SINGAPORE - There is a famous saying about cult New York group The Velvet Underground - not many people bought their debut 1967 record, The Velvet Underground & Nico, but everyone who did formed a band.

The group, led by late singer Lou Reed and known for songs such as Venus in Furs (1967) and Pale Blue Eyes (1969), was highly influential on succeeding generations of musicians.

American film-maker Todd Haynes, known for feted works such as 1950s melodrama Far From Heaven (2002 ) and period mini-series Mildred Pierce (2011), was also among those whose lives were touched by the band's music.

He has now channelled his love for the group into directing and producing The Velvet Underground, a film now streaming on Apple TV+. It had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in July.

Besides 1960s archival footage, including rare and unseen clips, the film also features interviews with the surviving band members John Cale and Moe Tucker, band members' families, and their associates. The band lasted from 1964 to 1973 and reunited several times in the 1990s.

While The Velvet Underground film marks the first time Haynes has taken on a feature-length music documentary, he is no stranger to music films.

He has made critically acclaimed movies Velvet Goldmine (1998), set during the 1970s glam rock era, and I'm Not There (2007), a biopic that tackles the different aspects of singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, who is played by several actors and actresses.

Haynes was just starting college when he first heard the music of The Velvet Underground, describing their songs as "music that aroused creative desire".

"More than anything, I felt like they opened up a space that I wanted to enter. I wanted to be inside the music and the world," the 60-year-old says in a Zoom interview from London.

Haynes said that he wanted to base The Velvet Underground documentary on the New York avant-garde film scene with which the band were closely associated. The band were known for working closely with Pop Art icon Andy Warhol, who managed and produced their debut album.

"This is a film about this band that comes out of cinema. And so let's let the cinema of its time and place be the way we visualise the band, and hopefully make the audience feel inside the world they were in, and maybe hear the music in a new way," he says.

He recalls how they almost could not get Tucker, who rarely gives interviews. "We kept hitting dead ends. I wrote her a letter - we thought we sent it to her home address, no response. Every phone call that they tried to make, no answer."

They finally managed to track down someone close to Tucker, and got him to call her. It turned out that she had never received any of the film-maker's letters or calls and was actually keen to be interviewed for the film.

Haynes never met Reed before he died in 2013, saying he had glimpsed the man but had "never had the courage to go up and throw myself at (him)".

The director feels that Reed was supportive of his work, though. "We wanted Satellite Of Love, his song from (1973 album) Transformer, in my film Velvet Goldmine. We needed his permission for it and I remember it was an immediate yes. We didn't get an immediate yes from David Bowie, that's for sure."

Asked which music icon he will pay tribute to next, Haynes says he has no idea yet, but that he will take on the challenge of tackling someone who is not easy to depict on film.

"But that's sort of true for every great performer - they are so impossible to replicate. And yet that hasn't stopped me from doing things kind of non-traditionally around David Bowie or Bob Dylan."

The Velvet Underground is streaming on Apple TV+ and is rated M18.