Timothy Michael Pope (born 12 February 1956, Hackney, London, England) is a film director most famous for his music videos, having directed feature films, and for a brief pop career.
Tim Pope first started making films, aged 9. It would take him up to 3 months to save up for a single roll of Kodak film. Growing up in north London, he was one of the first students to take film at UK exam O-Level, studying the works of directors such as Buñuel, Hitchcock and Polanski. He was featured in the ‘London Evening Standard’ and on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Today Programme’ and was mentioned as a budding director, aged 17. He later attended film courses at Hornsey College and Ravensbourne. His first job was at a company that trained politicians to go on TV, including clients like the then-Chancellor of the Exchequer, Denis Healey. Pope visited No. 10 Downing Street many times and would purloin the camera afterwards to film the gigs of post-punk bands like The Specials. He subsequently became the sixth-ever pop promo director in the world, directing his first clip in 1981. His influential, award-winning and internationally known work has been cited by many directors to have influenced their own work. From the eighties to present, Pope has made 200+ clips, with amongst others, Fatboy Slim, The Kaiser Chiefs, David Bowie, Neil Young, Iggy Pop and The Cure. The latter is perhaps his most famous working relationship, totaling 23 clips for the band across 18 years, as well as many MTV and other awards. Pope was awarded a CADS Outstanding Achievement award in 2005. He has also shot many lauded commercials for clients such as Agent Provocateur, Kodak, Renault, Coca-Cola and the BBC. In addition, he has directed TV shows, live concerts, and, in the nineties, the short film ‘Phone’, as well as the feature film ‘The Crow: City of Angels’, that for Dimension/Miramax and producers Harvey Weinstein and Bob Weinstein achieved the number one spot in America and as Variety said “becomes the highest Labor Day weekend opener ever”. In 1991, Pope was co-founder of production company Cowboy Films, London, that, as well as being a highly successful production company of commercials and videos, went on to produce feature films such as the Oscar-winner ‘The Last King of Scotland’ and TV shows like C4’s ‘Top Boy’. He continues to work to this day in videos, commercials and longer-form projects and is developing scripts for feature films and projects for TV. He was in 2012 the subject of a Sky TV documentary, meeting up again with old friends such as Paul Weller, Marc Almond, Norman Cook and Robert Smith.
Promos for The Cure
By 1982, and with a few more videos made, (Scottish band Altered Images, Nancy Nova, Jersey pub-rockers-financed-by-a-millionaire “Volcano”, etc.) Pope met The Cure’s singer Robert Smith and the shape of pop videos as previously understood was to change for all time. Their work together was to prove that directors could be constantly innovative, on a factory-line basis. Pope ultimately directed over 37 videos for the group, including many of their most famous songs – “Let’s Go To Bed” (1982), “Close To Me” (1985), “Just Like Heaven” (1987), “Friday I’m In Love”, (1992), “Wrong Number” (1997). He also directed the 35mm movie of “The Cure in Orange”, which captures their performance at the eponymous theatre in the south of France. He recorded his own song with them, called “I Want to be a Tree”, with its B-side “Elephants” and “The Double Crossing of Two-Faced Fred” (a choral verse poem he had written and performed at Latymer, a few years earlier). The single is a collector’s item for many Cure fans and Pope was the only early collaborator, apart from their postman, with a song called “I Dig You”.
Pope, of course, provided the video for “I Want to be a Tree”, which was famously achieved in a single, unbroken shot of over three minutes duration – the first time this was ever attempted in a pop video. Pope also musically supported another band he was working with at the time, The Psychedelic Furs, at Hammersmith Odeon, the same stage David Bowie had ‘retired’ from as his fictional character Ziggy Stardust. Pope parodied Bowie, referring to his own character as “Twiggy Sawdust” (a play on words from the Tree song). This appears to be the climax of Pope’s burgeoning wannabe-pop star career. The single reached number 137 in the British charts.
Work in the U.S.A.
He was invited to America for the first time in 1983 by Neil Young who asked him to film the video for his song “Wonderin’”. Young personally drove him around Los Angeles on a guided tour to see the sights, using the car that was ultimately to feature in the famous “Wonderin’” video, filmed with its idiosyncratic speed-up, speed-down style. Pope shot many more videos for Young until 1997. He said of the experience: “I thought it was everyone’s lot to be brought to America and driven around by iconic pop stars in flash motors.”
He also shot many more videos in the USA for various bands, including Hall & Oates, Iggy Pop and Wendy & Lisa, as well as more bands in the UK: The The, David Bowie, Strawberry Switchblade, Men Without Hats, Talk Talk, Paul Weller, Siouxsie and the Banshees and others.
Pope’s career in commercials began at this time, too, and he soon achieved a worldwide reputation, shooting for clients all over the world.
In 1989, he shot the TV series The Groovy Fellers with famous musician/TV presenter Jools Holland, about a Martian who lands in England and is shown about by the TV presenter, being presented with many of the eccentricities of life peculiar to the UK. The TV series was one of the first to use members of the public and also featured David Steel, Michael Heseltine and Sir Patrick Moore. The Martian lands naked in episode 1, walks into a pub, and the series climaxes with a car chase with Holland and the Martian attempting to answer the question “Why are we here on Planet Earth?” with the police in hot pursuit.
Later career
In 1991, Pope directed his first short film Phone that led directly to his being asked by the Weinstein Brothers of Miramax to make The Crow: City of Angels for them. Phone starred Bill Pullman, along with Linda Blair and Amanda Plummer. The film earned many awards from around the world, and was based on a real-life phone prank that Pope came across on a tape in a skip behind a strip club in Hollywood Boulevard.
He continued working on videos, spending more time in America. He worked with many new bands of the period, though old clients like Neil Young, David Bowie, The The and the Cure continued to request his services.
The Crow: City of Angels (1996) put Pope together again with production designer Alex McDowell and the duo gave the film an individual look and feel. It reached number one in the American movie charts, though Pope refused to do the commentary on the DVD, saying the studio had tampered with his film too much.
He directed David Bowie’s 50th birthday celebration at Madison Square Gardens in 1997, working with Bowie to construct the show over a long period. The show featured other artists, including Pope’s old friend Robert Smith of The Cure, Billy Corgan, Frank Black, The Foo Fighters and Lou Reed.
Shortly afterwards, Pope read and bought the book for The Last King of Scotland and brought Oscar winner Forest Whitaker to the project as Idi Amin (though he left the project due to differences on the progress of the film, in particular with the studio wanting to use writer Joe Penhall).
2000 to present
Pope returned to London from Hollywood and continued with his career making commercials.
In 2005, Pope was awarded a CADS lifetime achievement award by the music industry and after a prolonged and self-imposed period of 12 years, he returned to making videos again, working with The Darkness, KT Tunstall, The Kaiser Chiefs and Fatboy Slim.
He is rumoured to be working again in 2008 with The Cure and also to be about to make another feature film, as well as working with long-time collaborator Neil Young on a concert/conceptual film.
In 2013, Pope embarked with The Cure to film their “LatAm” tour across South America and Mexico, and a tour film is expected to be produced later with material both off and on stage.
He now lives with his family in Brighton, East Sussex. —Wikipedia
