NEW YORK TIMES
April 19, 2012
WHEN Paula Froehle started making her circus movie, she knew she’d be working without a net. But she didn’t know there would be an elephant in the room.
“The Show Must Go On,” which has its premiere April 20 at the Sarasota Film Festival, is Ms. Froehle’s documentary on the Flying Wallendas, the aerial act led by Tino Wallenda-Zoppe, a grandson of Karl Wallenda, who headed the family’s high-wire dynasty from the 1920s till his death in 1978. The Wallendas were renowned for their seven-person pyramid — 25 feet above the ground — and for their grace under pressure.
“One time, in South America, there was an earthquake while they were on the wire, and they stayed up,” Mr. Wallenda-Zoppe said of the original Wallendas. “In Fort Worth the lights went off for several seconds, which is an eternity when you’re up there. And when the lights came back, they were still doing the seven.”
But the Wallendas also became synonymous with tragedy: In 1962, during a performance in Detroit, the pyramid collapsed, killing two family members and leaving a third paralyzed. The routine was abandoned for years, until a younger generation recreated it in a 1978 made-for-TV movie, “The Great Wallendas.”
“It was about the family and the fall of the seven,” Mr. Wallenda-Zoppe said by phone while en route to his chiropractor in Sarasota, Fla. “All the grandkids did that.”
But the sense of family that long bound the Wallendas, who revived the pyramid in 2001, has disintegrated, to the point that there are now Flying Wallendas, Great Wallendas and World Famous Wallendas. Some factions in this very extended family talk to each other, some do not.
“It’s something Tino’s very closed mouth about,” Ms. Froehle said. “I tried to get at it, and when it was clear he wasn’t going to talk about it, I had to decide, O.K., then, this film will be a portrait of this family, their half of the family.”
Ms. Froehle’s subjects performed their last “seven” in Dayton, Ohio, in 2010. Equipment, time and personnel make the act prohibitively expensive and, with circus crowds down, its future is in doubt.
Added to this was the Flying Wallendas’ inability to find the right combination of personnel to do the trick with confidence. As Ms. Froehle’s film recounts, when the Flying Wallendas were short one daredevil and tried to incorporate a family friend, Trevor McNabb, into the act, the results were wobbly. “For most of my life,” Mr. Wallenda-Zoppe said, “my attitude has been that I could stay up regardless of anything — you know, ‘try to knock me down.’ And I had lost some of my confidence. I realized I’m not Superman.”
Before that point the director wasn’t sure she had a film. Ms. Froehle, who is also the executive vice president for academic affairs at the Tribeca Flashpoint Media Arts Academy, a two-year college in Chicago, had been shooting the family for seven years, but it wasn’t until the McNabb episode that “I knew I had the tension I needed.”
It is perverse, perhaps, that a filmmaker needs more than characters risking their lives every day; there has to be a conflict and, if not resolution, at least catharsis. With the family split off limits, Mr. McNabb’s difficulties played that role for Ms. Froehle.
She had wanted to do something for the Wallendas ever since they worked on her 2006 dramatic short “Up on the Rope.” It was suggested that she cast Alex Wallenda, now 23, and his father, Tino, provided more help than she expected.
“It was an incredible experience,” Ms. Froehle recalled. “Tino came in and rigged the wires, they did a lot of wire walking. I spent a lot of time with them and was struck by the family dynamic.” She continued: “When I was younger, there was a connotation attached to circus people, you know: ‘The gypsies are coming to town. Lock your doors and windows.’ And then to meet this family, which was a tighter unit than anything I’d ever known, it flew in the face of everything.”
It’s odd then that family would be a source of conflict. Asked about the Greater Wallenda situation, Mr. Wallenda-Zoppe said, “There’s no ill will on my part. Competition, certainly. But we all have equal access to the Wallenda lineage.”
Among the practicing aerialists descended from Karl Wallenda are his grandsons, the cousins Tino and Ricky, who have their own troupes, and Nik Wallenda, son of Karl’s granddaughter Delilah, who is planning a walk this summer across Niagara Falls. “He’s a bit of thrill seeker,” Nik’s cousin Aurelia, a daughter of Tino — and the person who most recently occupied the perilous top of the seven-person pyramid — said with no trace of irony.
Ms. Wallenda-Zoppe was more open about the family members, who live close enough to share backyards in Sarasota: “Ricky has a vendetta against everybody. It’s not just us he has a problem with.”
Rick Wallenda, whose Wallenda Enterprises Web site calls itself “the only official home of the world famous Wallendas,” said his problem with other family members has to do with the legacy of his grandmother, Helen Kreis, second wife of Karl and the woman who was the top of the pyramid from 1927 to ’47. She was the last surviving member of the original pyramid before her death in 1996.
“She remained his wife until his death in 1978,” Mr. Wallenda said by e-mail. “She also wisely invested the money earned by the act and was instrumental in providing for everyone in the family, including her husband’s first wife and her heirs. They refuse to acknowledge her.”
It would be a lot for any filmmaker to digest, much less get on screen. Aurelia Wallenda-Zoppe’s oldest sister, Alida, who with her husband, Robinson Cortes, is performing with the Big Apple Circus in Boston, said seeing the film was very emotional, “knowing how my father was really feeling, and knowing we were all feeling the same thing at the same time, and knowing it might be the last time we’ll be doing the seven.”
“I’m rather fond of my family,” she added.
After the April 20 screening of the new film, the Flying Wallendas are to perform an act designed for the beach at Sarasota Yacht Club. While no “seven” was planned, Mr. Wallenda-Zoppe sounded enthused, and said that he would be giving tickets to the various Sarasota Wallendas. “I’ll make sure even Ricky has tickets,” he said.
