tim pope's bio:

 

 


Tim Pope bio.

 

"The largest muscle in my body is my imagination...well, actually, the second."


Various Tim Pope shots from the eighties to the present.

Tim Pope is an acclaimed and award-winning pop video-maker, famous for the medium throughout the world. He started making videos in the eighties, pre-MTV, and also subsequently has made feature films (‘The Crow, City of Angels’), short films (‘Phone’, with Bill Pullman, Linda Blair, Amanda Plummer), commercials, TV series, documentaries, etc. He is cited by many current video-makers to be a major influence on their work, to have influenced the medium itself, with what he describes as a “scraggly but slick” style, and is even described by some as a ‘guru.’ Though he prefers often to refer to himself as a gnu.


I want to be a gnu.

Growing up in the wilds of north London, in Enfield, he picked up his first Standard-8 camera at the age of nine. “I filmed my sister riding around a paddock on a horse,” he says. It would take him up to 3 months to save up for a roll of Kodak film. “I used to shoot everything in-camera, editing as I went along. Something I still do to this day, actually. Everything I shoot is edited and put together as I go along inside my head.”


Tim Pope during the period of Latymer Grammar School.

Pope studied film at Latymer Grammar School, Edmonton, where he was in the first year of students to do film studies as an O-level. He even appeared on BBC Radio 4 alongside his film teacher Ian Gillman to talk about the new course. He appeared in the Evening Standard newspaper and underneath the photo it says: “Tim Pope, seventeen, who wants to be a film director.” Directors studied on the course included Hitchcock, Polanski and Buñuel.
Attending Ravensbourne College to study media/TV Production (1976-77) he soon found that his ability with music came naturally. “Asked to complete a brief to put an idea to music and to shoot it afterwards, I chose Frank Zappa’s ‘I am the Slime.’ The film was made based on my concept and I got my first ‘A’ when it was marked afterwards by the teacher. In many ways, this was my first music video.”
Leaving college, he started working at HyVision, London, where politicians and business leaders were trained to appear on TV.


Dennis Healey at the door of Number 10.

HyVision was situated in Earlham Street, home of the ‘Roxy’ club, famous for many of the early punk performances, including the Sex Pistols. And although Pope never claimed to be a punk – far from it, with his long hair – perhaps some of the ‘punk ethic’ infiltrated his work at this time, “percolating up through the brickwork to my psyche.” He worked the cameras for the boss, Stanley Hyland, an ex-head of Current Affairs at the BBC, and went to Downing Street many times. On one particular occasion, he left Downing Street and borrowing the cameras which had just filmed the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Denis Healey, he went to Guilford to film on stage The Specials, famous for their stage invasions by skinheads. This happened and Pope had to beat a hasty exit through the theatre’s back door for fear the equipment would be lynched, stolen or worse, as he had borrowed it without permission.


Two early Tim Pope videos for Soft Cell - 'Bedsitter' & 'Sex Dwarf.'

In 1980, Pope encountered Alex McDowell, an influential record sleeve designer, who owned and ran a company called ‘Rocking Russian’ in Berwick Street, Soho, London. He designed stuff for amongst others many post-punk bands, including The Rich Kids (Glen Matlock’s post-Pistols band), Siouxsie & the Banshees and, most importantly, Iggy Pop.
Pope was an ardent Iggy admirer, having witnessed him at London’s Rainbow Theatre in Finsbury Park, where David Bowie played keyboards. He went to see Bowie, but after Iggy appeared on stage wearing nothing but a horse’s tail and gyrating his hips to the recently released ‘Lust for Life’ he never looked back. He later extensively worked with both Bowie and Iggy, the latter in his movie ‘The Crow, City of Angels.’ Iggy also asked Pope to document his first ever fully filmed live performance in Paris, at the Olympia Theatre, which resulted in the powerful concert film ‘Kiss My Blood.’ (Bowie did similarly at Madison Sq Gdns). Iggy later said of Pope (on Pope’s 2005 CADS tribute film): “Tim came in to see me, just before I went on stage. I thought he was going to say, like, ‘X’ marks the spot – stand here while you perform. Instead, he said to me “you go wild, Jim, and as wild as you are I will match you.”” Pope kept his word and Iggy was pleased that the raw power of his live performance had been caught on film for the first and only time.
Alex McDowell suggested they form an early video production company and this began a relationship that lasted for six or so years, with Alex acting as production designer to Pope’s early direction. They worked together on many now-famous videos, including Neil Young, Soft Cell and The Cure. “Al always seemed to push me in ways which challenged me and this was good,” comments Pope. “Though sometimes we built sets that were too large to fit in the studio in which we were filming. Woops!” A time of free-thinking experimentation, then.
The duo later worked together again on ‘The Crow, City of Angels,’ where McDowell designed the ‘look’ of the film with Pope and worked on it with him conceptually. “It was great to work with Alex again, after all those years,” says Pope. “Out of anyone I have ever met, his sense of colour and design is second to none.” This was obviously true, as McDowell went on to be (and still is) one of Hollywood’s best production designers and his credits include Steven Spielberg, for whom he has designed two movies so far.


