When Pope left college, two years later, he found himself unemployable and, after a period of working for Williams & Glyn's Bank in Islington, he got his first job with HyVision, a company in Covent Garden that trained politicians to appear on TV.
One of the many people he worked with, apart from Trevor McDonald, Melvyn Bragg, and others, was the then Chancellor of the Exchequer Denis Healey, whom his boss, Stanley Hyland, trained to appear on the BBC's Panorama programme.
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.
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.
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.
More Some Bizzare videos followed with Soft Cell, including "Say Hello and Wave Goodbye" and thereafter an entire album of videos for their debut album Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret, including the infamous "Sex Dwarf" that featured a handful of real-life prostitutes, their pimp, a trainee doctor in leather trousers, and a handful of maggots that Pope chucked in during, causing a riot when the prostitutes fled from the St John's Wood film studio.
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).
Pope released his own song in 1984, "I Want to be a Tree",[4] The single's b-side was "The Double Crossing of Two-Faced Fred" (a choral verse poem he had written and performed at Latymer, a few years earlier) and, on the 12" version, "Elephants".
In between commitments to the Cure, The Glove and Siouxsie and the Banshees, Robert Smith found time to play most of the instruments on a new recording of "I Want To Be A Tree".
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.
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 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 1996, Bob and Harvey Weinstein asked Pope to direct The Crow: City of Angels for their production company, Miramax; both were fans of Phone.
The Crow: City of Angels put Pope together again with production designer Alex McDowell and the duo gave the film an individual look and feel.
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.