Chapter 1 - Double Indignities
VFX - This is a black-and-white story/movie, in keeping with it being a cheap film noir knockoff.
SCENE 1 - EXTERIOR, CINDERELLA'S HOME, NIGHT
SLOW ZOOM toward Cinderella's home, a Renaissance European-style three-story house on a street in a well-to-do suburb, obscured by the dark of night and a drenching downpour.
CINDERELLA (V.O.)
It was a dark and stormy night. . . . A severe thunderstorm watch in effect until 4 AM. . . with winds gusting to 30 miles per hour as a cold front moved through the tri-kingdom area -
DIRECTOR (V.O.)
CUT!
GUY WITH CLAPPERBOARD (V.O.)
Take two!
Sudden "BLEEP!" accompanies an abrupt edit in the film as it switches to:
SCENE 1, TAKE 2 - EXTERIOR, CINDERELLA'S HOME, NIGHT
SLOW ZOOM toward Cinderella's home, a Renaissance - oh, you know...
CINDERELLA (V.O.)
It was a dark and stormy night when my mother passed away. Maybe Heaven was giving a preview of the dark clouds about to fall over us long-term.
CUT to INTERIOR, MOTHER'S BEDROOM: Focus on a little girl, CINDERELLA, who kneels crying by a bed in which her mother's body lies. Cinderella's father hangs in the background, but due to the camera angle is only visible from the waist down.
CINDERELLA (V.O.)
That's me, Ella. Short for Gabriella. It was either "Ella" or "Gabby," and I was too quiet a girl for "Gabby."
GUY WITH CLAPPERBOARD (V.O.)
(mutters)
Not anymore.
CINDERELLA (V.O.)
Shut up!
DISSOLVE to a series of flashbacks illustrating the events that Cinderella's continued voiceover describes:
CINDERELLA (V.O.)
Pop didn't want me growing up without a mother, me being an only child and all, so soon after Mom died he married a woman he met on Sunset Boulevard. Pop was always a sucker for faces and fluttering eyelashes, and this dame bought 'em custom-made. She was a widow with two daughters about my age, so he figured it was a three-for-one deal: a new mother plus two sisters for me.
(beat)
A few months later, they found my old man face down in the pool out back. The cops didn't smell foul play, but my nose knew better. I knew Stepmom and her girls were bad news from the start. Pop's will left enough money to pay for his funeral. Stepmom spent one dollar on a garbage bag and pickup and blew the rest at Macy's. Right after that, she put me to work like a dog cleaning and cooking, and nothing I cooked was ever good enough for her...
SCENE 2 - INTERIOR, JUST OUTSIDE STEPMOTHER'S BEDROOM, CINDERELLA'S HOUSE
Cinderella hesitantly approaches the bedroom door.
STEPMOTHER (O.S.)
Cinderella! Come in here now!
Cinderella opens the door to step slowly inside, where she sees her STEPMOTHER sitting up in bed with a breakfast tray in front of her and an angry face on her. And it's a very familiar face too...
STEPMOTHER
You expect me to eat this!?
CINDERELLA
Please, Stepmother, I - Hey wait a minute! You're the wicked queen from "Snow White!"
STEPMOTHER
So? You seen one fairy tale wicked stepmother, you seen 'em all!
(beat)
You call this breakfast!? The bacon is supposed to be crisp and the eggs runny, not the other way around! And this toast!? If it were any darker, you could tar a roof with it! Can't you cook anything right!?
CINDERELLA
No one ever taught me how to cook!
STEPMOTHER
Go back to the kitchen and cook my breakfast right, or I'll teach you how to cook! From the inside of the oven!
Cinderella reluctantly leaves for the kitchen.
CINDERELLA (V.O.)
If only my name were Gretel, I'd show her the oven.
SCENE 3 - INTERIOR, WORKSHOP, CINDERELLA'S HOUSE
CINDERELLA (V.O.)
Living with that old dragon was bad enough, but throw in her two girls? The older one, Lizzie, played with knives . . . and guess who she liked to play with.
LIZZIE sits at a grinding stone, sharpening one of several knives from a nearby table. She gleefully admires her handy work, then turns with an evil grin toward the other side of the workshop, where Cinderella is mopping the floor.
LIZZIE
Hey, Cinderella!
CINDERELLA
(looks up)
Yes, Lizzie?
LIZZIE
Don't move!
