Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, sitting in for day, which you guessed. It makes this a short stuff, and it's a short stuff about a question that will probably never be answered. What is a mcguffin?
Yeah, I think I offered up a definition of my own recently, and I'm not even sure what I said you.
I think you went with the second definition. Okay, that we're covering here, all right, But there's I mean, even though, so there's a couple of different definitions. They contradict each other in certain ways, but there are some things they agree on, and that is that a mcguffin is a plot device. It moves things along to some way, to some degree or another, it motivates characters in a story or a movie. And what it is specifically and what role it ultimately plays in the plot, that's what That's
where the definitions differ. And so just based on what I just said, that means that figuring out what a mcguffin is is the mcguffin of this episode of short stuff.
This would that wouldn't be the central premise of the short stuff.
I don't know man, this is this is brain breaking. This is like economics, quantum physics, and jackhammer is all put together.
Well, the first sort of definition I think, example wise, is the Maltese falcon is kind of always if you if you look up anything about the mcguffin, they'll usually kind of point to the Maltese Falcon film as one of the best examples. It was a novel and then later a movie where Humphrey Bogart played Sam Spade and the mcguffin is the Maltese fact falcon. It's his statuette of a bird in the movie. But it's really not
about that Maltese falcon the object. It's about what happens to try and get a hold of this thing.
Basically, okay, okay, I okay, so this is where the this is where I don't get it. So there's definitions out there from screenwriters who say the Maltese falcon is the point, this is the object that does everything in the movie. All of the actions are based on getting their hands on the Maltese falcon. There would be no plot whatsoever if the Maltese falcon didn't exist. Ergo, that's what a mcguffin is. It's the thing that moves the
entire movie. Yeah, right. The other definition is no. I mean, it causes some action, and as far as the characters are concerned, it's the most important thing, but it actually
isn't all that important in the overall plot. I get the first definition of mcguffin quite clearly, but this other definition I can not get because every time I say, okay, well, then let me try to figure out what is an example of a mcguffin there, I usually come up short and it ends up basically falling into the first definition instead.
I don't see the difference much of a difference between the two definitions.
I know there's not much difference, but the idea that it's irrelevant or the most important part of the entire plot, that's that's a that's a difference for sure.
Okay, but ultimately the Maltese falcon itself isn't like and the cure for cancer is inside and we can save the main character, you know what I mean.
Okay, I'm gonna go with your take on this because I'm not the one who had a movie podcast.
So a good example of the second one, and we're going to go over some more famous examples too at the end. But in Raiders of the Lost Ark at the beginning, that little gold head statue that he's that he gets. If you had never seen that movie before, you know he saw it for the first time, you might think like, oh, this object that he's recovering is like super central to the plot perhaps, and it's not at all. So that's just sort of the first mcguffin
in that movie. They're usually introduced in act one, although George Lucas has come out and said that he thinks the actual arc of the Covenant is also a mcguffin.
So, yeah, you sent that and I don't get that. Then that's the thing that motivates everyone's action. It's the most important thing in the entire movie. How is that irrelevant?
Well, I mean because I guess because in the end they just go stick it in a box and put it in a warehouse.
Okay, So then let me ask you this. You reference like the multice Falcon haveying cure for cancer. If the point of getting the Arc of the Covenant was to open it up and like just and all of the ills of the world, and then they did that at the end, would that mean it's no out the mcguffin then or mcguffin.
I don't know, because I don't think that was the driving point of them trying to find the arc, like that was a byproduct of it.
If it had been, though, oh.
Well, geez, I don't know. That movie so ingrained, it's hard to sort of reframe it.
Okay, I say we take a break, we'll regroup, take a couple of film classes, and come back.
That sounds great.
Okay, Chuck, I've got another another attempt here. This one makes a little more sense to me. In the The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, the Agatha Christie book. Have you ever seen? It's really good. No, It's essentially what the what Knives Out the first one is based on. But in there, the character, the main character, the titular character, Roger Ackroyd. He is murdered, and he was murdered to get so the murderer could get their hands on a
blackmail letter. Okay, the blackmail letter with the name of the blackmailer. That's important to the characters, but it's not really the point of the overall plot. The point of the overall plot is Hercule Paul Rose's investigation to uncover who murdered Roger Ackroyd. So in that sense, that blackmailer letter is the mcguffin. How about that one?
Yeah, I mean it seems like a mcguffin to me.
Okay, okay, we're on the trail. So I think my problem is this, Chuck. It's not that I can't understand what a mcguffin is. It's that I can't understand why some things that are mcguffins are called mcguffins, and other things that aren't considered mcguffins aren't mcguffins. That's that's my big problem here. I'm just going to shut up about it from now on, but I just want to make sure I go on the record saying.
