Charlotte Le Bon and Joseph Gordon-Levitt in “The Walk.” (Photo credit: Sony Pictures Entertainment)

By Colin Covert
Star Tribune (Minneapolis) (TNS)

There’s a large element of make-believe in “The Walk,” the film dramatizing French high-wire artist Philippe Petit’s breathtaking 1974 walk between the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Many of the most impressive scenes were created on computer screens. Digital visualizations and mouse clicks inserted vistas of 1974 New York City, the vast towers themselves, the sky and clouds that the buildings touched a quarter-mile high. But the spectacle of the daredevil’s tightrope walk across the void should be largely credited to Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who strolled many of those scenes on his own, one cautious footstep after another.

“I did learn how to walk on the high wire,” he said recently from New York City after the film’s debut kicked off the 53rd annual New York Film Festival. “It was Philippe who insisted that he be the one to teach me. And not everyone who’s good at something is also good at teaching that thing. So I didn’t know what to expect.”

The extreme optimism that told Petit he could become the only man in history to cross the ultimate high-wire persuaded him that he could quickly turn Gordon-Levitt into a fair facsimile. “He said by the end of eight days you’ll be able to walk on your own,” the actor said. “That sounded sort of ambitious to me.”

Luckily, his real-life counterpart “turned out to be an excellent teacher,” Gordon-Levitt recalled. “He believed so strongly that I would be able to do it that he convinced me that I would be able to do it. And when I believed that I could do it, then I really did.”

The pair developed a friendly association. While the modest 34-year-old actor drops the first name and adds “Mr.” when talking about his Oscar-winning director Robert Zemeckis and co-star Ben Kingsley, he calls his acrobatic mentor “Philippe.”

Cheerfully sharing screen credit with his stunt double Jade Kindar-Martin, he admitted, “Look, I’m no master high-wire walker — that’s a life’s work! But I got good enough that I could walk forwards and backwards and keep my balance and do it with enough ease that I felt confident. Even though it hurts, it’s really, really fun. I never did fall.” That would have been unfortunate, as he often skipped his safety harness — the wire resting about 12 feet in the air.

“The Walk” marks an important move upward for Gordon-Levitt as he moves from a leading man in low-budget independents to big-budget studio films. It also introduces him to a new sort of fantasy world by working with Zemeckis, a Steven Spielberg protégé who had a live cast interacting with animated cartoons in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” and made Tom Hanks shake President John Kennedy’s hand in “Forrest Gump.”

“They built a beautiful set of the top two stories of the tower. It was really real, like being there. And then hung the wire off the top of the set and out into a green abyss,” to allow computer-generated, photorealistic effects. “A lot of the movie takes place in the World Trade Center, and that doesn’t exist anymore.”

While many actors prefer to act amid realistic settings, “I actually don’t find it any more difficult than acting on a practical set. One way or another, you’re still having to suspend your disbelief. There’s still a camera a foot away from your face.”

Having attended college in New York City and visited the top of the World Trade Towers (“touristy, but I had to do it”), Gordon-Levitt was glad “The Walk” had just debuted there. “It was really special to play this movie in New York. It’s an important place to premiere it.”

“Mr. Zemeckis always talked about the towers as a character in the movie. And Philippe always talks about the towers in a personified way. He talks about his relationship with the towers as a love affair. And I do think that’s true. And, of course, here in New York City, whenever we see images of those two towers, our mind immediately goes to tragedy. And I think that’s appropriate. I was actually here in New York on 9/11.

“I also think that with any tragic loss, it’s healthy to remember beautiful things and positive memories that you have of whatever it is that you’ve lost. When you’re grieving for a lost loved one, you don’t want to only focus on their death, you want to celebrate their life. And that’s what we want to do with this movie, salute the towers.”