Lizzie hurls the knife toward Cinderella. Cinderella shrieks and ducks, and the knife plunges blade-first into the wall where Cinderella's head was.
Lizzie quickly picks up two more knives.
LIZZIE
Two for flinching!
She hurls those knives simultaneously with both hands. Cinderella pulls in her arms and squeezes her body thin, so the knives plunge into the wall on both sides of her body with barely an inch to spare either way.
Lizzie grabs the rest of the knives from the table and hurls them all toward Cinderella. This time the scene doesn't switch to her until after the sounds of multiple thuds, after which we see Cinderella in a wildly splayed pose, arms and legs all at crazy angles, with the embedded knives perfectly marking out an outline of her body. Cinderella screams and runs out of the workshop, then Lizzie stomps over to the knives and starts pulling them out.
LIZZIE
Look what you did! Now I have to sharpen them all over again!
SCENE 4 - INTERIOR, KITCHEN, CINDERELLA'S HOUSE
CINDERELLA (V.O.)
The younger one, Lucretia, started out spitting in my milk, but then moved on to slipping me other kinds of mickies: vinegar, Tabasco, wood polish . . . sleeping pills . . .
Cinderella is in the middle of washing a huge pile of dishes. The stacks, one dirty and the other clean, are about the same height - over two feet - on either side of her as LUCRETIA saunters into the kitchen and gives Cinderella a smile . . . like the kind a cat would give to a mouse.
LUCRETIA
(mocking)
Oh, you poor dear, Cinderella! You must be exhausted from all that work! Here, let me get you a drink.
Lucretia pulls a mug from the bottom of the clean stack, causing all the other clean dishes to topple over and smash onto the floor.
LUCRETIA
Cinderella, you clumsy jerk! Wait'll Mother hears about this, she'll make you scrub out the inside of the septic tank again!
Lucretia pours milk into the mug and puts it in the microwave for thirty seconds.
LUCRETIA (cont.)
So if I were you, I'd take a nap right now, 'cause you're gonna be up all night cleaning up this mess.
The microwave dings, and Lucretia pulls out the mug of warmed milk.
LUCRETIA (cont.)
(silky voice)
Here, this will relax you.
With her back to Cinderella, Lucretia empties a fine powder out of her ring into the milk, before handing it to Cinderella with a barely-concealed evil grin. Cinderella notices Lucretia's expression and is quite wary as she raises the mug to her lips. A good sniff and the slightest taste confirm her worst fears, and she spits out what little milk was in her mouth, and drops the mug to the floor and spills the rest.
LUCRETIA
You little ingrate! I do you something nice, and that's how you thank me!?
CINDERELLA
You call that nice!?
Cinderella points to the floor, where the spilled milk has already started dissolving the floorboards.
LUCRETIA
So the milk expired! Grow up!
SCENE 5 - INTERIOR, LIVING ROOM, CINDERELLA'S HOUSE
Cinderella lies sleeping uneasily on the hard brick floor in front of the fireplace, using a rolled-up newspaper as a pillow.
CINDERELLA (V.O.)
I didn't even get my own room. They made me sleep on the floor in front of the fireplace and sweep out the cinders every morning. That's how I got the moniker "Cinder-Ella." They were mean, selfish, nasty, conniving...
SCENE 6 - INTERIOR, STEPMOTHER'S BEDROOM, CINDERELLA'S HOUSE
CINDERELLA (V.O.)
And Stepmom had a real beef about wire coat hangers.
In front of a large walk-in closet, a furious Stepmother waves several wire coat hangers in Cinderella's face.
STEPMOTHER
NO - WIRE - HANGERS!
CINDERELLA
Well what can I do!? Plastic hasn't been invented yet!
CUT to BLACK, with only the caption "CENSORED" showing, so we don't see the visuals accompanying the sudden sounds of a fight, several slaps, and a loud thud to the floor.
The visuals suddenly pop back, and we see Cinderella sprawled on the floor in front of the closet, with the remains of the wire hangers wrapped around her face, neck, chest, arms, etc.
CINDERELLA (V.O.)
What a sore-head.
SCENE 7 - INTERIOR, PARLOR
Another flashback, showing Stepmother at her desk writing on parchment.
CINDERELLA (V.O.)
For my eighteenth birthday, Stepmom gave me a real expensive present: a million-gold-grickle life insurance policy with herself as sole beneficiary, and a double indemnity clause saying she'd collect twice as much if I had an accidental death. And right away, the old battle-ax and her little hatchets started hatchin' one "accident" after another.
