A note here at the top, this episode contains some pretty frank discussion of suicide.

True story. I was hired to write a movie screenplay once. Don't look for it. It never got made, the fate of many screenplays.

And when they hired me, the producers said, yeah, just follow the three-act formula and we'll be good.

And I said, oh, okay.

And then I quickly Googled three-act formula movies.

And it turned out to be a pretty simple one.

Hero is living a routine life.

Something intrudes on that.

That's Act one.

Act two, Hero goes on a journey to make

things right, meets increasingly difficult challenges. Act three, Hero faces a challenge so

difficult, so enormous, that there's no way they'll conquer it, and yet somehow, often

using the skills they learned in Act 2 and their secret heroic nature from back in Act 1.

Somehow they win.

They return to a version of their former life, stronger and wiser and better off and happily ever after, unless there's a sequel.

And I realized it's in most big movies.

Luke Skywalker, the boy moisture farmer, gets a message from a princess.

Off he goes.

Has battles, finally blows up the Death Star, gets a medal.

Frodo is in the Shire.

Gandalf shows up.

Ring, Ghalm, Soren, throws the ring in the goo, comes back to the shire.

...