Maybury always saw music video as an extension of the film medium, and often rejected shorts for the challenges (and money) posed by the music clip format. 'I'd been making experimental films since 1977, and suddenly there was this opportunity to make a three-minute film -- which is how I looked at pop videos -- and show them to 30 million people across Europe. To me that was much more interesting than showing a little underground film to thirty know-it-all art film fanatics in the ICA.'

'I used pop videos to pay for my experimental films,' says Maybury. 'I did my first in 1984 for Everything But The Girl, then I did all of Sinead O'Connor's videos, a few for Neneh Cherry (she's a gorgeous woman and a good friend -- it's my handwriting on her three album covers) some for The Smiths, Jesus & Mary Chain.'

His most recent offering and debut feature film, "Love Is The Devil: Study For A Portrait Of Francis Bacon", is a harrowing journey into the mind of Britain's most important contemporary painter, and it's a far cry from the music videos he made his name directing.

"Love Is The Devil", with its difficult, distinctive visual style, bears many reminders of Maybury's music biz heritage, with Ryuchi Sakamoto's chilling score complementing perfectly Maybury's vision of the bizarre universe of British painter Francis Bacon. While it was always his intention to make "Love Is The Devil", as a film, behave just like a Bacon painting, Maybury's intentions were set back somewhat when the Bacon estate refused permission to use any of the artist's works. Although he didn't think so at the time, Maybury describes this obstacle as 'the best thing that could have happened'.

'It was at that point that I said we've actually got to use celluloid the way Bacon used paint,' he explains. 'Instead of showing fake Bacon paintings, we decided we'll try and make the whole thing look like a Bacon painting. Without sounding too much like a hippie, it just kind of happened organically, developed in its own language as we went along.'

While he was originally approached by the BBC to direct a film about the life of Bacon, Maybury started essentially from scratch, motivated by what he saw as the failure of most traditional bio-pics. A fan of Bacon's work since his days at art school, Maybury re-worked the script in line with his own recollections of Britain's most celebrated post-War artist. 'It was interesting to me because he was a figure around the scene in London. I'd met him, I'd seen him out at parties and in clubs. In a similar way to Warhol he was part of the London scene, an important part, even though in the few situations where people had introduced me I was terrified of him,' Maybury laughs. 'Scared shitless of him in fact, because he was this monstrous old queen.'

Starring stage veteran Derek Jacobi as Bacon (Maybury's first choice was actually Malcolm McDowell), "Love Is The Devil" focusses in particular on the relationship between Bacon and his lover and muse George Dyer. The two first met when Dyer broke into Bacon's house with the intention of making off with a few valuables. As it happened, Dyer ended up staying the night. So began a strange and beautiful relationship which was to last many years and become a recurring theme in Bacon's works.

'My favourite paintings of Bacon's were always the paintings of George Dyer, so I decided that's what I would focus on, that story, that relationship,' Maybury explains. 'In a way, the film is more the George Dyer story than it's the Francis Bacon story. In the research that I did, reading biographies, reading the different monographs, looking at documentaries, George Dyer almost doesn't exist. He's been kind of rubbed out. In a way, that's part of the story. The way people treated Dyer in the film is the way he's been treated in reality. Plus the sexual dynamic is interesting to me, the fact that Bacon was the masochist and Dyer was sadist, but psychologically exactly the opposite was the case.'

'But again, the estate of Francis Bacon said that they would sue us off the planet if there were any facsimiles of paintings,' Maybury continues. 'They said that I was going to damage Bacon's reputation, which I said was ridiculous. My line on that is the only way I could damage Francis Bacon's reputation is to say he was straight with two kids. He was the most honest about his private life. In any biography, in any of the monographs about his paintings, he was always very upfront about that.'

'But no, I think that's naive: the real reason they were worried is because they have a huge million-pound investment in his work, and they didn't need a feature film about Francis Bacon. And in fact, for all the awareness of his work and the documentaries and biographies and stuff, the bottom line is that more people go to the cinemas than ever go to art galleries. In a way, they were right, because I have made the film and I've sold it to twenty-five countries now, so it is going to be seen by a lot of people.'

Interestingly enough, before the crew finished filming, the very same representatives from the Bacon estate approached Maybury with an offer to make "Love Is The Devil" the official Francis Bacon biopic -- for a measly 25 per cent of its profit. As one would expect, Maybury was less than enthusiastic: 'I just said you can fuck off.'