Like Fine Wine, Initial Draft Screenplay, Scene 3 (Never Shot)
INT. CRUMBLING DRAGON FORTRESS - DRAGON’S LAIR -- DAY
A mighty dragon is seen reclining on top of a hoard of gold and gems. It is INFERNO. Flames rise from the corners of the room and the air is swelteringly hot. Distant screams and the yapping of diamond dog minions can be heard in the distance.
PANNING BACKWARDS - Hoofsteps become audible, and a mare emerges from the bottom of the frame walking towards the dragon, as the camera follows her. It is PLACE HOLDER, an older unicorn mare with three gold bars for a cutie mark.
PLACE HOLDER (V.O.)
I’ll never forget the first time I saw him.CENTERED SHOT OF DRAGON
A lowly diamond dog minion begs for its life as it yaps at its master. Inferno visibly loses his patience. He devours the minion in a single bite, sending the others scrambling.INTERCUT BETWEEN PLACE HOLDER AND INFERNO
Place Holder approaches the hoard and stares up at the dragon as he swallows the minion. Shot emphasizes other cowering creatures, and sight of the minion traveling down the dragon’s long throat.PLACE HOLDER (V.O.)
I should have been terrified. He might have devoured me then and there, if things had gone differently. I think, on some level, I hoped he would.LOW SHOT OF ROOM SO PLACEHOLDER IS VISIBLE LOOKING UP AT INFERNO
Place Holder stops, and Inferno laughs at her.INFERNO
What brings you here, little wizard?PLACE HOLDER
I’m not a wizard.SHOT FROM SIDE
Inferno leans down to look Place Holder in the eye, the motion emphasizing the size difference between them. His lizard tongue flicks the air in front of her.INFERNO
Oh? Are you a knight? A mighty warrior? Have you come to strike me down?INTERCUT BETWEEN PLACE HOLDER AND INFERNO
Place Holder cringes, fear showing on her face. She subconsciously leans away from the dragon and flinches.PLACE HOLDER
I’m not a knight. Or a warrior. Or a thief or any of those other fantasy cliches. I’m a goldsmith. I ran a jewelry shop.Inferno chuckles, seeming to delight in her discomfort.
INFERNO
You say you aren’t a thief. But what does a goldsmith want with me, if not my hoard?PLACE HOLDER
I know dragons hoard gold.SHOT OF PLACE HOLDER FROM THE SIDE
Place Holder turns to show her flanks to INFERNO. Her cutie mark, three gold bars, is clearly visible.PLACE HOLDER
I want you to collect me!
Rarity’s Recounting of What Happened Between Her and Spike the Dragon at Pie Pans Bar and Grill, in Downtown Ponywood, 1019, as Dramatized by Channel 7: Cultural Programming
Spike flipped through the script, as he and Rarity sat together at the bartop. The tip of one of his claws made a soft sigh as the pages slid over it, like the sound of the sea. The first ten pages or so were filled with red pen marks—after that, he’d stopped bothering.
“It’s fine,” he said, without inflection. He was good at that, Rarity realized. He was good at saying things without inflection, without expression, not poker faced or carefully neutral, but simply devoid of content. He could make things forgettable, and he often did.
“Oh, it’s only ‘fine’?” she asked with a dry wit. “I thought I’d written a real pager turner, with how you flipped straight to the end. I thought you were so eager to get to the big finale you simply couldn’t wait.”
“Well,” he picked up his whiskey, stalling for time with a slow sip. “I don’t really judge scripts. It’s hard for me to picture.”
“Spike,” Rarity said, her tone firm. “I appreciate that you respect me as an actress and so you are trying to be kind right now, but spit it out.”
A grimace appeared on Rarity’s face as she saw Spike struggle. Whatever he had to say was bad enough he needed time to work up to it. Even when he did speak, he did so hesitantly: “I have some nitpicks.”
“Such as?”
“Well…” He turned back to the beginning, flipping through the pages he had extensively marked. “You refer to the diamond dogs here with the M-word. I’m really not comfortable with that.”
“The M…” Rarity frowned. “Oh, mini-”
“Ah ah!” Spike hurriedly raised a talon. “Look, just… don’t ever use that word, okay? Dragons enslaved diamond dogs for hundreds of years. Tortured them, burnt them alive, used them as cannon fodder. And pony knights did not make the situation better. They looked at all those innocent creatures as one big speed bump on the way to fighting their dragon master. And that word was used by ponies and dragons alike to say diamond dogs aren’t real people. So maybe just... just avoid it in general. Forever.”
“I could call them servants instead,” Rarity suggested. “The dragon’s servants. Would that be better?”
“Um. No, not really.” Spike laughed a stiff laugh, reaching up to scratch his muzzle. “Because a lazy, violent, powerful dragon waited upon by diamond dogs is a stereotype. It’s a really, really racist stereotype, actually. Diamond dogs and dragons don’t agree on much, but that’s one cliche we’d both really like to move past.”
