There were a lot of people dreaming about making films, and they would finance maybe 6 films a year. Because they were funded by the government, the films sort-of had to deal with serious social issues - and, as a result, nobody went to see those films.

I was making films when I was about 12 years old - Super-8 films.

It proved to be pretty impossible to get funds for a feature film in Finland. It's still small, but the film industry was miniscule at that point in the early '80s.

Just live in the moment and not be afraid to try things out and make mistakes.

This was in '79. I got pretty restless there, sitting around with a lot of people sitting around smoking cigarettes and talking about films, but nobody really doing anything.

Several times we were stranded in strange places without any money and with our credit cards cancelled - trapped in a hotel that we couldn't check out of because we had no money to check out.

Eventually, in '84, we made a film for a little over a million dollars - with American actors that was shot in English - that was shown in Finland A little action film called Born American.