08/25/08
Text: Cheyne Nadeau
After watching the film Man on Wire, I caught up with director James March for a bit after the film and again for a quick espresso right before he flew back to London.
What drew you to make this film in the beginning?
I knew about it as a kind of New York antidote, I lived in N.Y. for about fourteen years. It’s one of those stories you get to hear about in connection with the twin towers so I knew about it even before the towers went down. Then the story got a little more play in some discreet ways after the towers destroyed.
My first point of entry was Phillip's book called To Reach the Clouds, which is a very personal and very idiosyncratic memoir of the story from his point of view only. That was a really good starting point for me and that was where I got the idea to structure the film as sort of a Hest film. The book kind of laid out this crime essentially but the big difference between the film and the book is that I interviewed all the other people involved. I used their testimonies in a way that brought contrast to Phillip’s very personal very egotistical recollections about the event in the film. He has an ego to for good reason but I think what were very useful to the film were these overlapping narratives and you have other people’s points of view.
There is a whole other story going on in the North Tower during the night they're actually in the tower that Phillip didn’t see because he wasn’t there. So the two other characters who were there and their part of the adventure or the objective is equally important at this point as his is because if they don’t get there or make it up to their roof nothing is going to happen. That opened up the film very nicely and allowed me to construct conflict and human drama because not everyone agreed with each other.
There was lots of conflict and any objective where you can get a group of people together that are not being paid; they are just doing it because they believe in something. As you saw in the film there is quite a lot of disagreement and human conflict. That choice to open the film up with many different points of view was very important to it’s integrity of the story.
Can you tell us a little bit about your approach on making a documentary about something that happened in 1974 that you knew was going to use talking heads for today but how you would refer to the past?
I think one of the most interested challenge to making the film in the beginning you obviously see Philippe Petit who is alive and well now and the film is very premised on a very dangerous and life threatening event. So it felt to me what I had to do is find a structure for the film that could create suspense with the preparation and put you in the moment. That was the first defining idea I had was to structure it like a thriller almost like a heist film and allow a present tense timeline much like the film Reservoir Dogs. Which you go into a crime and them you flash back to understand how people got there and what their relationships are with each other. So that was really the challenges was to make it into something dramatic and gripping in the moment when you probably guessed the outcome, so it’s the journey as opposed to the objective that I focused on.
Can you say something about working with Philippe Petit? He is obviously a very confidant person.
You don’t work with him; you kind of fight him off. You have to be a stubborn and as kind of relentless as he is. Obviously he is a performer and what performers have in common is that kind of theatrical narcissism which is "Look at me, just look at me" so in that respect working with someone who is an artistic performer, someone who is theatrical and often quite volatile and temperamental. It was difficult to work with him and we had quite a lot of passionate arguments in the course of making the film but he’s French and I’m British so there is a kind of a cultural gap between us.
That worked because he as almost a cliché Frenchman who is full of big gestures, romantic ideas and big passions. Coming from Britain we are much less much, more controlled if you like. Since having the British cliché of having cold blood I guess I have that and he has cold blooded too because what he does on that wire is very cold blooded. You can’t be passionate you have to absolutely in the moment. Anyhow it was a difficult process to work with someone like that and in a sense protect the film from him.
When you see old movies on T.V. (pre-2001) that are set in N.Y. and you see the W.T.C. there is always kind of a jolt for a moment and you’ve made a film about a situation that took place there. You don’t refer at all to what happened on 9/11 and obviously that was a choice you made. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Well, I think this is a very interesting place to talk about that because there is life before death, there is life before destruction. This film is about those buildings, which are a fetish in the modern world in a way this city (Sarajevo) has become or can be perceived that way too. There is life before tragedy; life before disaster, life before conflict and this film is about that. It’s not about destruction of course but it’s a huge fact that everyone here and everyone who see the films understands that those buildings have been destroyed in the most foul and disgusting way but this film isn’t about that.
I think that the reason not to mention that disaster because everyone here will have the own reaction to those buildings and it is a sense of trust I have for the audience to complete the film if they want to with that knowledge. As opposed to me making some ridiculous statement “they’re destroyed” well everyone knows that.
There is something very interesting about the parallels that I was aware of about a group of foreign people plotting something against those buildings if you’d like but they plot something beautiful it’s a bank robbery where something is given not taken. So that makes it the opposite of everything we have come to characterize those buildings with and I reiterate there was life in the city, people laugh and have passions. It’s not only about death, for it to be defined only about death is allowing the people who destroyed those buildings and then the people who exploited that destruction to win. This film isn’t going to change the world but 90 minutes you can actually enjoy a beautiful story if you’d like about those buildings and to see them go up is kind of magical as apposed to see them come down.
Do you have any plans on documenting Phillips work in the future?
He is doing something in London I believe, a walk inside a British library but this for me is a film I wanted to about him with him. I think there is going to be a feature film based on the same story but has nothing to do with me but it is in the works. For me this is enough, the world of tight rope walking is fascinating and Phillip is a fascinating human being but I have spent 2 years of my life doing this and that is really enough.
