I realize I'm a broken record on this, but every time the hoaxies say, "They use wires" it bugs me. Because they might as well be saying, "They used magic."
"Wire" is not this all-purpose tool that supports an actor in any position you want and makes every kind of motion you can dream up just happen. If you are going to accept it as a generic term at all, it still has to refer to a suite of techniques, each of which has very different results and all of which have very distinct restrictions.
The "yanked to his feet" wire claim the hoaxies make about one moment (Young, is it?) is a particular sore point. The only thing that comes close to the kind of situation where one person is holding on directly to a support cable (must be one STRONG person, I'd think!) is the wire PULL from the movies; when a bunch of burly stunt people yank on a single cable usually to throw a stuntperson horizontally as well as vertically -- to simulate getting blasted with a shotgun or blown up into the air by a mine or so forth. And this is a single, ballistic act; the stuntman is not under wire control after his flight. You can't just run down the catwalk and haul him up again from where he landed.
If you ignore the specifics of the hoaxie phrasing, it does sound more like theatrical flying, especially the school that uses a direct cable with no mechanical advantage (like VFX prefers). A typical flight gag has the fly man standing on top of a short stepladder, holding on to a thick padded rope. He takes up slack and softly drops off the ladder, a bit like the technique called in rock climbing the "dynamic belay." Again, though, this is essentially a single motion. There is a some control over the speed of descent (often done by running back up the ladder!) but it isn't a continuous effort by the muscles of one person to take the weight of another. It is instead human counterweight and ballistic movements.
The closest analog to always-on, always-taking-the-weight is bungie flying. We've been doing that a lot at the house I work at now -- our usual flight choreographer also works with a group in San Francisco that does elaborate bungie dance shows often in outdoor spaces. The trick for this is you take up slack, then lock in. After that, the actor is in control of their motions; they can make short hops and flights (but they have to be careful to bend their knees on the down!)
