David Manning: the completely fabricated movie critic who caused an industry scandal
In 2001, Newsweek journalist John Horn read a glowing review quote in a newspaper for Rob Schneider’s lamentable comedy The Animal. This was suspicious enough because the movie was being dismissed as one of the worst of the year by every other reputable critic out there. What piqued his interest even more, though, was that the reviewer, David Manning, had seemingly viewed the film before any of his peers. A suspicious Horn then dug into a few more of Manning’s ebullient pull quotes – and what he found sent shockwaves through Hollywood.
The strange tale of “David Manning” begins with Sony Pictures’ Director of Creative Advertising, Matthew Cramer. For years, he had operated behind the scenes of the press junket scene for Sony’s movies. The junkets, which see actors and directors paraded in front of the press and repeatedly asked the same five questions by different outlets, have been an integral part of selling movies since the 1930s. In essence, the name of the game is to ply the critics with free swag, access to celebrities, and even all expenses paid evenings in hotels. In return, the unspoken implication is that the critic will provide your movie with a more favourable quote to put on the poster or newspaper advertisement.
After doing this for so long, though, Cramer realised: why wine and dine a critic from an outlet no one has ever heard of when he could make one up and get the same result? He grew up in Ridgefield, Connecticut, and had a friend whose morals were loose enough to allow him to use his name for his scheme. That’s right, there is a real David Manning – but he sells medical equipment. For his part, the real Manning didn’t think too deeply about the ethical concerns of selling a product with completely fabricated review quotes. He told The New York Times, “I didn’t look at it as right and wrong. I looked at it as, I was going to see my name in a newspaper. I didn’t think ahead.”
Cramer knew that the best lies were cloaked in an aura of truth, so he tied his fictional movie reviewer—with a real guy’s name—to a real newspaper in his hometown. The Ridgefield Press was a local weekly paper in the area and was small enough that Cramer probably figured no one would ever think to poke around into the tastes of its movie critic.
With his ruse in place, Cramer began filtering Manning’s ecstatic reviews for subpar Sony movies into the press. He concocted six bogus pull quotes before being found out, and all were connected to films released by Sony-owned Columbia Pictures. Manning dubbed The Animal “another winner”, called Hollow Man “one hell of a scary ride”, and described Heath Ledger in A Knight’s Tale as “this year’s hottest new star”. He also felt The Forsaken was “a sexy, scary thrill-ride” and heaped praise upon the undeserving shoulders of Vertical Limit and The Patriot.
Newsweek’s Horn cottoned on to Cramer’s game when he was writing a story about press junket critics. When he saw Manning’s suspicious quote about The Animal, he asked around Hollywood to see if anyone knew Manning. Naturally, nobody had any idea who he was – not fellow critics and not publicists from the major studios.
Feeling something fishy was going on, Horn called The Ridgefield Press personally and was stunned when publisher Thomas Nash told him there was no “David Manning” working at his paper. The only movie reviewers he had on his staff were a father and son duo. Horn knew he was onto something by this point, so he next phoned Sony. Before he received a callback from the studio, though, the producer of The Animal called to assure him he had nothing to do with “David Manning.” In 2016, Horn revealed to Connecticut magazine, “That made me even more curious. So I asked Sony specifically if Manning existed, and the studio said no.”
When Horn blew the lid off the whole deal by publishing an expose in June 2001, Sony spokeswoman Susan Tick said, “It was an incredibly foolish decision, and we’re horrified. We are looking into it and will take appropriate action.” That “appropriate action” involved suspending Cramer and his boss, Josh Goldstine, for a month with no pay – but Sony wouldn’t get off that lightly overall.
You see, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal investigated Sony, and the studio settled for $326,000 in 2002. It was also forced to pay $1.5million to a group of angry moviegoers who filed suit against the studio, arguing that the Manning fiasco amounted to an “intentional and systematic deception of consumers.” The red-faced studio also offered a $5 refund to anyone who paid to see A Knight’s Tale, Vertical Limit, Hollow Man, or The Patriot – but not The Animal or The Forsaken, strangely.
All in all, the entire debacle was an embarrassing black eye for Sony, and a damning indictment of some of the shady tactics that major studios can use to sell bad movies to the public. The ultimate irony, though, came when the NYT asked the real Manning what he thought of The Animal.
“Not the best movie I’ve seen,” he sheepishly replied – which definitely would not have made it onto the newspaper ad.
