsing the walk and Philippe is trying to get them to create the wind conditions by shaking the wire and you realise, oh my god, a man’s life is at stake here, despite all this carefree capering. But you also see how people believe in what’s happening; it has many dimensions.

 

Was it important to keep the reconstructed footage quite light and funny?

Absolutely. What’s comic about any situation is people taking something very, very seriously and it not going to plan. So when they go into the Towers, both teams get trapped by a security guard who’s virtually ambling around. So they're both in preposterous positions: in the North Tower you have Jean-Louis and Albert in suits cowering behind boxes and it’s just ridiculous, they're grown men. In the other tower, Philippe and another Frenchman are hiding under a tarpaulin beside a beam and a drop of 200ft. So it’s absolutely ridiculous as well as being really serious and therein lies the comedy. So I hope there’s a certain amount of narrative suspense which is leavened by this.

 

With all the footage that was available, why wasn’t a camera taken to the top of the Towers?

Well it was. On the North Tower there was a 16mm camera loaded and ready to go, but Jean-Louis had been pulling on the wire for so long that he literally couldn’t pick the camera up to film. Even with the photos he took, the first ones were out of focus because he’s shaking. He was having his arms almost pulled out of their sockets for almost four hours so by the time he got the strength back to pick up the camera, the police were already on their way. He had to go and hide and so no footage exists of the walk. Ultimately perhaps for the film it was a good thing, because if we did have footage everyone would have seen it already and it would have taken away some of those magic moments in the photographs, those frozen moments in time that are so miraculous and ephemeral.

 

How was the editing process?

I wrote a very detailed outline of the structure which is more or less what I did in the cutting room. I filmed all the interviews and then spent about a month assembling a story, then on the back of that I then shot the reconstruction elements. Doing it that way it became very clear what the story should be.

 

It must have been a huge advantage having a character like Philippe telling the story....

The first interview quickly broke down into a theatrical acting out of the story. I had two choices – I could either have told him we’re not doing it that way and to sit down and be sensible, or I could just say “fuck it” and get on with it, which was very liberating. It has a wonderful energy because we allowed him to tell the story in his way, and it adds another layer to the story when he runs around and hides behind curtains. At one point he got so carried away he ran out the door. It was infectious and enervating but at the same time it defines the film and sets a level for the editing to follow. We don’t fuck about and it’s always moving forward.

 

And yet it ends up being surprisingly moving....

The intimacy that we created allowed them to be honest more than they were expecting and I think it came as a surprise to all of us when it became very emotional. Jean-Louis was very conflicted and upset about recalling this broken friendship but he never said don’t use it.

 

Is Philippe still a celebrated figure in the States?

Very much, particularly in New York, he’s literally a folk hero. People who live in New York see what he did as something quite unique, not just because of 9/11, but because it was almost impossible even then. And you can’t imagine the authorities responding in the same way, someone walking through the airport with a bow and arrow. There was a very emotional response in New York; half the audience was in tears. But people weren’t upset, they were just moved by this maelstrom of emotion that I think we all felt.

Read our film review of Man on Wire.