Lauren Wissot gets a wonderful interview from documentary filmmaker James Marsh and Philippe Petit (the highwire artist subject of Man On Wire) – One brief excerpt from the interview:
Philippe Petit: Everything I do I feel is completely honest, completely felt, completely generous and sincere. At the same time I have to seduce, I have to steal, I have to lie, I have to convince, I have to acquire things, I have to force, I have to impose. This is what an artist should do regardless of the rules, if he has a pure heart and wants to do something beautiful.
There are brief moments when I despise living out in BFE…caught a radio interview with Petit the other day. Gonna have to check Man on Wire out…probably on DVD…not sure the arthouse scene has a tight enough filter to catch this one in East TN….
Tommy – Hopefully it’ll get television distribution as well! Petit sounds like such an interesting man – and the thought of him on that wire in between the towers is just so awful to me. But I loved the clip in Lauren’s post – with the cop telling his side of things … Even though what Petit did was illegal and insane, you can tell that the cop who witnessed it was just … awestruck by the whole thing.
Oh and Tommy, stupid question: what’s “BFE”? I keep trying to work it out in my mind but I can’t get it. I can tell the concept from the context you put it in – but please enlighten me!