Director and producer Alfred Hitchcock popularized the term MacGuffin and the technique with his 1935 film The 39 Steps, an early example of the concept, in which the MacGuffin is some otherwise incidental military secrets.[Hitchcock explained the term MacGuffin in a 1939 lecture at Columbia University in New York City:
It might be a Scottish name, taken from a story about two men on a train. One man says, 'What's that package up there in the baggage rack?' And the other answers, 'Oh, that's a MacGuffin'. The first one asks, 'What's a MacGuffin?' 'Well,' the other man says, 'it's an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands.' The first man says, 'But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands,' and the other one answers, 'Well then, that's no MacGuffin!' So you see that a MacGuffin is actually nothing at all.
~Wikipedia
I have never used this plot device, but I'm intrigued by it and aim to work one into one of my future screenplays. Classic MacGuffins include the briefcase in Pulp Fiction, the Ark of The Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Maltese Falcon.
Forum Dwellers, have any of you put a MacGuggin in your scripts?
I haven't used MacGuffins in scripts, but I've included them in outlines for scripts I haven't written yet. I might use a MacGuffin in my next script.
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Maurice: It's never really on my radar, and then I saw a show that referenced them. Here's a list of the best MacGuffins, and I'd have to go with Rosebud in Citizen Kane, which was a writer's joke. As the story goes, Rosebud was a pet name used by William Randolph Hearst to describe something belonging to Marion Davies. I'll let you figure out the rest.
https://screenrant.com/movie-macguffins-iconic-ranked/
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I appreciate it, Phillip E. Hardy, "The Real Deal". One reason I haven't written MacGuffins in scripts is I wasn't sure how to, but with your link and some other resources, I know more about MacGuffins.
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Hitch gave the MacGuffin its moniker but it has been in use long before that (the letters of transit & earlier). Its home seems to mostly be in the Action/Drama genre. I don't often incorporate them in my mostly character portrait shorts.
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Mission Impossible movies do this often.
I fucked up a mcguffin because I didnt know what I was doing and ended up messing up main plot ( I actually paid a "homage" to Pulp Fiction suitcase). the prod co. bought script and fired me; they called me weeks later and asked me to explain what I was trying to do and I reminded them they said they know what they're doing and didnt want my help, and Ii wasn't giving them any free rewrites. They never called back :)
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I am rewriting a single location horror/thriller and I needed a something to locate the people in the building, why they are there, and to give them something to worry about until the story starts.
So I actually thought of the Pulp Fiction brief case. In my story it is a large envelope. The character looks in it and is happy the contents is still there. We never see the contents. But the envelope goes missing. This keeps them in the place, at the start anyway.
I don’t got full Pulp Fiction and make it so up front. Have a physical thing as a kicking off point is great.
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Thanks for the MacGuffin example, Craig D Griffiths.
"I needed a something to locate the people in the building, why they are there, and to give them something to worry about until the story starts." It's important to have a reason why characters go to a place and stay there. It's kinda like with first-person POV movies. Why are they recording? Why do they keep recording? There needs to be a reason.
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Hi Maurice Vaughan, I remember watching “Psycho” about 15 after seeing as a kid (yep, very lacks parenting in my house) and thinking “she stole money?”.
Once Janet Lee gets stabbed the money is not important. It got her to the Motel, job done.
There are so many devices we all forget about. I think it is important to watch the classics with a forensic eye.
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2001 comes to mind. Kubrick was going to show aliens but said, "It's like showing the face of God" so he'd rather the audience use their imagination. The aliens are a huge part of the movie. You never see them.
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2001, ah I recall it well - half a pane of LSD & it was a colorful, wonderful trip.
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I do that, Craig D Griffiths. "I think it is important to watch the classics with a forensic eye." I go into classics, looking for things to learn (because they're classics).
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Didn't they revealed what was in the suitcase at the Oscars? Anyways, almost all European scripts are by definition McGuffins...loose ends and nowhere' s galore...
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Now I'm tempted to...
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Stephanie, you are correct. The papers of transit is the MacGuffin in the film Casablanca.
I've thought a lot about the McGuffin (and MacGuffin) over several years since my film school days that were long time ago. The dictionary defines the McGuffin as: an object or device in a movie or a book that serves merely as a trigger for the plot. I heard Hitchcock in an interview talking about his microfilm McGuffin in North by Northest. He simply said that the McGuffin is the thing in the film that everyone wants, the thing characters will go to any lengths to get, but no one in the audience is absolutely sure what it is. So he seems to be saying that the chase and the activity that the McGuffin generates is more important than knowing what it actually is. His definition stayed with me a long time. Can we get away with a McGuffin in it's purest form now..? I'm not sure. Have audiences grown more film literate now, demanding logic in a way they didn't back in 1959 when North by Northwest came out..? I know that I feel pressure to at least provide strong clues about what's driving characters to pursue each other. What about you..?