Tim Pope

In 2018, Pope filmed a documentary on Sheridan Smith called Sheridan Smith: Coming Home.

On July 7, 2018 Pope directed the "Anniversary: 1978-2018 - Live in Hyde Park London" concert the Cure performed as part of the British Summer Time concert series. The concert was released on dvd as part of the six disc set of "Curaetion 25 - Anniversary", released in October 2019.

He directed The The's The Comeback Special - Live at the Royal Albert Hall in 2018. It was released on dvd/blu ray in October 2021.

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.

In March 2008, Pope re-united with Neil Young to film In London which captures Young and his band during their multi-night engagement at the Hammersmith Odeon. The film was premiered in 2019 on Young's personal archives site.

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 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, Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins, Frank Black, the Foo Fighters and Lou Reed.

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.

In 1989, Pope directed the TV comedy series The Groovy Fellers which he co-wrote with Squeeze keyboardist and TV presenter Jools Holland and comedian Rowland Rivron, about a Martian (played by Rivron) who lands in England and is shown around the country by Holland, being presented with many of the eccentricities of life peculiar to the United Kingdom. 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. The programme was produced by Border Television for Channel 4.

In between commitments to the Cure, the Glove and the Banshees, Robert Smith also found time to perform on Pope's Syd Barrett-inspired "I Want To Be A Tree" single. Pope at the time was the regular director of promotional videos for the Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees and Marc Almond, among others, but was taken aback when his fame on American MTV as a video director began to rival that of the bands he worked for. He described the project as "a real piss-take of what was going on in America", prompted by people referring to "Tim Pope Videos", and said that he "felt really strongly that they were not Tim Pope videos, they were Cure videos or Siouxsie videos or whatever". Over the 1983 Christmas holidays, Pope and a friend, Charles Gray, recorded what Pope described as "this really stupid song" that they had co-written years earlier as teenagers. Pope made an accompanying video for his showreel, asking several of the artists he worked with (the Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Soft Cell, Talk Talk, the Style Council, Paul Young and Freur) to "come along and slag me off on the showreel". He then played the artists the song, while filming their reactions to it. The Old Grey Whistle Test screened the video, which Pope says resulted in several record deals being offered. The song was re-recorded with Robert Smith playing most instruments in January 1984, produced by Chris Parry, and was released on Fiction Records (with a new video) in June, reaching number 34 in the British charts.

He was invited to The United States 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."

At about this time, pop videos were starting to be made more frequently by directors like Russell Mulcahy (Duran Duran), David Mallet (David Bowie), and Brian Grant (Olivia Newton-John). Pope decided to turn his hand to this new form. His first attempts at rock video were shot in Carnaby Street and in Putney Bridge's tunnels on a non-broadcast format for the single "Cut Out the Real" by Jo Broadbery and the Standouts, as well as its B-side. After unsuccessfully pitching many videos (and with very little to show as his own work), he was finally engaged to make Soft Cell's first video for Some Bizzare Records, Non-Stop Exotic Video Show, which was a companion release to their debut album Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret. The collection was originally issued on VHS, Betamax, and laserdisc in 1982, and re-issued on DVD in 2004. The video for "Bedsitter" had Pope's trademark individuality, as it featured the band's singer, Marc Almond, wearing shirts that matched the walls behind him. In many ways, it is considered this video bears all the major hallmarks of a Pope video: individuality, linear progression in terms of story, and a slight psychedelic feel. (Pope has many names for different genres of videos and this type he calls a narrative/atmospheric. He has lectured all over the world on the subject, including at London's National Film Theatre.)

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. 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".

While still at HyVision, in 1979 Pope met Alex McDowell, who ran Rocking Russian, a company that designed T-shirts and record sleeves from a studio in Berwick Street. Alex had designed Iggy Pop's album sleeve for Soldier and Pope was a massive Iggy Pop fan. (Pope later became a close friend to the singer and worked with him many times). The duo went on to form a very successful and long-lasting relationship with McDowell as production designer and Pope as director – before McDowell emigrated to America in the mid-1980s to become a movie production designer for people like Steven Spielberg and Tim Burton.

Pope applied to many film colleges, realising that film was something he seriously wanted to devote his life to, and having been turned down by many, he finally attended Ravensbourne College of Art & Design, Bromley. The course was more TV-oriented, and Pope achieved his highest course marks when a brief was set to create an idea to a piece of music. He chose Frank Zappa's "I'm the Slime" from his album Over-Nite Sensation (1973).

Timothy Michael Pope (born 12 February 1956) is a film director most known for his music videos, for having directed feature films, and for a brief pop career.