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Having come up through “Chris actually wrote a very nice own background in documentaries
thing about me, saying that I was chameleon-like, and didn’t have a par- ticular style. I hate that thing about being pigeonholed, where people think there is only one facet to you. I find that incredibly restricting.
“So when people ask me about Mike, I’m dead glad that I did Topsy- Turvy with him, because otherwise the films have been very contemporary and often working class. It’s awful to be labelled as Mr Urban Grit.”
Pope – dubbed ‘the Pontiff’ by McQuarrie – recognises the debt he owes, and the affection he feels, for his association with Mike Leigh begin- ning on Life Is Sweet and continuing on through to the director’s newest film, All Or Nothing.
“There’s no question about it, I’m very proud to be associated with Mike’s work,” he nods. The key to this long and fruitful relationship is Pope’s
the British industry dur- ing one of its periodic slumps in the late 60s and early 70s, Dick Pope is well used to having to adapt to survive.
The amiable cinematographer, whose career is irrevocably inter- twined with that of Mike Leigh throughout their ten year collabora- tion, has also proved himself on pro- jects well away from Leigh’s highly political, highly respected movies.
In recent years, these have includ- ed Beeban Kidron’s epic romance Amy Foster (aka Swept From The Sea), Chris McQuarrie’s latterday western Way Of The Gun and the US indepen- dent, 13 Conversations About One Thing, co-starring Alan Arkin and Matthew McConaughey.
“It’s nice to be able to ring the changes in your work,” Pope explains.
which came about after a spell as a clapper loader on a series of dispirit- ing and unsuccessful British films.
“One of them was What’s Good For The Goose, he chuckles, “a hippy psy- chedelic drug-fest with Norman Wisdom as a salesman who goes on a trip. Get your head round that!
“They were terrible films, a lot of them, and I wanted to do things which meant something to me. I found that in documentaries. I spent what felt like a whole lifetime doing series like World In Action and Disappearing World. Then they stopped making the sort of film I liked to shoot. I was too political an animal to make the neutral sort of films they started making and I became ambi- tious to do other things.”
Seamlessly moving into film, Pope got his first feature cinematographer credit proper on The Girl In The
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Photo: Dick Pope (centre by the camera) and Mike Leigh discussing the next shot on All Or Nothing