“I could make the servants ponies,” Rarity said, indicating some of the offending lines. “I mean, that’s a simple find/replace. Dogs to horses.”
“Well, sure, you could,” Spike said, his voice picking up. “But are you going to keep the scene where Inferno eats one of his servants? Pony, dog, whatever, it’s weird to introduce the male lead in your romance by having him commit casual first degree murder and cannibalism. Like, how would you enjoy a romance that opens with the male lead slitting a mare’s throat and casually tossing her body to one side?”
Rarity’s eyes turned away from the script, and she stared down into her untouched Mai Tai, but the dam behind Spike’s jaws had broken, and the words spilled out regardless. “And also, there’s a lot of very basic factual errors here. Dragons don’t hoard gold. We don’t. We hoard gems. It really feels like maybe you wrote this script for a protagonist who had three gems for a cutie mark, then realized that was a little on the nose and made a last moment substitution.”
Spike’s tone grew steadily sharper as he continued, his eyes glaring down at the script like it had offended him. “And I’m sorry, but did you have to cram every dragon-related fetish into this movie? Just in your opening, you’ve got extreme size difference, vore, fire breath… is owning a pony BDSM? I don’t know. I’m going to say BDSM. If you have him threaten to spank her you complete the row and win pervert bingo.”
“Right.” Rarity said. “Right.”
“You said you wanted me to play Inferno. I’m not big enough to eat a pony in one bite. Even if I didn’t have a no-cannibalism policy, you’re three or four bites at least. And if I flip through here, there’s definitely a sex scene where she enjoys being owned and dominated by a dragon. Right? Like I haven’t seen it yet, but it’s in here.”
“You’ve made your point,” she snapped, eyes boring a hole down through her glass. “I need a smoke.”
And without waiting for him to reply, without touching her drink, she got up from the table and stormed outside.
Spike did not follow her right away, but when he eventually went back out, he found her trying to hail a cab and light a cigarette at the same time, completely failing at both tasks. She was outwardly too anxious, too upset to concentrate, and could not summon her magical focus. Her horn would not spark.
“Here, let me,” Spike said, reaching for the cigarette, but she yanked it away.
“I’m fine,” she snapped at him, expression wounded, voice filled with bitterness. “I’m sorry for wasting your time today.”
“You didn’t waste my time,” Spike insisted. “I just don’t understand why you’re writing a bodice-ripper. It feels like a novel a pony would find in the airport, and the cover would be a dragon picking up a mare in one talon and ripping her dress off with the other. It was borderline pornographic.”
“I guess I’m not as good a writer as I am an actress,” Rarity said, waving her hoof at another taxi. It sped by without stopping. “All there is to it. I should stick to what I know.”
“I refuse to believe you’re that bad.” Spike paused a moment, regarding her with a sidelong glance. “Tell me what you were trying to accomplish there. What’s the… emotional arc of the movie?”
“Place Holder feels worthless after her husband divorces her and she loses her jewelry business, so she travels to the dragonlands so a dragon can eat her.” Rarity said, waving at another taxi. Not in service. “It’s a suicide attempt, basically. But she ends up falling in love with Inferno, and feels better about herself, and he lets her go. That’s it. And yes, fine. It’s stupid. I was trying!”
“So,” Spike said. “Place Holder feels bad because a stallion rejected her. But then she feels better because, forgive my bluntness, a richer, hotter, more powerful male says she’s great? It sounds like Place Holder derives a lot of her sense of self-worth from what creatures with dicks think about her.”
“Oh, you’re my therapist now?” Rarity snaps, raising a hoof for a vehicle that, upon closer inspection, was merely a yellow wagon and not a taxi.
“I’m just… saying,” Spike let out a heavy sigh. “If I was writing it, I would say, Place Holder needs to find confidence inside herself. Not just find a big lizard as a rebound date after her husband leaves her. And for the love of Celestia, please just let me fly you home. You don’t need a cab.”
“I also don’t need to be clinging to your back for dear life a thousand feet in the air.”
“Rarity,” Spike craned his long, serpentine neck around to face her head-on. “Rarity.”
She froze, looking up at him, staring into his eyes.
With a little puff of flame from one nostril, he lit her cigarette.
“Were you trying to be cool there?” she asked, a laugh escaping her. “Was that an attempt to be suave? That came out of your nose. That’s the dragon equivalent of you hocking a booger.”
She waved again, and that time, a taxi pulled over for her. “Look, you’re… this was a mistake. I know, this wasn’t good. I’m sorry I dragged you into this. Never meet your heroes. You and Applejack would make a great movie.”
“Rarity, I—”
But Rarity piled into the cab and shut the door on him, and the cabbie pulled away.