"
David Manning" was a
fictitious film
critic, created by a marketing executive working for
Sony Corporation around July 2000 to give
consistently good reviews for releases from Sony subsidiary
Columbia Pictures. Several blurbs
posted under the name "David Manning" were written for the medieval
action/drama
A Knight's
Tale (citing
Heath Ledger as
"this year's hottest new star!") and
Rob
Schneider's comedy
The
Animal ("Another winner!"), the latter of which generally
received very poor reviews by real critics.
Details
David Manning was named after a friend of Matthew Cramer,
the Sony marketing executive responsible for the insertions.
Manning
was credited to the Ridgefield
Press, a small Connecticut
weekly. During an investigation into
Manning's quotes,
Newsweek
reporter John Horn discovered that the newspaper had never heard of
him. Horn disclosed the truth about Manning in a June 2001 article
in
Newsweek, which emerged at around the same time as an
announcement that Sony had used employees posing as moviegoers in
television commercials to praise
Mel
Gibson's
The
Patriot. These occurrences, in tandem, raised questions
and controversy about ethics in
movie
marketing practices.
On the June 10, 2001 episode of
Le
Show, host
Harry Shearer
conducted an in-studio interview with David Manning. The voice of
Manning was provided by a computer
voice synthesizer.
Some time after news of the hoax became widespread, actor
Bryan Cranston, then a lead in the US
television sitcom
Malcolm in
the Middle, took out a print advertisement in
entertainment trade papers recommending his work to
Emmy Awards voters. The ad featured positive
comments from Mr. Manning as a joke.
On August 3, 2005, Sony made an out-of-court settlement and agreed
to refund $5 each to dissatisfied customers who saw
Hollow Man,
The
Animal,
The
Patriot,
A Knight's
Tale, or
Vertical
Limit in American theatres, under the impression that it
would be a great movie due to Manning's reviews.
References
- John Horn. "The Reviewer Who Wasn't There."
Newsweek web exclusive. June 2, 2001.
- "Sony to pay $1.5m for film hoax,"
Irish Independent, August 5,
2005.
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