SCENE 8 - INTERIOR, STAIRWELL
Cinderella is at the top of the stairs, just starting to dust the banister, working her way slowly down the long stairwell as she dusts. Stepmother appears at the top of the stairs, walking down faster.
CINDERELLA (V.O.)
Like everyday household accidents...
As Stepmother passes Cinderella, she nonchalantly drops a roller skate two steps down from Cinderella's foot. Half a minute later, Cinderella steps on the skate, with predictable results at first. But before she can complete the flying tumble off the stairs and into thin air, she grabs the banister with her free hands and turns her flying tumble into a flip onto the banister, and slides down backwards at breakneck speed.
Stepmother gets to the bottom first and notices Cinderella is sliding instead of falling. Reacting quickly, she shoves a Radio Flyer(TM) wagon into Cinderella's landing zone. Cinderella lands a bull's-eye on it and her momentum sends her and the wagon careening through the house and out the front door. A loud, lingering crashing sound soon follows from outside.
SCENE 9 - EXTERIOR, OUTSIDE WALL, CINDERELLA'S HOUSE
Cinderella is on a ladder, cleaning the second-story windows.
CINDERELLA (V.O.)
Sometimes not-so-everyday accidents.
In the backyard is an animal pen where the family keeps five pigs, the first of which is dressed for going to the market later. Lucretia dumps leftovers from a plate of roast beef into the third pig's trough; the fourth pig stares longingly at it but Lucretia doesn't give him any. Instead, she looks around to see if anyone's watching, particularly Cinderella, and then opens the pen and starts jumping up and down.
LUCRETIA
Yah, pigs! YAH-YAH!
Frightened by Lucretia's shouting, the pigs dash out of the pen, straight toward the bottom of Cinderella's ladder. They collide, and the ladder starts tipping over backwards. Cinderella grabs for the window sill too late, and with a scream and a flailing of arms, she topples over backwards. As luck would have it, the ladder's trajectory drops her right into the muddy center of the pigpen, giving her a soft landing, although the soap bucket she was using for window cleaning lands upside-down on her head.
Lucretia, upset that Cinderella survived, marches to the pigpen and confronts her.
LUCRETIA
Now you got your clothes all dirty, Cinderella! You're gonna be in so much trouble!
The five pigs suddenly stampede into Lucretia, catapulting her face first into the pigpen's mud with Cinderella. The pigs follow closely after, the last one crying "Whee-whee-whee!" as it goes.
LUCRETIA
(mutters)
Where's the Big Bad Wolf when you need him?
SCENE 10 - INTERIOR, BATHROOM
Cinderella is taking a shower. P.O.V. from inside the shower.
CINDERELLA (V.O.)
Other times, they try to scare me to death.
Several seconds pass just watching Cinderella scrub herself - only from the shoulders up, of course; this is a PG-rated story.
Then an ominous looking shadow slowly creeps up on the shower curtain. The shadow resolves itself to be human, and then the human's arm slowly raises the shadow of a knife.
Cinderella suddenly notices the shadow just as its owner yanks open the curtain. The owner is Lizzie, who swings the knife downward just as Cinderella screams bloody murder. At the same instant, Cinderella slips on the bar of soap and falls downward, causing the knife to miss her and hit the shampoo bottle in her hand. The shampoo squirts out all over the place, some of it hitting Lizzie right in the eyes and causing her to stumble backwards, trip over the toilet, and fall onto the sink, breaking the faucet and starting a geyser of water spilling out all over the bathroom.
Meanwhile, Cinderella had grabbed the shower curtain for purchase, but now it breaks off the curtain rings one at a time and falls into the shower with her, while what's left of the shampoo swirls down the bathtub drain. For several seconds, Cinderella lies in the tub under the shower water, hyperventilating and waiting for her pulse to drop back below 200. Lizzie sits dazed between the toilet and sink, with an impromptu water fountain pouring over her head.
Suddenly there's a loud pounding on the bathroom door.
LUCRETIA (O.S.)
Hey, Cinderella! Ain't you done in there yet!?
CINDERELLA (V.O.)
And that's how it was, me under the toes of those three heels without souls. Life was going downhill fast, and they weren't giving me any brakes.
Lucretia pounds even louder.
LUCRETIA (O.S.)
Stop narrating and let me in before I pee my dress!
CINDERELLA (V.O.)
And all that time, I didn't know that halfway across town, there was another sap stuck in a tree as sticky as mine.
