I went out to some advertising agencies and asked if I could do anything.

In Hollywood, you tend to get pigeonholed to certain genres, and then when you try to do something different, it's not always so easy. Obviously, you don't want to keep repeating yourself, all the time. So, it's a constant struggle for every filmmaker and actor to find something that you can really feel passionate about. It's a profession like anything else.

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.

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.

I went out to some advertising agencies and asked if I could do anything.

A government institution called the Finnish Film Foundation funds filmmaking there, and I wrote several screenplays but never got any money. They were sent back to me, and they said that they were too commercial for them.

Ford Fairlane was one of those movies that was so much fun to make that it was bound not to be a big hit.