Mario Manzini

Eric Thibault

I thought that the Mario Manzini piece had its positives and its negatives. As a whole, I thought it was average at best, considering the potential of the subject.

The reporter did a nice job of finding an interesting story. He found a local guy with an extraordinary career, and dove further into the guy's life than just focusing on some of his stunts. I thought Manzini's relationship with his family was especially intriguing - it is ironic to have a choice between being an escape artist and a mobster.

Several angles of Manzini's life were covered, and it was good to have some family background, some reasoning for why he loves his profession, and an explanation for how he became an "escapologist." Manzini opened up and was very candid about his life - some of the credit there has to go to the reporter.

However, I thought there were several small distractions that took away from the piece. First was the description of Manzini before we hear his voice. The Popeye reference could have easily thrown the listener off, and describing Manzini's voice as having an "Italian accent" is fairly misleading. He is from New York, not Italy, and appears to have an American-Italian accent. I was waiting to hear some sort of heavy, Italian-as-a-first-language voice, which was not the case.

There were a few contradictions that went unexplained, such as Manzini describing his father as a "good" man, only then going on to talk about how he needed to get away from his family. The reporter should have sought a little more clarity. Also, if being an escape artist "saved his life," then how is his profession more dangerous than carrying a gun and being part of the mob?

On the technical side, the audio levels for Manzini also seemed to differ greatly from clip to clip. I thought the reporter used good timing on when to insert Manzini's clips, and they fit well into the context of the story.

It wasn't bad, I just thought he could have done a less-confusing job with the material at hand.