What 2000 movie starring a veteran of NBC's "Saturday Night Live" was promoted using fictionalized reviews attributed to "David Manning"?
David Manning (fictitious writer) David Manning (sometimes "Dave") was a pseudonym used by a marketing executive working for Sony Corporation around July 2000 to give consistently good reviews for releases from Sony subsidiary Columbia Pictures. Several fictional review quotes attributed to "David Manning" were used in the promotion of medieval action/drama "A Knight's Tale" (describing Heath Ledger as "this year's hottest new star!") and Rob Schneider's comedy "The Animal" ("Another winner!"), the latter of which generally received mixed to poor reviews by real critics.
Bert Kreischer Albert "Bert" Kreischer is an American stand-up comedian, actor, and reality television host. In 1997, as a member of the Alpha Tau Omega Fraternity, he was featured in "Rolling Stone" as "the top partier" at Florida State University, the "top party school in the US", while he was in his sixth year of college. The "Rolling Stone" article was the inspiration for the 2002 movie "Van Wilder". From 2000 to 2001, he was the co-host of the FX Network variety show "The X Show". A segment that aired on the show, "Ass Wax", where Kreischer had his hair removed with hot wax, led Kreischer to gain his own show on the FX Network, titled "Hurt Bert", in 2004. In the same year, he had a role in an episode of the police drama "The Shield".