HELP! How to return the returned value from a threaded function

[D. Xenakis]

> This sounds like homework... what have you tried, and what happened?

heheh naaah no cheating here. I just provided the example this way to make as clear as possible what I want to do. Return the returned value from a threaded function.

apparently this does not work as I hoped: 
return Thread(target=message_function).start()

> Have you looked at the docs of the threading module?
Lost in there