Tim Pope and Bob Smith.


Bob Smith stars in Tim Pope's videos - "The Lovecats," "Lullaby" and "Wrong Number."

Pope’s most famous video working relationship, however, is for The Cure and Robert Smith. “I met Smith on a rooftop in Berwick Street in Soho and can see us both standing talking like it was yesterday.” This was 1981 and resulted in their first video for ‘Let’s Go To Bed.’ After this, they made it is claimed 37 videos, though Pope himself admits on the number issue: “People ask you how many you have made for them and you say thirty-seven and then you even start to believe it yourself after a while.” The relationship lasted with the Cure until 1997 and many of the works are considered to be classics within the medium. “For each album, I’d make maybe four videos – two would be classics, one ok and the last one absolute rubbish.”
Pope’s career began to take momentum, during the early eighties, working with many bands, including the Psychedelic Furs, whom he had filmed on stage back at the time he had done so with the Specials. “I considered myself to be like the pub of the profession. When people were ‘in the area’ they popped in to see me.”


Some people who popped in to Tim Pope's "pub" - David Bowie, Neil Young and Matt Johnson of The The.

His career built, with much media interest in him, and three years into his career the call came from America when Neil Young invited him over to shoot the song ‘Wonderin’’ in LA. “Neil liked the fact I did not know who he was. Later on, I got to hear ‘After the Goldrush’ and ‘Harvest’ and ‘Harvest Moon.’"


Tim Pope's first American trip in 1983.

He worked through this eighties period for many artists repeatedly – including The Cure (seventeen years), David Bowie (twelve years), The The (sixteen years), Neil Young (fifteen years), etc.


Tim Pope and Neil Young, shooting 'This Town' in 1997.

In the end, Pope shot many videos – it is rumoured over three hundred. There are too many awards to mention, though these have included MTV, etc. He is mentioned by name in many people's biographies - Iggy Pop, David Bowie, The Cure and Neil Young. He has featured on the cover of many magazines. Pope made many personal TV appearances, including ‘The Tube,’ ‘Juke Box Jury,’ ‘Later,’ ‘Night Network,’ ‘Saturday Morning Superstore’ and MTV. He also recorded in 1986 a song with The Cure, ‘I Want To Be A Tree,’ written when he was fourteen years old. The song went into the BBC charts and Pope also supported the Psychedelic Furs at the then Hammersmith Odeon as a character called ‘Twiggy Sawdust.’ Paralleling David Bowie, who has retired as Ziggy Stardust on the same stage, he too retired that night of his first and only musical gig.


Tim Pope who wanted simply to be a tree gets touched up by an arborologist.

Pope also began to shoot many award-winning commercials for clients including Tuborg Lager, the BBC, Kodak, Renault and many, many others, on both sides of the Atlantic. In between all this, he managed to squeeze in a Channel 4 TV series with British TV-personality Jools Holland, ‘The Groovy Fellers,’ which Pope described as ‘a real hoot to shoot.’ Jools and he have since always remained good friends.


Jools Holland in Tim Pope's 'Groovy Fellers.'

