The story of Philippe Petit’s 1974 tightrope walk between New York’s twin towers at the World Trade Center was already a perfectly serviceable (and Oscar winning) documentary from James Marsh. Nonetheless, Robert Zemeckis is making a Hollywood feature about it called ‘The Walk,’ starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Petit. Levitt recently posted the first picture of himself in Fronch-face as Petit with his co-star Charlotte LeBon who’s already French and thus doesn’t require a turtleneck. It’s like a who’s-more-adorable contest where everyone wins!
Still, we all pretty much know this story already, and if we didn’t, why wouldn’t we just watch the documentary? I’m sure parts of the story will be fictionalized, but it’s never anything crazy with these movies, they’ll probably just make his girlfriend pregnant while he’s walking the rope or something, to amp up the “drama.” If you’re going to fictionalize, why not doing something big with it? Like maybe some aliens invade New York and they shoot the ship with a harpoon and Petit has to walk across the wire to plant the bomb while Kiss plays a concert at the Garden to distract them. That might be interesting. I never understand the urge to slightly embellish an already-good story. Go big or go home, you f*cks, it’s not like you’re fooling us.