For younger audiences, the artistry of Petit's feat resembles Christo streaming orange banners through Central Park. Marsh says, "He transformed an environment - and in 1974, that environment hadn't quite been finished."
No one before Marsh conducted any public interviews with Petit's friends and accomplices, who helped him concoct and execute plans to sneak past guards at the World Trade Center and smuggle the tools they needed to its rooftops. They include his stalwart girlfriend and the man who thought of shooting the cable from one building to the next with a bow and arrow. "Their interviews were very emotional, detailed and fresh: This was a big event in their lives, probably the most exciting moment they ever had. They were not a group of professional criminals, but they had to think like criminals to come up with some of their solutions - they even had 'an inside man.'"
After Marsh "passed a series of tests," Petit handed him a stash of film documenting Petit and his gang in France: "with this fearless, ecstatic innocence," they approximate the conditions of walking between the towers. The quality is superb, and no wonder. A famous French cinematographer (Etienne Becker) shot it for a film that was abandoned because the cinematographer hated the director and everyone realized "you can't really document an illegal act."