In 1991, he established his own production company Cowboy Films, which became very successful and was listed in the industry as the No. 1 company for several years. The company, subsequent to the award-winning short ‘Phone’ and which was bought by Chris Blackwell of Island Records, went into the business of making feature films, including the Oscar-winning ‘Wasp’ and ‘The Last King of Scotland.’
In 1991, the inevitable move towards movies came about, when Pope was handed an audio-tape of a real-life telephone conversation between four people and became his first award-winning short ‘Phone.’ ‘'Phone' came about as I was standing in a car park behind a strip joint on La Cienega Boulevard in LA. Someone gave me a tape and the film was born.’ He shot the 31-minute film a week later and the film’s dialogue was verbatim from the tape. It went on to win many awards around the world.


Amanda Plummer and Linda Blair in Tim Pope's 'Phone.'

This film led directly to his involvement in ‘The Crow, City of Angels,' when film fiend Bob Weinstein of Miramax fame saw the short film and realised Pope’s potential as a filmmaker. “The Crow experience was a mixed one, though I guess I achieved a Number One film in America, even at the cost of the movie not representing my own vision completely.” Pope later refused to do the commentary for the movie as he felt there had been far too many cooks in the kitchen.


'Not a Tim Pope Film' starring Vincent Perez and Iggy Pop.

After 'The Crow' experience, Pope returned to England to make more commercials and after winning a CADS lifetime-award in 2005, after a break of some twelve years, decided to make more pop videos, making a comeback with the ground-breaking ‘Slash Dot Dash’ for Fatboy Slim. Subsequently, he has worked with The Kaiser Chiefs, KT Tunstall, The Darkness, Jim Noir and Jack Peñate. He says: “I felt at the CADS like this was the end of the road – they were telling me to go away and die. I thought, "I’m not ready to die." So I picked up making videos again, as I have a special connection with music and will always love it.’ He lives in Brighton with his family and has recently announced his comeback to the movie world, due to shoot in early 2009. He still makes videos and commercials.


Some Tim Pope award-winning commercials - 'Tuborg,' 'Renault Scenic' and 'BBC.'

Incomplete list of bands Tim has worked with:

Altered Images
The Bangles
Beautiful South
Adrian Belew
Blancmange
David Bowie
Bow Wow Wow
The Cars
The Christians
The Creatures
The Cure
The Darkness
Nick Drake
Fatboy Slim
Bryan Ferry
Dave Gilmour
Jools Holland
James
Tom Jones
Terry Hall (The Specials)
Hall & Oates
The Kaiser Chiefs
Julian Lennon
Live
Paul McCartney
Ian McCulloch
Men Without Hats
Les Rita Mitsouko
Ministry
Peter Murphy (Bauhaus)
Ned's Atomic Dustbin
Jim Noir
Jack Peñate
Iggy Pop
The Pretenders
The Psychedelic Furs
Queen
Rush
Seven Mary Three
Siouxsie & the Banshees
Soft Cell
Sparks
Dave Stewart
The Stranglers
Strawberry Switchblade
Stump
Talk Talk
Roger Taylor
The The
Tin Machine
Tom Tom Club
Bonnie Tyler
KT Tunstall
Bonnie Tyler
Paul Weller/Style Council
Wham! (George Michael)
Neil Young/Neil Young & Crazy Horse
Wendy & Lisa

Live concerts: The Cure; The The; David Bowie; Iggy Pop; Neil Young.

Movies: Phone (1992) starrring Linda Blair, Amanda Plummer, Bill Pullman; Crow: City of Angels (1996) starring Vincent Perez, Iggy Pop, Thomas Jane.

TV: Accidentally On Purpose (1990) starring Joie & Cinque Lee, iggy Pop; The Groovy Fellers (1989) starring Joole Holland.

Commercials: endless clients...

Shorter Biog:
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, including Michel Gondry, 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 lifetime achievement award in 2005. He has also shot many lauded commercials for clients such as 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 achieved the number one spot in America. In 1991, Pope was co-founder of production company Cowboy Films that, as well as being a highly successful production company of commercials, went on to produce feature films such as 'The Last King of Scotland'. He continues to work to this day in videos, commercials and longer form projects and is developing scripts for feature films.