Walking a thin line into history

Tonight's Oscar race for Best Documentary could very well go down to the wire, thanks to one very sure-footed man. Anthony Mason went to pay him a visit:

Philippe Petit started building the small barn himself at his home near Woodstock, New York, ten years ago. A sign reads: "The smallest theater in the world."

That's what it is," he said. "Welcome."

This is the artist's refuge: home for his juggler's equipment ...

"Well, I have all my props. These are the clubs that I use when I practice."

…His costumes …

"You can do so many things with a top hat."

... His high wire … and of course his shoes.

"These are actually the historic shoes of the World Trade Center," petit showed Mason. "Actually, you see the mark of the cable here."

They're the shoes he wore that grey August morning in 1974 when the then-24-year-old Frenchman stepped out onto a steel cable strung between the twin towers ... a quarter-mile above the streets of Manhattan.

"It was not difficult," petit says now. "I mean, I just had to grab the pole and get on that wire. It's not difficult, but it's the most difficult thing in the world, of course!"

Petit insisted he wasn't a daredevil, he was an artist:

"I was not gambling my life. I was doing something much more beautiful. I was carrying my life across. I wanted to use the wire as a stage. And I wanted to do something, I don't know, profound or something inspiring. And then the twin towers knock at my door.

"You see, I didn't find them - they found me."

They found him when he was 17, waiting in a French dentist's office, a moment recreated in the documentary film "Man on Wire":

"And suddenly I freeze. Because I've opened a newspaper at a page and I see something magnificent - something that inspire me. I see two towers and the article says one day those towers will be built. They're not even there yet."

But Petit's dream was born:

"So what I do is under the cover of sneeze (ah-choo! ) I steal the page, put it under my jacket and go out."

The film follows Petit's six-and-a-half year clandestine quest.

Through his juggling on the streets of Paris and New York, he raised $20,000.

He created a scale model of the rooftops of the World Trade Center.

In a farm field in France, he set up a wire the exact distance between the twin towers, while his friends tugged on it to simulate the wind.

Finally, a fake ID would gain him access.

Watching "Man on Wire," now up for an Oscar for Best Documentray, even its star was on the edge of his seat:

"And I'm thinking, Is he going to make it? And I am like, you know, my palms are sweaty. And then I realize I'm the guy. I'm here."

In 45 minutes on the wire that morning, he crossed the 140 feet between the twin towers eight times before police coaxed him off.

Petit was arrested, charged with trespassing and disorderly conduct. But the case was quickly dropped.

"I personally figured I was watching something that somebody else would never see again in the world," said one cop prophetically.

"I mean, you can't help but look at that and say: 'What do you do for an encore?'" Mason said.

"Well, you see, if I were a different kind of wire walker, the one who wanted to run across and claim 'I did it' and have his name in a book of records, then I would have killed myself," Petit said. "Because there was nothing, higher, bigger, more amazing than the twin towers. But I am the opposite of that artist. I am someone who goes through life looking for interesting artistic challenges."

In 1989, he crossed the River Seine on a wire between Paris' Palais de Chaillot and the Eiffel Tower. In 1994, half a million people watched him cross the skies over Frankfurt, Germany. And earlier this decade, he planned to stretch a wire across the Grand Canyon.

He had pure steel cable anchors custom-made:

"So these were supposed to hold the cable that you were going to walk across the Grand Canyon?" Mason asked.

"Yeah, on each side."

But the backers got cold feet:

"And one of the producers went to the site and he get on the edge and he get completely scared. And probably he think inside his head he must think, Why am I helping this man to kill himself?"

Ridiculous, says Petit, who by his count has performed 82 high wire walks and never fallen.

"I am more in command of the wire, more knowledgeable of my own limits, more understanding of space and time on a stage. And, in a way, I am a much better wire walker today than I was, when I was, you know, rebellious. I am still rebellious! But I was arrogant.

"I'm still arrogant!" he laughs.

And he still performs regularly at New York's Cathedral of St. John the Divine, where he is artist in residence. Now nearly 60, Philippe Petit still trains three hours a day, even in winter.

"But, I mean, two feet of snow, it's a little bit against the wire walker's rule right? To walk an icy cable?"

He walked a piece of the actual cable he was walking on between the twin towers - and occasionally sitting on it.

"Can you still imagine it, now that they're not there?" Mason asked.

"They are there. They are there," he said. "Those towers to me, they were alive. They were almost human. They breathe. They move. They allow me to pass. They smile when I walk. They were alive inside of me. And I still see them there. And they are in my heart, of course."