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A Quietus Interview

A Long Term Effect: Tim Pope On Four Decades Of Work With The Cure
Ned Raggett , July 8th, 2019 06:47

Our man in San Francisco Ned Raggett chats with Pope about his forthcoming Cure concert film Anniversary as well as more unusual anecdotes about his many music videos for them than you can shake a stick at. Or is that a sock?

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Lullaby

"Famously what we did at our meetings was to talk for an hour or two until we came up with an idea. I would assume that I knew what [Robert] was saying but then he'd turn up on the set and it would be [a different story]. This happened on 'Lullaby'. He'd given me the best line anyone has ever given me before a video shoot: "I feel like I'm being eaten by a thousand million shivering furry holes." You don't get lines like that every day of the week. He assumed I was going to build a large spider's mouth but what I actually built was a rather large female organ instead, the one that you see him get sucked into. So there seemed to be some confusion. The band, frankly, do not like dressing up. That is very apparent in 'Lullaby.' They are very uncomfortable with that. It's not a thing they feel good about. Again, I remember Simon playing the tuba in 'Lullaby,' and again, I weed myself, because it was just so funny. One of the people I became obsessed with when I was a teenager was Polanski and the whole idea of the deep fear of spiders, arachnophobia, and the image of the walls being alive with people. I think I was very lucky because The Cure's songs had a wonderful sort of dreamy quality, which really suits film. And I think that this is one of the ones that really worked."