SCENE 11 - EXTERIOR, ESTABLISHING SHOT of ROYAL PALACE, NIGHT
Another storm with howling winds and driving rain is raging outside during a SLOW ZOOM toward the royal palace, a magnificent European-style castle at the top of a hill overlooking a medieval-type city. Whatever bright lights the palace has are muted by the rain and fog.
CINDERELLA (V.O. cont.)
This sap was the kind of young, handsome prince you always find in stories like these. He didn't know it, but he was sitting on dynamite, and somebody was lighting the fuse. It was another dark and stormy night...
SCENE 12 - INTERIOR, GRAND ENTRANCE HALL, ROYAL PALACE, NIGHT
The exterior door to the grand entrance hall opens as the PRINCE enters the palace from the raging storm. His royal clothes are soaking wet, rumpled, and twisted in odd angles around his body. He carries the tattered, twisted remains of an umbrella, and there appears to be a pair of underwear hanging from his neck. He slams the door in disgust.
PRINCE
Now she tells me.
The Prince notices the underwear around his neck, pulls it off, and stares at it crossly.
PRINCE
And the royal tailor said these were guaranteed not to ride up!
The PRIME MINISTER rushes into the entrance hall toward the Prince.
PRIME MINISTER
Your Highness! There's an urgent matter we need to discuss!
PRINCE
Do you mind, Prime Minister? I only just got off Noah's Ark, and I'm still waiting for my luggage.
PRIME MINISTER
As droll as that is, this matter could ruin your royal career, and perhaps leave the entire monarchy DOA!
PRINCE
(bored sarcasm)
DOA? OMG. We better do something PDQ B4 we're all FUBAR. LOL.
PRIME MINISTER
This is serious, Your Highness! You're sitting on dynamite, and somebody's lighting the fuse!
CINDERELLA (V.O.)
That's what I said.
PRIME MINISTER
Who asked you!?
(to the Prince)
You know about your father's gambling? Well, he owes a small fortune to King Midas. The royal treasury's been drained, and now the king is blackmailing your father to pay up or else!
PRINCE
What's he gonna do, turn Father into a gold statue? Aren't they saving that for the next James Bomb movie?
PRIME MINISTER
Worse! Midas is threatening to publish photographs of you in compromising situations with several neighboring princesses, causing a scandal that will shake our kingdom to its foundations!
PRINCE
What!? You know I don't go in for that stuff! I don't stick my neck out to romance no dames!
PRIME MINISTER
That's not what people will think when they see these!
The Prime Minister pulls out a handful of photographs from his suit pocket and shows them to the Prince one by one:
PRIME MINISTER
Midas sent us copies to prove he means business. This one shows you and Tinkerbell stumbling out of a bar after hours!
PRINCE
The bar called me over there just to help her get home, on account of she was all lit up!
The Prime Minister shows the Prince a second photo.
PRIME MINISTER
This one shows you on a nude beach with the Little Mermaid!
PRINCE
That wasn't a nude beach! That "No Littering" sign is covering up my swim trunks! And I was just talking to her for a minute while she was taking a break from filming a guest spot on "Whale Wars."
The Prime Minister shows a third photo.
PRIME MINISTER
And this! It shows you in bed with Sleeping Beauty!
The Prince takes the photo and gapes at it.
PRINCE
Oh come on, anybody can see this is photoshopped!
PRIME MINISTER
But nobody will believe it's photoshopped 'cause computers haven't been invented yet!
(beat)
Listen, Sire, I've been talking with the Minister of Finance, and he thinks there's only one way out of this. You've got to get married into a rich family. Once everyone sees you're a stable family man, it'll put to bed any rumors about you playing around, and we can use the money from your new wife's family to pay off your father's debts.
PRINCE
(sarcastic)
Oh, is that all? And where am I supposed to find a sucker who'll marry me for her money instead of mine?
PRIME MINISTER
He's got an idea about that, too: You throw a big party and invite all the high-society big shots and their eligible daughters. Then you just take your pick.
PRINCE
(sarcastic)
That sounds like a real ball.
PRIME MINISTER
And don't drop it, Sire, or we'll all be rolling into the gutter.
CINDERELLA (V.O.)
He ain't kiddin'.
PRIME MINISTER
You bet I ain't kiddin'!
CINDERELLA (V.O.)
Things were messed up so bad, it was gonna take lots more chapters to fix it all up.
TO BE CONTINUED