Man On Wire

My book on Shoot Out The Lights is a work of fiction, although it deals with real people (like, say, Richard and Linda Thompson) and real events (like, say, any of those that reference Richard and Linda Thompson). One of the real people who crops up in the book is Philippe Petit, the high-wire artist who walked between the World Trade Center in 1974, between the recording and release of one of Richard & Linda Thompson's two great tightrope-as-metaphor songs, "The Great Valerio." In researching Philippe's stunning walk, I mostly relied on his memoir To Reach The Clouds. After I'd finished the draft, my wife found a lovely children's book by Mordicai Gerstein called The Man Who Walked Between The Towers. This morning I read that someone's made a movie about Petit called Man On Wire. It's playing at the Tribeca Film Festival four times over the next week, and man, I wish I lived in New York. I can't imagine that this could be anything but incredible.