Never stop dreaming – Aim High

Cowboys fighting against indians. John Wayne, Clint Eastwood. The legendary music by Ennio Morricone. Those are the early memories of feature films. The world of films seemed magical. Of course I wanted to be a movie star just like the heroes of films I saw. Well, that didn’t go that direction. I grew up in a small village which was in my own words, in the middle of nowhere. There weren’t any chance to embark the road of acting and I don’t believe my parents would have given the ok for such an hobby even if there’d been theater society or something. So, my childhood was filled with typical farm life, working my ass off on the hay fields during the summer, helping parents to in all the other farming work. School of course filled the days and weeks from mid August till end of May each year. 

Little Entertainer

School was terrible, especially the first six years. Our teacher was a real deal tyrant abusing me and most of the other kids. I think she really enjoyed that. She took my hair inside her fist and started to pull me like a mad cow. Map stick was her choice of weapon. Very handy to bang kids fingers with it. But force feeding was the worst. I really hated that. My mother was excellent cook every dish was pure joy, even that dishes were very simple ones. School food was most of the time tasteless. I never understood how they managed to screw up even potatoes! You can’t go wrong with potatoes, com’on! And those terrible liver casseroles and other terrible stuff! The thing was that, if you didn’t eat, our teacher came right next to you and started shouting like a maniac. “You have to eat all food from your plate because there is a hunger in Africa!” that famous idiotic phrase was widely used during those days. Like it would have helped any poor Africans in hunger if I’d have shoveled my dishes and all the possible food in the world into my mouth! What a stupid thing! So, I ended up being force feeding for years.  Shouting was a every day hobby for teacher. Funny thing is that, it’s amazing how you can adapt even for absolutely terrible conditions. There wasn’t way to runaway, nor fight as it would have just made the situation even more worse. So, I froze myself. I have heard this kind of experience from others too. E.g. Action movie star Dolph Lundgren spoke about it in his TED Speech.

In the midst of all that crazy every day hell on earth and after shock was gone, I started entertain my fellow school mates and myself by mimicking actors, actresses, politicians, athletes and news folks I saw from television. My very favorite characters were Yle’s weatherman who had a very distinctive voice. It sounded like he had nose blocked permanently and the look of the guy was funny too. The other one was famous cross country skiing athlete who had a very high voice and of course always a red face as sports journalists rushed to do the interview right after she had crossed the finish line. When you ad a thick Karelian accent (well, I had the same those days!) it was always extremely entertaining for little guy like me.  Another my favorite voice was Donald Duck. My little daughter by the way loves it very much and ask me often do that, “talk with the funny voice she asks and she won’t stop until I do so!” Making other kids laugh alongside of sports helped me survive during those crazy years. The habit stayed with me and I kept it alive even as an adult. 

Never stop dreaming

Long story short. As acting wasn’t any choice as a kid and youngster due to pure fact of living environment, I ended up studying massage therapy after my military service. It became a long standing career and I started to specialize for migraine care even my early days due to my own migraine. My life has been full of challenges, crazy ones and even dangerous ones. I’ve been even working on hostile environment in a war torn Iraq when Saddam Hussein’s regime was kicked off from power. Having met thousands of people during my therapy career and helping them have given me a great gift of hearing lot of stories, not just the pains and diseases, but everything what life throws on the way of people. I have experienced a lot in my personal life myself as in professional life. All the loses, winnings, troubles, crisis and smelling red roses moments are great source of stories for films. But, hey, it’s not just personal stories. There are so many untold stories in the world waiting to be on screen.

Filmmaker

When Covid-19 crisis swept the whole planet, including Finland, my professional life and life itself changed over night completely. I went from being busy migraine specialist for specialist with mickey mouse size mount of patients. Pretty soon after Covid crisis screwed my career, I decided to start something new, something which I have always dreamed about it, but which have been just unreachable dream. That was acting. I managed to get into Vincent Curatola’s acting workshop, even it meant to stay up all night  every Thursday. It’s always been easy to stay up very late to me, so it wasn’t a big deal to me. Vincent’s classes very fun and very inspiring  alongside of educating. At some point, Vincent started to encourage me to write my own stuff. As a life long private entrepreneur with experience of being involved in 16 companies, I really didn’t needed another push. I had anyway decided that I better start doing my own stuff as just applying for another folks’s productions and gigs sounded to me, too much like making a lottery ticket and hoping to win. So, I embarked very much the world of learning how the feature films are done. Along the way of learning and trying different sort of stuff, my own way for film making started to born. I’m feeling that my life and career experiences are extremely helpful. I’m strong advocate of making your own way, don’t copy purely someone else. You can take the great and functional stuff from someone else who has already done it, but make sure to have your own strong signature on it. This is the story behind me as a filmmaker.