  pertti olavi "spede" pasanen (10 april 1930 &ndash; 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 elokuvasÃ¤Ã¤tiÃ¶, a government-financed film-funding organisation which continuously refused to fund his movies. ==influences and comedy== spede pasanen named bob hope as one of his biggest comedy influences. spede pasanen is considered emblematic of savonian ironic humor varying between the fullest extremes of understatement and hyperbole. as he himself explained: "a savonian never tells a thing exactly like it is." spede's comedy denounced elitism and he explicitly sought to write and perform comedy for the largest possible audience. his uuno turhapuro movies can be considered conventional farces. an unemployed slacker will, with comically incredible luck, a father-in-law who is rich and connected but unlucky (mainly due to uuno), and with slick charm, end up i
1930_births 2001_deaths Deaths_from_myocardial_infarction Finnish-language_writers Finnish_comedians Finnish_film_directors Finnish_film_producers Finnish_inventors Finnish_male_actors Finnish_writers People_from_Kuopio Spede_Pasanen