Renny Harlin Quotes
In Finland, getting a university degree is the first thing that you expect your kids to do.
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.
I did some film reviews for small papers in Finland and things like that to be able to keep living here.
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.
You just never give up, no matter how hard the challenges are, and observe this world with a healthy dose of criticism and don't just follow the herd like somebody else might do.
I loved cutting together simple commercials about margarine or soft drinks - all kinds of silly products - but I tried to make the commercials different.
I became a real Shell Motor Oil expert, and I did this 25-minute film. It turned out really well and, as a result, they offered me more work and lots of commercials to direct.
Ford Fairlane was one of those movies that was so much fun to make that it was bound not to be a big hit.
I think that villains who are just brawn, muscles and weapons are boring. So I always try to find intelligence in my villains and also a sense of humor whenever that is possible.
I decided that, somehow, I had to get out of there and go to Hollywood. I had never been to America.
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.
I feel like I learned very early on that your heroes are only as powerful as your villains. And I'm attracted to intelligent villains.
