Spede Pasanen

Pertti Olavi "Spede" Pasanen (10 April 1930 – 7 September 2001) was a Finnish film director and producer, comedian, humorist, inventor, TV personality and practitioner of gags. During his career he directed, wrote, produced or acted in about 50 movies and participated in numerous TV productions, including the comedy Spede Show and the game-show Speden Spelit. Much of his more commercial work was in collaboration with Vesa-Matti Loiri (whose most popular character created by Pasanen was Uuno Turhapuro; first in TV sketches and then in a long-lasting series of motion pictures) and Simo Salminen. Pasanen's films and TV shows, often made fast and inexpensively in a conveyor-belt mode, usually didn't gain much recognition from the critics but were extremely popular among Finnish audiences from the 1960s onwards. He was the owner of his own film production company, Filmituotanto Spede Pasanen Ky. He is noted as the main influence of many who make an attempt to break into the Finnish comedy scene. Spede also had a long, strained relationship with Suomen elokuvasäätiö, a government-financed film-funding organisation which continuously refused to fund his movies.