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Salome: A Love Story

King Herod lusts after his stepdaughter, Princess Salome, under the disapproving glare of his wife, Queen Herodias, while Salome falls madly in love with the prophet Jokanaan and demands he return her love with tragic results.

  • Nicolas Walker
    Director
  • Nicolas Walker
    Writer
  • Oscar Wilde
    Writer
  • Frederick Keeve
    Producer
  • Jassmine Glodeanu
    Key Cast
    "Salome"
  • Frederick Keeve
    Key Cast
    "King Herod"
  • Angelle Brooks
    Key Cast
    "Queen Herodias"
  • Michael Parks
    Key Cast
    "Jokanaan"
  • Project Type:
    Feature
  • Runtime:
    1 hour 24 minutes 33 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    September 1, 2023
  • Production Budget:
    400,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital - Arri
  • Aspect Ratio:
    4x3
  • Film Color:
    Black & White
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Nicolas Walker

Nicolas Walker – Writer (adaptation) / Director

Nicolas Walker studied acting with Robert Taylor Tayman and Maria Machado at the Renaissance Theater Company in Northern California. He directed his first stage play there, Medea, by Euripides, in 1988, and Six Characters in Search of an Author, by Luigi Pirandello, the following year.

After a time spent in the business sector he returned to directing in 2008 with a production of Rumi & Shams: In Their own Words, an original play which he also co-wrote. In 2012 he co-wrote and directed an adaptation of The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

Other directorial efforts included: A film version of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in 2013, as well as stage productions of Macbeth (2015), Oedipus Rex, by Sophocles (2017) and Euripides’ The Trojan Women (2021.)

Nicolas Walker studied acting with Robert Taylor Tayman and Maria Machado at the Renaissance Theater Company in Northern California and directed his first stage play there, Medea, by Euripides, in 1988, and Six Characters in Search of an Author, by Luigi Pirandello, the following year.

After a time spent in the business sector he returned to directing in 2008 with a production of Rumi & Shams: In Their own Words, an original play which he also co-wrote.

He directed a film version of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in 2013 as well as stage productions of Macbeth (2015), Oedipus Rex by Sophocles (2017) and Euripides’ The Trojan Women (2021).

He recently completed an award-winning screenplay Journal of My Other Self, adapted from the novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge by Rainer Maria Rilke.

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Director Statement

What attracted me to adapt Oscar Wilde’s one-act play Salome into a film? I had admired his writings for years after reading his De Profundis, a letter he wrote to a friend in 1897, while imprisoned for “Gross Indecency” (A homosexual lifestyle).

Last year, while online, I encountered the play and began to study it more closely. I was amazed by the subtleties and the nuanced degree of character development he was able to bring to what amounts to a couple of paragraphs from the Gospel of Matthew, the story’s most widely known source.

The Bible’s treatment is basically this: Herodias, King Herod’s wife, Queen of Judea, concocts a way to get rid of John the Baptist for publicly denouncing her marriage to Herod, by convincing her daughter Salome to ask for John’s head as a condition of her dancing for Herod. But in Wilde’s version it is clearly Love that drives the story. Not Love in its most perfect fairy tale form but surely a darker dimension of human love, nonetheless.

I became so attuned to the varying love connections in the play that it became clear we had to change the title to Salome: A Love Story. The most blatant element of love is found in Salome’s love (and lust) for John the Baptist (aka Jokanaan). “You are the only man I have loved” she tenderly proclaims. Equally evident is Herod’s love for Salome, his step-daughter - “I have always loved you. Perhaps I’ve loved you too much.” Then there is The Young Syrian’s love for Salome, who kills himself over Salome’s overtures of love towards Jokanaan.

But these versions of Love are all destructive by nature. A wise sage once observed that the lion, when it devours the gazelle, is in love with it. And while this is how things work in the animal kingdom, echoes of this kind of destructive love is analogous in the human realm, hence the truism - “We always hurt the ones we love.” However, love is not the entire story of Salome. Wilde also imbued it with many sidelong glances of human frailties both, humorous and grave.

I’ve always been attracted to the classics. My favorite definition of a classic is the concise statement – That which endures. In the case of the story of Salome, its pedigree, from the Gospel of Matthew, to being adapted by one of the greatest writers of the late 19th century, certainly fits the definition of a Classic work.