>>Has anyone seen Inception?
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>We all shouted at the end, when they cut away from the spinning top when it was about to tip over.... did it, or didn't it ??? Is it real, or is it a dream???

I don't think there is a right answer. This is a movie that plays with your mind. It was maddening to me, too.

Check out "Memento." It also plays with your mind but everything is sorted out by the end. You just have to watch very closely to catch some of it.

When I was hanging out with the screenwriters "Memento" was one of the most discussed and debated movies. The only one I can remember discussed more was "The Sixth Sense." That discussion went on for weeks. I was really impressed by what the real and aspiring screenwriters noticed. These are guys who watch movies with stopwatches, measuring scene length, making notes. Did you notice he never touches anyone? The use of the color red. Settings and their meanings.

The king of the Screenwriting forum was a guy named John Hill. He wrote a number of produced movies, "Quigley Down Under" with Tom Selleck probably being the best known. He also won an Emmy for his writing on "L.A. Law." He said it was in a closet but I bet it was right on the mantel. He shared his understanding of the biz tirelessly, often consisting of buckets of cold water. Some of it came from personal experience, I'm sure. He had been successful and was no longer in demand. When you turn 40 you're dead in this business if you don't have a recent box office success, he said. He sent me a number of private messages that persuaded me that I would be wasting my time. Write a novel, he said. He said you've got the talent, up there in the bleachers <g>. (He hated it when I griped about schlocky movies). Crank out a page a day and in a year you've got a book.

What I liked about John was that despite his cynical knowledge of the business he was always a movie fan. And a fan of well written TV shows. Once he remembered, in that scene by scene way of his, an episode of "St. Elsewhere." There were two subplots. One was a patient who needed a heart transplant or was going to die. The other was the wife of a main character being killed in a car crash. The doctor said yes, take her off life support and transplant her heart. Late that night, no one else around -- hey, it's fiction -- he walks into the recovery room and holds his stethoscope to the patient's heart. Thump thump, thump thump, thump thump. Fade to black.