A MacGuffin isn’t the name of a breakfast sandwich, but it could be — that is, if a movie involves characters trying to get that sandwich. The MacGuffin, also spelled McGuffin or maguffin, is any object in a film that drives the story forward, like the secret papers or the stolen necklace. Alfred Hitchcock made the MacGuffin famous, and explained it this way in a 1939 lecture at Columbia University: “It is the mechanical element that usually crops up in any story. In crook stories it is always the necklace and in spy stories it is always the papers. We just try to be a little more original.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Hitchcock’s MacGuffins”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello, my name is Stephen Pounders. I’m from Waco, Texas.
Thanks for calling. What can we help you with?
There’s a word that I know. The word is MacGuffin.
I’ve used it before. I’m a theater professor, and I know what it means, but I’m not sure where it comes from.
Well, tell us what it means.
Well, from what I understand, a MacGuffin is an object.
It’s usually in a film. It’s a film term, and it’s a prop or an object that drives the story forward.
So, for example, the Maltese Falcon would be a classic example.
And the way I understand it, a MacGuffin can be anything.
The story doesn’t turn on what the thing is.
It just turns on the fact that everybody wants it or everybody needs it.
It’s sort of like unobtainium in Avatar.
Yes.
It could be a silver chalice or secret documents or, I don’t know, a magic peanut butter sandwich or whatever.
It’s just something that everybody wants.
So the whole plot turns on, you know, let’s get that one before everybody else does.
Exactly. I think it could even be an idea like the 39 steps for the nuclear secret in Torn Curtain.
Well, it sounds like maybe you’ve read that Alfred Hitchcock either coined or popularized it.
It does seem to come up a lot with Hitchcock films, yeah.
He talked about the fact that he had a screenwriter who told a story about MacGuffin.
It’s this really silly, shaggy dog tale about two guys on a train.
And one of them is traveling with an odd-looking package, and the other one says, what’s that?
And the guy says, well, it’s a MacGuffin.
It’s a tool that’s used to hunt lions in the Scottish Highlands.
And the person says, well, there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands.
And the other guy says, well, then it’s not a MacGuffin.
Story makes no sense whatsoever.
The anti-joke.
Yeah.
It’s just silly.
So it’s sort of a thing that isn’t a thing.
Hitchcock was using it as early as the 1930s.
Yeah.
He became known for it and was constantly asked about it for the next few decades as it came out in the press that he had this term.
So there is no Mr. McGuffin out there.
Well, there might be, but not related to this term as far as we know.
Yeah.
And I think there’s a term guffin that means sort of adult or simpleton or something, and maybe that’s a silly name derived from it, but we don’t really know that for sure.
Yeah, in a 1939 lecture that he gave at Columbia University, my alma mater, Hitchcock said that there’s a name in the studio.
We call it the MacGuffin.
It is the mechanical element that usually crops up in any story.
In crook stories, it is almost always the necklace.
And in spy stories, it is almost always the papers.
And I think that’s a very nice way of putting it.
Yeah.
Thanks for calling, Stephen.
Really appreciate it.
Thank you very much.
Have fun.
Take care now.
Bye-bye.
Bye.
MacGuffin.
Film business is just filled with this stuff.
I mean, we talk about the jargon of trades.
It’s funny.
People criticize the business jargon, but there are a lot of businesses that have lively jargon, and film business is one of them.
Yes, and it makes us hot and bothered.
So send your hot chat to words@waywordradio.org or call us on the phone, 877-929-9673.
