Before the sobering associations they now carry, the Twin Towers in New York long stood as one of the country's most memorable sights, America's entrepreneurial spirit writ large over the Big Apple. While still being constructed, the Towers caught the eye and the imagination of one Philippe Petit, a French performance artist and high-wire man.  Where others saw only buildings, or even only a symbol, he saw a challenge.

On April 7, 1974, Petit ascended to the top of the Towers and walked a high-wire from one to the other. It was brazen, it was inspiring — it was incredibly illegal. He had planned for months, years even, along with a small, devoted team of helpers to make it happen, and his success was a triumph not only for himself but for art and the human spirit.

Twenty-four years later that story, enshrined in Petit's 2002 memoir To Reach the Clouds, caught the attention of James Marsh, a British documentarian whose previous subjects had included the surrealist animator and filmmaker Jan Svankmajer and Elvis Presley. Man on Wire, playing in New York now and expanding to more theaters across the country this summer, is the Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winning fruit of their collaboration, Petit's stunt told as "a heist." Recently, Filmazing sat with Marsh and Petit to discuss the caper itself and the resulting film.

Q: Why do you guys think [the film and Philippe’s stunt] captures the imagination and inspires everyone across the globe?

James Marsh: I can only speak for myself and that’s my reaction too, when I encountered the story in all its details and its epic dimensions. It was utterly captivating and I think the challenge then was to get the film to be as close to the experience of the people doing this and of Philippe in particular and to match and measure yourself against the excitement and the setbacks and the human drama that was generated by Felipe’s impossible dream, which ends up being, of course, possible.

Philippe Petit: I completely agree with all of what you say. It’s unbelievable and it’s impossible and probably that’s why I did it.

Q: That takes such courage. That takes such boldness. Did you have an idea of the audacity at the time?

PP: Oh yes, yes, yes. Audacity comes with a good dose of arrogance and I have no problem fitting myself with that. But truly, it was a dream, this was almost like a fairytale, a long, long dream. From the moment I got the idea to the moment I stepped on the wire, it was almost six and a half years. So usually people dream not that long. So yes, it’s an amazing adventure – and on the screen, it catches you with drama, tears, laughter.  So, it’s an important work.

Q: Now you fulfilled this dream back in the 70s. What’s life like after that, [after] you do the world’s ultimate feat?

PP: Well, if I was collecting the largest and the highest and the longest, I would have killed myself after the Twin Towers. But, I don’t have a career. I am a poet, I am a man who grabs life like this, galloping, and I have no problem, and I had no problem, after the World Trade Center, to concentrate on my next dream, even if it was not a highest or longest walk. I have done some very beautiful high-wire walks that were very intimate in a small theatre. So I am not collecting the gigantic, I am collecting the inspiring and the beautiful.

Q: I see you as an artist, and you’re sacrificed a lot for your art. Can you address that?

PP: No, no, no. I am not to be taken into pity and I do not sacrifice. Life is too short to do what I want, so I have to actually decide (what) will I do for my miserable 24 hours a day? But no, I go from project to project with bromides, with avidity and with a certain childlike way of seeing the world, and certainly with the idea that nothing is impossible.

Q: [To Marsh] How did you come to this project? Were you inspired by the book, and then did you have to convince Philippe to cooperate?

JW: Well there was no way I wasn’t going to do it. Once I read Philip’s memoir, To Reach the Clouds, and saw, within the book this very suspenseful story – it’s not what you expect. When you have a dim memory or idea about what Philip achieved there. Once you became involved with the minutiae of it, the process, it became obvious to me it was going to be like a heist film. And then I began to meet some of the people involved.

But there was a process by which we had to be comfortable doing the film together. Philippe is the protagonist of this story, and it is his story, and it was important that we understood and collaborated going in, and that we were both open to each other’s ideas about how this story was going to be told. So that part of it was very important, but once we got beyond that, it was a very interesting collaboration and you challenge each other in any collaboration and that’s the point of it. You question each other and that’s what makes hopefully the film work.

Q: how long have you been working on this project?

JW: It was a year, from start to finish. Yeah, we don’t hang about. It was shorter than the planning that Philippe had to do, oddly enough.

PP: I was dreaming about it on and off all those years, but I had to wait for the towers to be built. The minute they were about to be finished I knew my time was coming and I came to New York and I spent a miserable eight months assembling the last pieces of the puzzle and doing it. So, yes, it’s probably a few months of organization.

Q: How did you feel on September 11th when you heard that the Towers had come down?

PP: Well, certainly, talking about this film and my book – it’s another film, another book, so I don’t want to expand on that, but as you can imagine, since I had followed those towers being built, being born, I had a feeling that they were alive in me the day they died, but I cannot even mention that when you know that they died taking with them all those human lives. So it certainly was something very, very personal there.

Q: When you were planning this great adventure, did you have any idea how many people you’d inspire?

PP: No, you know, I never thought of the impact, of the after-world. Would they cut my head? Would they put me 20 years in jail, would they cut the wire while I was on the wire? I never thought of the consequences, and I think that a poet, an artist, should not think about the after, they should think about the during, and so I concentrated before on the doing, I concentrated on making it happen and presenting myself on that wire.

But then after that, I had a wonderful gift, that people would tell me how I offered them a gift and how inspired they were. So it had not dawned on me actually, how I would inspire people actually, until to this day.

Q: So you did it for the art.

PP: Absolutely.