"How many people are walking in the sky?"

The Times, 19 June, 2008

It is 34 years since Philippe Petit performed his masterpiece of “intimate theatre”, suspending a rope 1,350ft (410m) above ground between the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York, and stepping out into the void.

In 45 minutes he walked the 60m line between “my new friends” eight times; he sat on the wire for while, and even lay down as if sleeping. When he finally gave himself up, police threw him in a hospital for the insane.

Now Petit, in Edinburgh for the European premiere of Man on Wire, the elegiac documentary that charts his astonishing feat, is gazing from his hotel window towards St Cuthbert's Church and gauging the pitch of an imaginary wire stretched from its spire to the ramparts of Edinburgh Castle.

“To conquer the world, to run a wire between that beautiful church and incline it towards the castle — I am ready to do that tomorrow,” he muses. “It would take a few months of research and organisation and weeks of rigging. And it will cost a lot of money. But then, it will draw in a few hundred thousand people, and through the press, the entire world will witness another miracle.”

Why is it not happening, he wonders? “If the phone rings, and the mayor of Edinburgh says, Hey, Philippe, I saw your film and I know you would like to walk. My city says, Come here, let's do something.' That is my dream.”

It took six years for Petit to plan and execute his early morning walk over Lower Manhattan. Over the same period he carried out two equally terrifying high-wire walks between the towers of Notre Dame Cathedral and over the arches of Sydney Harbour Bridge. All three were illegal, but their magic impressed even the policemen sent to pluck Petit from the sky.

In James Marsh's film, Sergeant Charles Daniel of the NYPD, the officer in charge on August 7, 1974, is describing events in the usual “I was proceeding down Broadway” kind of way, when he suddenly breaks off, exclaiming: “I figured I was watching something that no one would ever see again, that is was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.” Petit laughs: “He was pulled out of his condition of being a policeman.”

The walker himself describes his experience that day in mystical terms. “I had to make the decision to take my foot, anchored on the building, and put it on the wire. Not many people dare to take that first step - to land on the Moon, to dive into a great abyss in the sea. I feel that sensation each time I grab the balancing pole and start a high-wire walk. It is not exactly the same feeling each time, but it is a feeling of intimate decision. Not for nothing is it called the first step, like the first step on a new continent.”

There is he says, no fear, nor expectation, nor even a sense of letting go at this moment of absolute truth. “It is more of starting a voyage of exploration, in a world that has not been touched by man. Look out of the window. How many people are walking in the sky? None. It's a mythic voyage, something out of this world. What I feel out there - and I love it so much for that reason - is something that you do not feel on Earth.”

Petit, 58, was a childhood rebel from his bourgeois upbringing, who pulled off his most famous walks in his early twenties with the help of old friends from Paris. They are witnesses in Man on Wire, and most say the twin towers experience was as life-changing for them as it was for Petit. Few now send Christmas cards. Most poignantly, Annie, his lover and a partner in much of his training, lost touch with him soon after his “miracle of New York”. This severance, Marsh implies in the film, was because he slept with the American woman who embraced him after his release from custody and said, “Welcome to New York.” Petit recalls matters differently: his love affair with Annie was already dying.

As for the notion that he has changed, Petit insists he hasn't. He still performs conjuring shows in parks in New York, where he lives with his partner, Kathy, and practises high-wire four hours a day. But he hasn't had a professional gig for three years.

“The world has changed immensely,” he complains. “When most people think of what I do, they must say, ‘This man is mad. He's risking his life. It's insane. We should stop him and put him in jail.' We are surrounded by cowards, who have forgotten how to live.

“Why are we letting them dull our senses? My profession is to do beautiful things, but I need to be invited.”

STUNT THAT KEPT BELEAGUERED NIXON OFF THE FRONT PAGES

Philippe Petit’s walk between the towers of the World Trade Centre on the morning of 7 August, 1974, made him an instant celebrity, knocking Richard Nixon off the front pages, the day before the president resigned over the Watergate scandal.

The NYPD quickly relented, dropping charges of trespass and disorderly conduct, on the condition that the high-wire artist performed for local children. This he did, stretching a wire over the Central Park lake. Petit even received a lifetime’s pass to the twin towers’ observation deck from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and his signature, inscribed on a steel beam, was lovingly preserved.

The destruction of the buildings by al-Qaeda terrorists is not mentioned in Man on Wire, the documentary of Petit’s achievement, but the film has an elegiac quality for the buildings and the people who perished in them.