That, all right, well it all comes. It came pre Hitchcock, But Hitchcock is the one that sort of made it famous. I guess he used it in a lot of his movies, for sure, and he had a couple of different explanations over the years. One is that it was something vitally important to the characters but of no importance to me,
the narrator. Another one I saw him say was, it's the thing that the spies are after, but the audience doesn't care about, which was where he and George Lucas diverged because George Lucas apparently R two D two was a mcguffin in Star Wars. He said, I think the audience should care and tally like, if the audience doesn't care as much about R two as Luke does in finding him, then like the emotional tilt will be off.
Yeah for sure. But Hetchcock was able to pull off what he was saying, and that say, like the microfilm or whatever, you don't really care if the bad guys get it or Carry Grant gets it. You want to make sure that Carry Grant and was it Grace Kelly who is in north By Northwest? You just want to make sure that they're both okay. You don't care about the microfilm?
Yeah, yeah, for sure. The movie Psycho is one of the classic examples, because you know, everyone remembers the Baits Motel. But I think if you haven't seen the movie in a while, if you're not a student of that film, you may forget that whole first part in the first act where Janet Lee the reason she goes to the Bates Motel is because she's on the run. After stealing forty grand from her employer. And that forty grand, that's the mcguffin that it never comes up again.
No, but it's the thing that initially motivates the character's actions. It gets her to flee. She's on the lamp that takes her to the Bates Motel, and then the actual plot begins.
Yeah, but what about the word itself?
Well, you sent something and I've read this ten times and I still don't get how it explains what a mcguffin is. So I think I'll leave it to you. But it's the one time Hitchcock tried to explain the origin of mcguffin or what it is. I think.
Yeah, he credits a writer that he worked with named a Scottish guy named Angus McPhail, And one of the theories is that it just comes from the root word guff which is a word that means like something said that's trivial or meaningless. So that certainly has a little bit of weight. But another story is that apparently McPhail had told this story to Hitchcock, where he said, two Scottish men are riding on a train. One man asked the other about the contents of a package on the
overhead luggage rack. He said, it's a mcguffin device for hunting tigers in Scotland. And the other guy said, but there are no tigers in Scotland. And he says, well, then I guess it's not a mcguffin.
Still do not get it, well, I mean to me.
That just means it's sort of like that illustrates its meaninglessness.
Okay, okay, we'll go with that.
I mean, I don't see what else it could mean.
I don't either. I don't see what it can mean in any case. Like it's like, yeah, I don't know who knows. I think your interpretation's right. I can kind of sink my teeth into the history of this because you said that it predates Hitchcock, although he popularized it apparently decades before that. This was TV Tropes who pointed this out. There was a silent film actress named Pearl White and then the kind of action cliffhanger serials that
she started. They were always chasing after some like role of film or some treasure or something like that, and she called them Weeni's but they were essentially what she was saying. They were the plot devices. That was driving all of the character's actions.
I like Weenie.
I like Weenie too.
Yeah, that's pretty good.
Bring that back.
My favorite mcguffin I think is probably from Escape from New York. Oh yeah, the cassette tape.
Yeah, that's a good one.
Yeah, there's a cassette tape of Donald Pleasants as the President, and you know, he's trapped on the prison island of New York and Snake Plisken is tasked with going to get him and crucially that cassette tape back because it's some big important speech to the world and you don't even hear it at the end because well, I don't want to spoil it, but you never end up hearing what's even on that cassette tape. So that's sort of a classic mcguffin.
Similarly, another John Carpenter movie that had a great mcguffin was the thing with Wilford Brimley being the mcguffin from my understanding.
Of mcguffins, Yeah, that's a great movie.
You said, R two is the mcguffin in Star Wars Episode four. I think that's awesome. I had never thought about that before. But he's the droid that they're after because he has the plans for the Death Star. Another one that comes to mind is that mysterious briefcase that belonged to Marcellus Wallace that Vincent and Jules go retrieve in pulp fiction.
Yeah, classic mcguffin, And that one is I mean, I love pulp fiction, but that one definitely seems like Tarantino really wanted to write in a classic mcguffin I think.
Yeah, and he did. Yeah, And they also they never say what was in the briefcase no, and it just kind of falls away from the plot eventually too.
Yeah, for sure, I think I have a bad taste in my mouth about Tarantino in general lately.
Yeah, what is it about like men who have power and fame and reach like their fifties and just completely just jerk out. I don't know, I don't get it.
Well, my time is coming, I guess.
No, I think you've passed the point.
Okay, so once you hear fifty four or fifty five, then you're safe.
Yeah, okay, I think you made it through the great filter of becoming a jerk.
All right, Well, your time's coming, then.
I know I'm really having to hang out you'll be all right. I'm going to follow all of your examples, including your definition of mcguffin, and I think we should stop talking about mcguffins now, all.
Right, And hey, we'll say this right in. We'd love to hear from film students and film centephiles and see if you guys can give us a clearer definition.
That's a great call, Chuck, great call. Short Stuff is out.
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows