| PRE-ANM: THE AVELEYMAN YEARS |
In around 2007 I found a film website called Aveleyman, which is basically the IMDb in picture form. After contacting the owner, Tony Sullivan (a fellow Brit as it turned out) I was permitted and encouraged to submit screenshots from films to his website for publication. This lasted for about four years during which time he allowed me to take a more prominent role in the running/maintenance of the site, though with some limitations. Here I learned a little bit about programming and HTML coding and how to publish text and images to a website. However, by April 2011 I started to lose interest in the site due to mainly the lack of creative control and limited input I had with the running of/ideas implemented on Aveleyman and decided to quit, though remaining on good terms with the owner. I therefore decided to form my own website where I would have complete control on content, design and ideas. The question was, what would my website be about? I had to choose something which a) I had sufficient knowledge of, b) I could build with enthusiasm, and do it well, and c) something which could compete with similar sites in order to be recognised by those with the interest of my subject. I contemplated the popular animated television show The Simpsons, as I had all the episdoes, was a big fan, and knew I could do a good job. But I found similar sites which had invested a lot of time and research and I abandoned the idea quickly because I didn't want to simply copy them.
| WHERE DID THE IDEA COME FROM? |
I wanted to tackle a subject which was sorely lacking on the internet. I took a look at the films I had in my DVD collection and found some solo films of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, which I thought could be a cool idea because not much was published about their pre-teaming films. I have always liked the films of Laurel and Hardy, but have never considered myself a 'fan' and so I knew I could build an unbiased website on their films unlike others which are always so cringeworthingly too positive and naive in their assessment of the films.
| HOW THE SITE GOT ITS NAME |
The domain name of "lordheath.com" came about because I was in limbo. I wanted to create a website but didn't know what it was going to be about, or how the whole process worked. So I simply bought a domain name and used my nickname "Lord Heath" thinking it would be a temporary fix until I knew what I was going to do. Realizing I was unable to change it, I was stuck with "lordheath.com" and had to go with it. I decided to call the site ANOTHER NICE MESS. For two reasons. One, given that Laurel and Hardy were initially the principal focus of the site I wanted to concentrate on the often-misquoted famous line spoken by Oliver Hardy in the films - which is not "Here's another fine mess you have gotten me into", but rather, another NICE mess. Secondly, I knew that once I set the site up that I would be forever tweaking it, realigning pages and improving pages and the whole bloody thing would look like a "mess". The title of the site is very deliberate.
I see ANM as a huge jigsaw puzzle which has been fun piecing together over the past few years. Of course some of the pieces will forever be missing owing to lost films (and even some which aren't lost but are impossible to come by for home viewing). When completed, I hope this website will be able to comprehensively list as many of Roach's films and its actors as physically possible.
| THE LAUREL AND HARDY FORUM EXPERIENCE (2011-2012) |
Shortly after creating the site I joined The Laurel and Hardy Forum, primarily to promote the work I was doing and to engage with people in order to further my education. I made many friends on there, one of which was Irv Hyatt, who would later become the very first person to mention me by name in a printed publication. By the end of 2011, the L&H forum declared ANM as their "Website of the Year" - an honour which meant a considerable amount to me. Unfortunately, a year later I had left the forum in acrimonious circumstances due to personal issues I had with a couple of members. One interesting friendship which materialized from my brief time with the forum was that of fellow Londoner Mick Roche. A complete stranger, as were all others to me on the forum, he respectfully challenged my (mostly) negative views on Laurel & Hardy's massively over-rated feature Block-Heads, which most fans know I have publicly denounced as mediocrity, and opinion I completely stand by today. Willing to respect my opinion, as I was his, Mick and I later exchanged details and met up in person at his house on a number of occasions. I regard Mick as a personal friend now... despite his misguided views on what is- and what isn't- good Laurel & Hardy material! Another forum member who also became a personal friend was Tony Bensley, from Canada, whom I met up with in 2017 in London.
| GATHERING PROMOTION AND MATERIAL FOR THE SITE |
Two gentlemen initially helped to get ANM off the ground and spread the word: Gene Sorkin and Ken Runyan. Gene, the Grand Sheik of "The Chimp Tent" in Cincinnati, Ohio, first contacted me via my forum and thanked me for the effort I was making with putting the site together. He spread the word about the site and I noticed that visitor numbers started to rise. Then, out of the blue a large package landed on my doorstep courtesy of yet another stranger - Mr. Runyan. Inside it were approximately 40 DVDs containing material which was useful to the construction of the site. The time it must have taken to put those discs together, not to mention the personal cost in postage just astounded me. I quickly started to find that fans of Laurel and Hardy were kind, generous and extremely approachable people. Well, most of them. As the popularity of the site began to soar more and more kind folk contacted me and wanted to send me more material to cover other aspects of the site. By 2013, I had enough material on other series, such as Charley Chase, Our Gang, Harold Lloyd, The Boy Friends, The Taxi Boys, the Pitts/Todd/Kelly films and many others that I was overwhelmed with films which I could review though I was not keen at this point to commit myself to extending the already-clogged site. Through watching some of these other Roach-produced films I began to identify some actors from the Laurel & Hardy films and this gave me the thought of extending the site on a trial basis, though I knew this would entail a shit lot of extra work and coding.
