STATEMENT - DECEMBER 16, 2023

This site has always been FREE to use, without ADVERTS and has been NON-PROFIT. When I began ANM (this site) back in 2011 I simply did so as something to pass the time and fill up my boring days whilst I was out of work. It was never intended to be a full-on venture that I would still be doing nearly 13 years later. But, that's what has happened. Initially I found the whole thing fun, I enjoyed the films of Laurel and Hardy and it was exciting to make screenshots and share all of my work, opinions and ideas with a small number of people. I never expected this website to become known worldwide and to be respected by so many. With this came pressure. Pressure to deliver and maintain my standards, my exploration and ultimately my expansion of the website. What started out as a simple hobby quickly turned into a full-blown project after it started gaining a lot of attention. What many people do not realise is that this came at a major financial cost to me. A cost I couldn't afford. I was out of work and my bank was stupid enough to give me a credit card. And I was even more stupid to use it to pay for the expensive servers each month just to host the site. My debts escalated and my mental health deteriorated over a period of a few years until I just hated doing the website. But I was in a catch-22 situation I couldn't escape. Give up the site, not add to my debt and walk away; or continue the website and keep going? Some people began to donate small amounts of money - £10 here, £20 there - and this was to me a large amount of money I desperately needed. But it all got swallowed up in the debt of running the site. After years of the debt becoming out of control I finally became debt-free in 2023 after a charity from my church stepped in and wrote to my creditors to have the debt of £10,000 erased and I could hit the refresh button. Naturally, this messed up my credit rating but at least I was out of debt. All of this led to a major amount of resentment by me in being too naive to continue running a website on my own with only a minimal amount of return financially. So that now leaves me with 3 options: 1. Sell the site and everything in it and give the buyer every single film I have digitally (including the films I am not supposed to share). I would be walking away completely and would no longer care about honouring any deals I had made previously. The new owner could also change the name of the site to whatever they want. I would not be involved. I'd take £1,000 for it right now and you'd get everything I just promised you. You would inherit the site "as is" and I would relinquish all copyright in my text, my reviews and my designs. You would also receive the text files for each page currently published on the site. 2. Continue on exactly as I am now. Spending hours each day updating the site I no longer enjoy just so that others can occasionally look at it, steal my screenshots and post them elsewhere, submit them to the thieving bastards at the IMDb; allow others to consult with the site so that they can use material for their books and make a living whilst I simply get a "credit". I don't work for free, and I'm sure you wouldn't either? 3. Make this website a membership-only. This way I would have an incentive to carry on, improve, spend more hours dedicated to the appearance, the accuracy and the integrity of the site. Adding new reviews, and uploading some of these films to a server for others to see in private they wouldn't otherwise have access to. This would separate those who "like" the site from those who "support" it. I don't need likes, I don't need fame, I don't need recognition.... I need money. I don't have money. There will be some who think this stance will be unreasonable. Those people can go somewhere else. $5 a month from 20 people would be enough for me. I would do this work for those 20 people at $100 a month. I have already had several people tell me they would be willing to do this. I never wanted to write a statement such as this, but I'm tired of being a mug, tired of seeing my screenshots on the IMDb - a website I respect as highly as dog shit. Credits in books do not pay my bills. I do not need to do this crap every day. It's boring, it's tedious, I don't enjoy the films (you may have noticed), I hate being called a "Laurel & Hardy fan" because I definitely am not, and I am just so sick and tired of theft all the time... I want to say again, there have been a many number of people who have donated to this website with knowledge, research and help over the years. Others have sent donations, whilst one person kept the site on the internet for a period of time when I walked away from it. I won't forget those people. Thank you to each and every one of you.