It was cool as hell.

And a fitting cap to a few weeks of watching that same man climb a whole bunch of mountains in a series of documentaries. Alex Honnold is an incredible climber, obviously, but he’s also interested in making a name for himself. Free Solo, a movie I was fortunate enough to see in theaters back in 2018, is one of the most stressful movies I’ve ever seen. I know that he successfully Free Solo’d El Capitan because the movie exists and doesn’t start with an In Memoriam, but when you’re watching him hang from barely visible holds above thousands of feet of air and no ropes to save him… you can’t rationalize it. Yes, you know, but do you know?

When I rewatched Free Solo a few weeks ago, I didn’t know that he would be climbing Taipei’s tallest building – a 101-story skyscraper fittingly named Taipei 101. It’s a building I stood outside of just a few months ago, as I ended my month in Asia with a few days in Taiwan. I didn’t go inside, but I stood there and marveled. It’s a fascinating structure, unlike any in the world.

I did know by the time I saw him show up in The Alpinist to sing the praises of Marc-André Leclerc, who served as a fascinating counterpoint to Honnold. Where Honnold has made a business out of his climbing – I’m sure he made a fuuuuuck-ton of money on last night’s event – Leclerc didn’t care if anyone knew what he did. He actually preferred that they didn’t, at one point telling the documentarians that he didn’t even really want to them to be making the documentary… and many of the most popular Letterboxd reviews are revolted by the fact that the documentary was made regardless.

And I think there are a lot of fascinating ethical questions around that, but I also think most of the people who hated on The Alpinist wouldn’t feel the same way about the recently released doc Cover-Up, which tells stories from journalist Seymour Hersch and also includes moments where the subject says he regrets signing up for the project.

I should have watched 2014’s Valley Uprising before rewatching Free Solo, given that it adds a lot of useful historical context to the sport of climbing and includes footage of Alex Honnold before he became a(n almost) household name, as people talked about this gangly 20something up-and-comer changing the game. It feels like a prequel to Free Solo.

It’s also one of the most annoyingly edited movies I’ve ever seen. The climbing footage makes it worth watching, but tbh just barely.

I considered watching a few more of the type (The Dawn Wall, Fine Lines, etc.), but instead I finished off the run with something that felt more appropriate to this particular death-defying task Alex Honnold had given himself: 2005’s Man on Wire, which documents Philippe Petit's high-wire walk between the twin towers of the world trade center back in 1974. Petit was (and presumably still is) deranged in precisely the same way as Honnold. They have the desire to do something no one else has ever done and to perform it. They wanted the audience, the people looking up at them in absolute awe while they did something truly incredible – that no one had done before and no one will do again.  

Alex Honnold didn’t need to sneak his way into/onto a building. I’m sure Taipei’s tourism board or whatever was ecstatic to be featured in such a public way. (It really is a lovely city that I wish I’d spent more time in and that I have every intention of returning to in the way that I do not really plan to revisit Hong Kong.)

Watching Alex Honnold climb a skyscraper live is a very different experience than watching Free Solo, because you obviously assume he’ll make it because if people believed he couldn’t do it this thing wouldn’t be happening… but you don’t actually know. And that’s terrifying. Of course, the building is a known quantity. The steel and glass isn’t at risk of breaking the way a rock face is, but it also doesn’t react to the body the way that rock does. The holds may be bigger than the ones on El Cap et al, but they’re something else entirely. So I was glad that one of the color commentators on the ground was a climbing commentator specifically: Pete Woods gave useful context to the task Honnold faced and honestly one of the worst things about the stream was how little we got to hear from him. I didn’t need to keep hearing WWE star Seth Rollins tell all of us how crazy it was to watch because we were also watching.  

(On the note of commentators… did Mark Rober get work done? His face looks really weird.)

And it really was crazy to watch. During most of the climb, he seemed at ease and on reasonably solid holds and while the obvious distance from the ground was never not a little nerve-wracking, it wasn’t terribly stressful until he’d get to e.g. one of the ten “dragon” fixtures: 16-foot-tall, curved metal structures that he had to do some real gnarly stuff to get up on top. Every single time he did it, I cringed a little bit because every time it really did feel like Netflix might have their first snuff film.  

What shocked me about the production was that the building remained open. A few stories up, we see the first few people inside, phones raised waiting for him to go by. And there are more every few stories. Sometimes they’re just filming, but other times they’re more actively engaged than that: jumping up and down and trying to get his attention. And yeah, he smiles and waves every time – occasionally making a remark about it into the mic he’s wearing throughout… but they don’t know that they’re not going to be a distraction. And a distraction is the last thing he needs. I would be utterly terrified that my jumping and waving would be the thing that caused him to lose a step. And that sure wouldn’t be worth the IG.  

Sixty floors up, they planted his wife, which resulted in probably the most awkward moment of the entire event – which ran just under two hours with a climb that lasted just over 90 minutes. He didn’t wave at her the way he waved at others on the floor. He did smile, but he did not seem actively pleased to see her. And yeah, that makes sense! She even said that it was her job to be neutral before the climb, to not make him too hyped or too stressed. In Free Solo, he made her stay behind, because he knew that if she was there he would be thinking about her and he needed to be thinking about nothing but the climb.  

And in that moment, it felt like the production crew was putting her into his headspace where she shouldn’t have been. And again: it was ultimately fine. But when the peanut gallery on the ground was talking about awwww how sweet, etc., I just have to assume they weren’t seeing the same footage I was. Because it felt weird as hell.  

But that’s also the charm of a live event: you can have that kind of awkward moment because you don’t know what’s going to happen. A producer can try to create a moment but with no ability to edit for maximum drama, it might just end up inert.

But the whole event doesn’t. How could it? I got to watch a man do an absolutely incredible feat of physical and mental fortitude. When Honnold stood at the top of Taipei 101 and the helicopter camera circled him to really emphasize just how beautiful the view was, I could feel just a little bit what this was all for. Because holy cow what a view. (I tried to look for my hotel, but tbh I wasn’t in the city long enough to have figured that out).

The top of that tower isn’t the highest a man could go or even the highest that particular man has gone, but in that moment, it does feel like he’s standing on top of the world.

And so I’m glad that Alex Honnold is that kind of crazy — that he wants to share his passion and performance with the world.

Tom Cruise: Eat your heart out.

Filed Under: Movies & TV