1. A true story.
Read the introduction to a magazine article. Number the pictures in the order that they are mentioned.
You’ve probably seen the old black-and-white photograph of New York City construction workers in the 1930s sitting fearless on a beam way up in the sky. Apparently they used to work without any safety equipment and they’d even have lunch up there! Even though I’m not sure if those photographs were posed or real, they still give me a real feeling of vertigo.
Watching the movie Man on Wire gave me a similar feeling. This documentary, named after a police report, tells the true story of Philippe Petit’s New York City Twin Towers walk.
Theo Freeman tells us more about this unique Frenchman.3. Read.
Read the first part of the article and complete the statements.
Philippe Petit is alive and well. That in itself is a bit of a miracle, considering the many death-defying acts the French high-wire artist has pulled off over the past four decades. On August 7, 1974, 24-year-old Petit performed his most dangerous and dazzling feat by walking the 43 metres (141 feet) across a wire strung illegally between the unfinished Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City.
4. Read more.
Read the next part of the article and put the pictures in the correct order.
Philippe Petit was sitting in a dentist's office when he first saw a drawing of the proposed buildings. He set his sights on conquering the Twin Towers, which at that point were to be the tallest buildings in the world.
After six years of planning, Petit and his crew flew from Paris to New York with heavy steel cable and rigging equipment and managed to smuggle it all into the towers.
To bypass the World Trade Center’s security, he managed to involve an office worker who took it all as a joke and let Petit copy his security pass.
The day before the walk, Petit and his accomplices, dressed as deliverymen and executives with forged identification, gained entry into the North and South Towers and later spent five hours waiting motionless on beams under the roofs.
When night fell, Petit and his crew used a bow and arrow to pass the cable across the void between the towers. They then anchored the wire to withstand the winds and swaying of the buildings. Amazingly, nobody noticed.
5. Meaning in context.
Choose the correct meaning of the highlighted phrases and words.
Philippe Petit was sitting in a dentist's office when he first saw a drawing of the proposed buildings. He set his sights on conquering the Twin Towers, which at that point were to be the tallest buildings in the world.
After six years of planning, Petit and his crew flew from Paris to New York with heavy steel cable and rigging equipment and managed to smuggle it all into the towers.
To bypass the World Trade Center’s security, he managed to involve an office worker who took it all as a joke and let Petit copy his security pass.
The day before the walk, Petit and his accomplices, dressed as deliverymen and executives with forged identification, gained entry into the North and South Towers and later spent five hours waiting motionless on beams under the roofs.
When night fell, Petit and his crew used a bow and arrow to pass the cable across the void between the towers. They then anchored the wire to withstand the winds and swaying of the buildings. Amazingly, nobody noticed.
6. The end of the article.
Read the end of the article and put the events in the correct order.
Did he get away with it? Not exactly. He was finally persuaded by police officers to give himself up after he was warned that a police helicopter would come to pick him off the wire. Petit was worried that the wind from the helicopter would knock him off the wire, so he decided it was time to give up.
He was arrested, handcuffed and led away toward a police station, where 30 journalists were waiting. "Why did you do it?" they asked. He answered, "When I see three oranges, I juggle. When I see two towers, I walk." An official from the mayor's office "sentenced" him to perform for children in Central Park.
Petit, now in his 60s, used to climb everything he could when he was a little boy. As a teenager he’d practice juggling with the Cirque d'Hiver in Paris. His tightrope-walking skills eventually led him to walk a wire between the towers of Notre Dame (while juggling!) in 1971, and then he walked a wire strung across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1973.
Since Petit’s "artistic crime of the century", as he proudly called it, he has completed 79 performances, all without safety nets – among them a 700-metre (2,300-foot) walk up to the second level of the Eiffel Tower (for which he had to get permission from 72 government bodies "just to make a little hole for my anchor") and a Bridge for Peace between the Jewish and Arab quarters of Jerusalem. A "walk" on Easter Island is his current project.