“It is hard for me to talk about my personal feelings with all this loss of life,” says Petit. “I had toiled so hard to get to know those towers, they grew on me almost as a living entity, and when they fell I felt something was pulled out of me.”

The poet, his wife, the actress, her mother

The Times, June 19, 2008

Two English roses, in the unmistakeable forms of Keira Knightley and Sienna Miller, a handsome Welsh anti-hero, played by Matthew Rhys, and a salivating press pack from all around the world. For centuries impregnable, Edinburgh Castle was well and truly stormed to mark the opening of the city's international film festival.

This was a media conference to mark the world premiere of the festival's opening film, The Edge of Love. Described by its director John Maybury as a “feelgood chick-flick”, it is a romantic drama about the friendship between Dylan Thomas and his wife Caitlin, and the poet's friend Vera Phillips and her husband, William Killick.

The film features verse, and much worse: brutality, drunkenness, violence, sex and betrayal. All in all, producing the kind of atmosphere which can enervate fans and news cameramen, but which can, after a while, weary the stars.

Through much of this trial by media, Miller seemed to be leaning on Maybury for support, perhaps fearing an attack of the paparazzi who have so often plagued her life. But she needn't have worried. All eyes here were on Knightley, cast as Vera, the poet's lover, who takes her clothes off and has sex with Thomas on screen. And this in a film scripted by the actress's mother, Sharman MacDonald.

Grey-haired and smiling, MacDonald - or “Shar”, as Knightley calls her - had already said that she never went near the set when her daughter was kissing or simulating sex. So did it feel odd for the actress to play out these same scenes which had been contrived by own her dear parent?

“I don't have a problem with that,” snorted Knightley, whose father is Will Knightley, the actor. “It's a story about relationships, about how friendship can be ruined over an absolute betrayal in the form of sex. I can't really get out of the fact that there is sex involved in it. It certainly didn't worry me that my mother actually knows what sex is.”

Another questioner ventured into the same territory. The scene would surely capture the imagination of many of Knightley's fans. And it would put to rest all that nonsensical speculation about a naturally slim actress who has had to put up with many unkind remarks about body image.

“No. It was very simple,” retorted Knightley. “It was a sex scene and I never like them when they've got bras on. John Maybury said, ‘Take your bra off,' and I said, ‘All right then'.”

Prurience aside, The Edge of Love is an evocation of four lives which are buffeted in war. It is co-produced by Rebekah Gilbertson, whose grandparents were the couple who featured in Thomases' life in the early 1940s, first in London and then in South Wales.

Philips had known Thomas as a child in Swansea, and met him again much later by which time she had married Killick, an army commando, who had been psychologically damaged in battle. One evening, after a row in a pub, Killick fired shots into the Thomases' house, kicked down the front door and then produced a hand grenade, before he was dissuaded from the ultimate act of destruction. He was later tried for attempted murder.

Thomas aficionados will have to suspend their disbelief for parts of the film. MacDonald admitted taking “enormous liberties” with these four people, and could not prove that there had been betrayals in love. “I do not know what the truth is. I don't think anyone left alive does,” she said.

Then there is the matter of casting. The poet “had a pink blubbery face with pop eyes, lose lips and a tadpole body” according to Caitlin herself, but is played here by the chisel-jawed Rhys. Caitlin, statuesque in life, could reputedly carry her husband “across streams” under one arm; here she is brought to life by the elfin Miller.

MacDonald had initially imagined her daughter as Caitlin, but Knightley demurred. “When I first read the script I completely fell in love with Vera, her subtlety, her quiet, not very dramatic way. I felt her emotions very keenly,” said the actress.

Her mother had her “revenge” on her daughter for not taking the part. As Vera, she was obliged to sing on set. That had been an ordeal, admitted Knightley. “My knees started buckling. Then someone very kindly brought me a couple of shots of vodka and everything was alright.”

Sundance comes to Edinburgh

The Times, Tuesday March 19, 2008

A huge increase in the budget of the Edinburgh International Film Festival has been announced which could turn the event into the British equivalent of Sundance the influential independent festival in the United States, and bring a sprinkling of Hollywood celebrity to Scotland.

The £1.88 million investment spread over three years was revealed yesterday by John Woodward, the chief executive of the UK Film Council, who said the award recognised Edinburgh’s consistent record in nurturing new talent, and showcasing movies which were “fresh and interesting” for audiences and for film industry insiders alike.

