As most of you probably know, a “MacGuffin” or “McGuffin” is the item – treasure, prize, limitary secret, piece of a puzzle, map, etc. – that drive the plot of a thriller. Its main importance is as the motivator that everyone makes a fuss over and is either seeking or using.
The term was popularized by Alfred Hitchcock, although apparently it was invented by British screenwriter Angus MacPhail. Pearl White, the silent screen actress, had earlier called such a device a “weenie”. I only know all of this because of the Wikipedia article on it.(see below)
Of course, there are tons of MacGuffins the movies and TV shows we watch, and in the books we read. You wouldn’t have to work hard to name quite a few of them:
The Maltese Falcon
The One Ring
The Holy Grail
The Ark of the Covenant
The ATAC Machine
The Lector Decoder
etc., etc., etc. ad nauseum.
I’m not interested in just a listing of MacGuffins. I want you to give us a relatively obscure and interesting MacGuffin.
My suggestion:
The Arms of the Venus de Milo
These feature in the obscure and virtually forgotten Allen and Rossi comedy The Last of the Secret Agents?. The Bad Guys want to steal the original sculpture the Venus de Milo so they can re-attach them.
About the only other notable thing is that Nancy Sinatra sang the title song (and appears in the movie) a year before she sang the title song for the James bond film You Only Live Twice
John Huston’s The Kremlin Letter (1970). The “Letter” is obviously the MacGuffin. A group of fossil spies,with interesting *names get together for one last caper to retrieve the letter. George Sanders as a drag queen. Gay art collectors, including a high-ranking Soviet official. Patrick O’Neal as a chain-smoking hyperthymesic spy. It’s on youtube if anyone is interested.
The poster reads:
“If you miss the first five minutes, you miss one suicide, two executions, one seduction, and the key to the plot.”
*The Whore, The Highwayman, Warlock, Pupper Maker, Erector Set, Ditto Machine, Sweet Alice, Pepper Pot, and Richard Boone as Uncle
Odd credits note: The actor who plays “Pepper Pot” is uncredited and has a very significant speaking role at the beginning of the movie. On the other hand, the actor playing Ditto Machine is seen only from the side in a scene lasting about 10 seconds, but he does get a credit.
On the one hand, I’m gong to fight the hypothetical.
I don’t believe in the concept of the MacGuffin as described. For example, the Maltese Falcon, whatever it is (The stuff dreams are made of) is not “insignificant, unimportant, or irrelevant”. Just because the movie doesn’t care, the characters do. They know what it is. And they are willing to kill to get it.
Given that, in the spirit of the thread, I nominate the contents of the briefcase in Pulp Fiction. Not only do we never know what they are, the movie deliberately deceives us into thinking it is something more than just vulgar money or diamonds or whatever. (Maybe even Marcellus’ literal soul, if you will). Plus, since the film is sort of an anthology of different characters interacting at different points, it isn’t the kind of movie where the briefcase is relevant. It doesn’t drive Mia, or HunnyBunny, or Butch, or Zed, or Jimmy. And then the movie moves on and forgets and we even stop caring. But people still wonder, all these years later.
That’s pretty much the definition of a McGuffin. The entire point of the term is that, for the story, it could be changed to any other thing, and the story would be exactly the same. It exists in the story solely in service to the plot.
My memory of that movie is that it was a heavy, thick and square lead-lined box with a leather carrying case, not a briefcase.
I think you’re missing the point of what they mean by saying the MacGuffin is irrelevant. Obviously the characters care about it, it’s driving the plot, but you could replace the MacGuffin with just about anything and the plot remains the same. The Maltese Falcon might as well be a wheel of cheese from Maltese for all the difference that would make to the plot. It’s been a while since I’ve seen it, but I don’t think they ever recover the falcon in the movie. i.e. The fate of the falcon isn’t resolved, which is fine because it doesn’t matter to the narrative. What matters is is Spade has cleared his name.
Its power to signal to the Nazgûl, leading to the attack on Bilbo;
The power it gives to Frodo to command Gollum;
The whispering tempting sounds at various times in the movie;
The destruction at Mount Doom, which saves the world
Unlike the Maltese Falcon, when they discover at the end that the one they’ve got is a fake, and Caspar Guttman just shrugs and says “Let’s find the real one.”
I learned the word MacGuffin when Roger Ebert used it in one of his books in reference to that briefcase. It was the first time I heard it and I remember myself and my brother wondering if was a typo and meant to be McMuffin. The way the sentence was worded, it still made sense.
Too many of you are obsessing over the definition and properties of the “MacGuffin”. To me, it’s the item everyone is searching for that moves the plot forward, Hitchcock and others to the contrary, it’s not necessarily unimportant or not cared about, or only important t the villains, or whatever. The One Ring, which Sauron’s goons are searching for (and Frodo is desperately tryi ng to get rid of) is definitely a MacGuffin by my lights. Stop obsessing over this and find some interesting MacGuffins. So far most of what you’ve all turned up are pretty obvious and straightforward cases. Find me a WEIRD MacGuffin with an interesting backstory.
Here’s an example – in the 1992 movie Sneakers (which has one of the weirdest and wildest casts I’ve ever seen) the MacGuffin is clearly the “black box” called “Setec Astronomy”. It turns out to be a super code-breaking device whose name is an anagram for “Too Many Secrets”