| SITE EXTENSION |
My friend Tom Schober introduced me to a book which ultimately proved to be the decisive turning point in expanding the site to allow ALL of Hal Roach's films to be included by way of cross-referencing them in with the Laurel and Hardy films. The book was the magnificent Smile When The Raindrops Fall by Brian Anthony and Andy Edmonds. In 2016 I had a long telephone conversation with Brian where I thanked him for writing the book and offered my most sincere respect to him as an author. I was surprised to learn that he was a keen viewer of my site and looks at it regularly. In a twist of unexpected complimenting, he thanked me for the work I had done. Wow.
| WEBSITE CRITERIA |
Many people have asked me about what exactly is or isn't allowed on the site. It's quite simple: All the films made or produced by Hal Roach / Hal Roach Studios; all films with Stan Laurel; all films with Oliver 'Babe' Hardy; all films with Charley Chase; all films with Our Gang. That's it.
| MY GRIEVANCE WITH THE IMDB |
Here's the big difference between the IMDb and ANM - Responsibility. ANM does its own research, checks its facts and most importantly pays due credit and respect to all those who have offered the information based on their knowledge, research or publications. The IMDb does not. The number of errors on their site is astoundingly huge. They get their information from clueless film fans who guess 'facts' and then have the site submit them as such, ANM does not. My beef with them started in 2007 when I was working with Aveleyman and would contribute infrequently to their site information I saw that needed adding or correcting. It is quite the co-incidence that it was a Laurel and Hardy film which caused the problem! One day when I was reviewing "Below Zero" I noted they had mis-credited Lyle Tayo as the "woman at the window". I wrote to tell them that it was in fact not Tayo, but rather Kay Deslys. They never changed it, so I wrote again three more times. They ignored me, and at that point I basically told them to go fuck themselves and to carry on being the wealth of incompetence they currently are. I see over the years things have gradually got worse. Based on my experience with trying to talk sense with them, and having MY research added to their shitty site, I get extremely annoyed whenever I find an actor in a Roach film which then strangely appears on their site. It's fair to say I *hate* that site and all those who use information from ANM to submit to them in order to make the IMDb "better".
| REAL RESEARCH, REAL DEDICATION |
Their names are (in alpabetical order by surname so as not to rank them!): Jesse Brisson and Jim Jarvis. These two guys have made significant improvements, additions and contributions to the wealth of information contained exclusively on this website. When people tell me that ANM is "the only site worth submitting factual information to" I take such compliments seriously. ANM is dedicated to facts.
| ANM'S FINANCIAL STRUGGLES AND SURVIVAL |
Two men have kept ANM on the internet when all was seemingly lost: Max Lanzisera and Chris Bungo. When I created ANM in April 2011 I did so on the cheap, using a shared server and paying approximately £70 a year for the privilege. Unfortunately, the site quickly gained an unexpected attention which I hadn't anticipated and I was advised by my hosting company that I was hogging 95% of their servers, and that the other 1,400 users were having to share the other 5%. Whether that story is true or not (I did have to laugh), I was kicked off the server and had no choice that to pay for a dedicated server, which was expensive at £121 a month! It was money I didn't have and I was hours away from closing the site down for ever, despite all the hard work.
Between March 2013 and January 2015 a gentleman in New York whom I had barely had any contact with previously offered to rescue the site without condition and took over the regular payments for the site. This helped relieve my financial woes and eased a lot of pressure on me after I had kept the site on-line using my credit card for several months. It was a catch-22 situation for me. Keep the site and the hard work but at a price I couldn't afford - or shut it down, save my money, cut my losses and lose everything. It was around this time I had no choice than to beg for donations. Several people heard my pleas and helped me out. Some donations were over $100, which shocked me considerably. All of the money which has been received from donations has been spent in either repaying the debt I incurred in keeping the site on-line or invested into the site. I would hate to feel that I had ever abused any money sent to me for the purpose it was intended. The list of those who contributed financially to the site is long, but those who did so know who you are and you each have my most grateful and sincere thanks. Donations are still welcome of course!
| I AM NOT A "LAUREL & HARDY FAN" |
Many people assume that because I have devoted so much time and effort in building a website which was predominantly based on the films of Laurel & Hardy that I am some sort of die-hard, hardcore fan. I am not. I have been personally invited to conventions and get-togethers with fans and have refused every time and will continue to do so - so please don't ask me! The sight of watching grown men dressing up as Laurel and Hardy makes me cringe. I have been very vocal and negative in my assessment with some of their films, most notably "Block-Heads" and I find L&H fans to be biased and over-protective of their films.
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