He said: “It’s not a perfect match – but [Edinburgh] is probably closest to Sundance. If you think about where Sundance is, that is not a bad aspiration.”

Such is the Film Council's enthusiasm for Edinburgh that it announced that its first tranche of £600,000 is to be invested in time for the 2008 festival, a commitment which will take total funding of this year's event to £1.8 million and help to expand the range of films on show, according to the festival's director, Hannah McGill. She said that the Film Council's decision was a “ringing endorsement” of Edinburgh’s “ethos of discovery, celebration of talent, and of spreading film knowledge and film education”.

Although it has long been overshadowed by the big European festivals at Cannes, Venice and Berlin, ironically it was the strength of Edinburgh’s reputation as the champion of independent filmmakers in the 1970s which led some commentators to label Sundance “the American Edinburgh” when it was established in Park City, Utah under the chairmanship of Robert Redford.

Since then, Sundance has been transformed from an event for low-budget movies made by little-known directors into an extravaganza, which lures A-list actors and representatives from all the best-known Hollywood studios.

This January’s festival bill featured typically eclectic fare, including Marina Zenovich’s expose, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, Morgan Spurlock’s Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? and the new Steve Coogan comedy, Hamlet 2.

But it added a celebrity cachet which has usually eluded Edinburgh. Redford himself was in town; Colin Farrell attended the premiere of In Bruges, and Mary Kate Olsen arrived for her latest film The Wackness. Jack Black, Woody Harrelson, Jessica Alba, Ben Kingsley, Quentin Tarantino and Colin Firth were among a host of celebrities lured into snowy Park City to be snapped by the paparazzi.

Ginnie Atkinson, managing director of the festival, said Sundance “was a good analogy” for the Scottish event. “Sundance was always connected with training and the development of filmmakers of vision, all of them with an independent spirit. The industry wants Edinburgh to succeed.- they want Edinburgh to deliver for them, they can see the value of the festival. If they can see that happening, more people can have a good experience,” she said.

For the first time in its history, this year’s festival will be held in June. As well as improved programming, Ms McGill said the new funds would enable services to the film industry to be expanded “enhancing the ability to network and talent spot in Edinburgh” and would enable more new talent showcases to be staged.

She added that a festival in early summer was a more attractive proposition for the industry, because it no longer competed with the London film festival, usually held in October. The new dates also ensure that the event is not swamped in the media frenzy which surrounds the Edinburgh International Festival and Fringe, she said.

“In terms of press attention, it’s a lot more attractive to say to distributors to say ‘the film festival will be the only show in town’ than to say ‘you are going to be up against every arts thing in the entire world and you might get bumped off the front page if a Korean chef juggles some knives on the Royal Mile’,” she said.

Other film festivals, notably London and Cambridge are expected to benefit from further announcements from the UKFC, and one will be established as a “red carpet” event - London was “a serious contender” said Mr Woodward.

Edinburgh was the only film festival singled out in the 2005 Labour Party manifesto as a high priority for extra investment. However the Scottish government were quick to point out that the level of its funding through the publicly funded film agency Scottish Screen had also been increased to £250,000 a year.

A Scottish Government spokesman said s that the UK Film Council award would “allow the festival to play a leading role in the development of film in the UK.”

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Established in 1947, the Edinburgh International Film Festival enjoys the longest continuous run of any comparable event in the world.

The first festival was dedicated to the documentary, which was where Scotland’s great strengths in film-making lay. John Grierson opened the eight-day event which screened 75 titles, including Roberto Rossellini’s Paisa, one of the most moving films about war ever made.

During the 1960s, Edinburgh introduced the the idea of the retrospective, re-evaluating the diverse talents of filmmakers including John Huston, Sam Fuller, Douglas Sirk and even the young Martin Scorsese. Over the following decades the festival consolidated its reputation as a pioneering force for UK audiences, screening European, Japanese and independent American films, alongside works by new talents found closer to home, such as Bill Forsyth.

Notable premieres of recent years include Control, The Full Monty, Mrs Brown, Billy Elliot, East is East, Ratcatcher, Stardust, Ratatouille, Little Miss Sunshine, An Inconvenient Truth, and Tsotsi.

Last year, a decision was made to the move the festival from August to June 18-29. A full programme will be announced on May 7.