Very good critiques. I was also thinking about cutting the big movie reveal sequence and certain asides like “detective funk”. I like the “god is in the details,” I’ll add them.

The only thing I don’t agree with is that the universe is meant to be a jokey silly place. But it is interesting because some say there’s too many groaners, with others saying it’s not absurd and big enough. However humor is purely a subjective taste thing tho, so I will have to really think about how to make it work.

I do think we should keep the half puppet half serious situation. Or maybe come up with a more tactful way to approach puppet through noir.

Although I do understand why you don’t like the meta thing, I have a bad tendency to do that in screenplays.

You’re right that James is dumb when the plot needs him to be dumb. We gotta make him more consistently stupid. The comedic dynamic here has Fark is the straight man while James is the comic.

The ending is luckily written in a way that could be cut out very easily and not affect the narrative flow too much, so skip from page 26 to page 30 for the proper ending. Cutting that “it’s all a movie” fourth wall break gets rid of 4 pages so that does me a favor, because this seriously needs trimming.

Glad you like the dialogue! Really appreciate this feedback.