American Experience
The Center of the World: Interview Outtakes

Philippe Petit:
video | transcript

Being Aerial 1 -- Rehearsing the Walk2 -- Getting the Cable Across3 -- Setting Foot On the Cable4 -- Being Aerial

Mike Wallace Pete Hamill Carol Willis Guy Tozzoli
Leslie Robertson Camilo José Vergara Niall Ferguson Philippe Petit
William Langewiesche Ed Koch Mario Cuomo Ada Louise Huxtable

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Somehow I did this shift from being grounded to being aerial. And I started gliding, and the first crossing -- There might have been only one -- but the first crossing is always an interrogation between me and the place where I anchored my wire, me and the wire itself, because there's no way to test that wire before. So the first crossing has a little bit of a test to it. But I didn't even took the full length of the crossing to get to know the rigging and the vibration of the building and the wire. After a few steps, I knew I was in my element and I knew the wire was not well rigged (we had some tremendous problem during the whole night of rigging) but it was safe enough for me to carry on. And then, very slowly as I walked, I was overwhelmed by a sense of easiness, a sense of simplicity. And actually I can be seen on the first pictures smiling, smiling probably out of disbelief. It's so easy, after all those years and months of ups and down and detours, victories and disasters. Finally I was carrying my life on a path that was the simplest, the most beautiful, and the easiest. I shouldn't say that, but why not? It's very easy to walk on a wire if you spend a whole lifetime practicing for it. So I was actually enjoying myself tremendously, and I was feeling the bird in me, the feathers in my arm grow. And then somehow I improvised on that wire, and I found myself spending 45 minutes and doing eight crossings.