A scene from Man on Wire ©2008 Jean-Louis Blondeau / Polaris Images.

James Marsh's documentary Man on Wire opens as a thriller might — with a nightmare of tightrope walker Philippe Petit trapped in a coffin-like box. No wonder, as it was the night before the famed Frenchman's 1974 death-defying walk between the then-new World Trade Center towers.

"Philippe is waking full of the anxieties of what is about to happen that day," says Marsh (Wisconsin Death Trip). "You can't even shed those anxieties in your dreams." Marsh's approach to the subject matter pays homage to the drama and adventure of what's been called the artistic crime of the century. "I really wanted to inhabit the story in the present tense and put you there for each stage of this adventure, not to be too mindful of the conventions of documentary filmmaking and to make it like a heist film," he says.

Marsh turned to the opening of Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs for inspiration. Like Tarantino's crew, who convenes at a local diner to discuss the heist they just finished (and the implications of a Madonna song), Man on Wire begins with Petit, his partner-in-crime Jean-Louis Blondeau, girlfriend Annie Allix, and all the other characters involved. By doing this, Marsh says, we "get to know them as the story unfolds in flashback to all the events and obstacles that had to be overcome to get Philippe on the wire."

Unlike the three daredevils that attempted — with varying degrees of success — to clamber to the top of the New York Times building earlier this year, Petit's hour-long balancing act between what were then the world's tallest buildings was the result of over eight months of painstaking planning. It was also the ultimate symbol of his core belief that it is our duty to look at life with an explorer's eye and an adventurer's soul. Here filmmaker James Marsh and Philippe Petit discuss the making of the documentary Man on Wire, a Tribeca Film Fest fave that's already getting Oscar buzz.

I want to know what you think about when you are on the wire.
Philippe Petit [PP]: For me, it is never the same; it is always the same. It is never the same because two high wire walks, legal or illegal, great height or lower, sheltered from the weather or completely exposed, they are always different. But the process is the same. There is a moment of decision: grabbing the bouncing pole, doing that famous first step. There is that moment of arrival, the victory. There are similitudes, and yet at the same time it is always new and always fresh.

People that have watched you during tight-rope walks have said your face registers complete concentration, like a mask reminiscent of the Sphinx.
PP: Yes, that is a nice line. Now after 45 years of practicing, I have created a very strong focus that I think not many people on earth probably practice. Marlon Brando, when I met [him], I thought [he] probably had that intense focus. It is a focus that is the right focus to have when your life is in the game — not at stake because I don't risk my life — but when your life is present in the equation, when you are holding your life in your hands. This is a metaphor. It is also me holding my balancing pole. I hold my life. I carry it across. So, I am intensely focused. But this focus is not a closed door. It is not wearing blinkers like horses. It is almost the opposite. It allows you because your senses have been inflated to be alert: to smell more, to see more, to hear more. This can save my life because I can feel a particular vibration on the wire. Or I can hear a little click that indicates that something is wrong. Or I can feel the humidity in the air coming. So, I have brought that into an art and it is second nature. It is hard for me to talk about because it is so natural.