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.
Renny Harlin

Actually, it was first a movie called Gale Force, which was a hurricane movie. That script never came together, and then the same deal was replaced with Cliffhanger.
Renny Harlin

At that point, the movie was called Wild Force. Everything fell apart, eventually - our financing completely fell apart - and we were never able to make that film.
Renny Harlin

Eventually I did that, but it took a lot of twists and turns, and there were a year or two there where I was living with no money at all - no home, no car, no nothing. I was living in somebody's garage in Los Angeles at that point - for a year.
Renny Harlin

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.
Renny Harlin

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

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.
Renny Harlin

I decided that, somehow, I had to get out of there and go to Hollywood. I had never been to America.
Renny Harlin

I did some film reviews for small papers in Finland and things like that to be able to keep living here.
Renny Harlin

I learned a lot about how to shoot and how to put together sequences.
Renny Harlin


I loved cutting together simple commercials about margarine or soft drinks - all kinds of silly products - but I tried to make the commercials different.
Renny Harlin

I loved movies and went to see every movie I could in Finland.
Renny Harlin

I think the reason why we were able to actually get it made was that we were so extremely naive - we had no experience at all here. We didn't even know that you were supposed to have an agent. We didn't even have a lawyer. We didn't know one soul.
Renny Harlin

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

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

I've continued to always keep in mind having a healthy does of that in Hollywood, now that I am part of the system and obviously have to follow the way the system works - you still have to have that crazy determination.
Renny Harlin

In Finland, getting a university degree is the first thing that you expect your kids to do.
Renny Harlin

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.
Renny Harlin

My very, very first professional job was when I was 19 years old - I got a job doing an educational industrial film on Shell Motor Oil's oil products. I really put my heart into it - I wrote a script for it, I did a lot of research.
Renny Harlin

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.
Renny Harlin