29 January 2022

MacGuffins


  

MacGuffin, according to Wikipedia, is "an object, device, or event that is necessary to the plot and the motivation of the characters, but insignificant, unimportant, or irrevelant in itself."

I like that definition, and I like MacGuffins. I like them so much I used them as the basis for my story "Mayhem at the Mini-Mart," which appears in the current (January/February 2022) issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. The original name for this story, in fact, was "MacGuffins." And by the way, this is the only story, of the two dozen I've sold to AHMM, that involved a title change. Editor Linda Landrigan sent me an email in October asking if I'd mind changing it from "MacGuffins" to "Mayhem at the Mini-Mart" because they wanted to use it for the cover of the Jan/Feb issue and the other title could be more easily used in the cover art. I of course said that'd be fine with me, and it was--but MacGuffins are still the heart of the tale.


Here's a quick summary of the story. Two brothers in the deep south who run a web-design business and love movies are taking a one-day break from work to go fishing together. On their way to the lake they amuse themselves in the car with a game in which one of the two describes a MacGuffin and the other tries to name the movie that features it. When they stop at a filling-station/convenience-store to gas up and grab some snacks, they interrupt a robbery-in-progress by a man who, according to what they heard earlier on their car radio, has already robbed and murdered an attendant at another mini-mart nor far away. And, as it turns out, the movie guessing-game they've been playing is the way they save themselves, and save the day.

At 2300 words, it's a fairly short story--a lot shorter than most of those I've sold to AHMM--and the first half is almost entirely dialogue between the two brothers. That, and the movie theme, made it great fun to write. As for its sale to AH, I suspect it didn't hurt that the term "MacGuffins," although it originated with a film guy named Angus McPhail, was adopted by Alfred Hitchcock and became a common plot device in storytelling. 

With regard to the definition, Wikipedia also describes a MacGuffin as something that is revealed in the first act, then declines in importance, and might reappear at the end of the story. One of the things I like most about the technique is that a MacGuffin serves as a way to link the entire story together, and is sometimes so important to the characters that it drives the plot. Examples: the One Ring in Tolkien's trilogy, the magical suitcase in Fantastic Beasts, the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders.

Anyhow . . . to steal from the text of my story and to include a few other movies I also remember fondly, here's a list of some MacGuffins and the films that used them.


Letters of transit -- Casablanca

The body of a boy hit by a train -- Stand By Me

A giant emerald -- Romancing the Stone

Microfilm of secret government documents -- North by Northwest

A glowing briefcase -- Pulp Fiction

A tattooed map to Dry Land -- Waterworld

A clause from a secret peace treaty -- Foreign Correspondent

Rosebud -- Citizen Kane

A Persian rug -- The Big Lebowski

A WWII soldier whose brothers have all been killed in action -- Saving Private Ryan

A rabbit's foot -- Mission Impossible III

Secret plans for the Death Star -- Star Wars

A black statuette -- The Maltese Falcon

A harmonica -- Once Upon a Time in the West

A coded message in a piece of music -- The Lady Vanishes

Walley World -- National Lampoon's Vacation

An audiotape of a summit-meeting speech -- Escape from New York

A silver necklace with a blue heart -- Titanic

A necklace with a gold-and-red heart -- Vertigo

Radioactive uranium in wine bottles -- Notorious

A red stapler -- Office Space

A consignment of diamonds from a jewelry shop -- Reservoir Dogs

An empty Coke bottle -- The Gods Must Be Crazy

A boy who'll save the world in the far-distant future -- Terminator 2

A baseball bat carved from the wood of a tree -- The Natural

Plans for an aircraft engine -- The 39 Steps

The Holy Grail -- Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (among others)

Project Genesis -- Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

A pocket watch that plays chimes -- For a Few Dollars More

A child's doll stuffed with heroin -- Wait Until Dark


Do you agree with these? (MacGuffins can sometimes be vague.) Can you think of others? Have you ever used MacGuffins in your own fiction? There's a chance you probably have and didn't realize it--I know I've done that.

One last point: I've heard that the key part of the word MacGuffin is "guff," which means utter nonsense. And maybe that's true.

But it works.


36 comments:

  1. Love it! I've written a handful of flash fictions where a tall tale is spun by a club bore named "McGuffin." Can't wait for the story!

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    1. Thanks, Jeff. I love it that you used it as the name for a character.

      Hope you'll like the story.

      Delete
  2. Count me in as somebody who apparently used a McGuffin and didn't realize it. In my story "A Tale of Two Sisters," I have a tiara that multiple people are after.

    Interesting column, John.

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    1. That'll do it, Barb. I suspect that objects precious to the characters wind up used as MacGuffins more than things like people or places, although a lot of MacG's seem to be destinations, like Walley World or Dry Land.

      They do often make for a good, cohesive plot. Thanks for the thoughts!

      Delete
  3. A great list, John. I love McGuffins, too, but the closest I've ever come to using one is the stolen audio tape of a recording session in Blood on the Tracks, and that's enough of a clue that it may not really qualify.

    I really enjoyed your story, too, under whichever title.

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    1. Hey Steve. Aha, the old stolen audiotape. You make a good point about it also being a clue. I agree that MacGuffins usually aren't clues, and I wonder if in some cases they could be.

      Another interesting thing about your comment: MacGuffins are sometimes hard to identify. I've heard it said that the money Janet Leigh's character (Marian?) stole is the MacGuffin in Psycho, though I don't think that's a great example. After she gets killed in the shower fairly early in the movie, the stolen loot becomes meaningless. (BTW, I think most moviegoers took baths instead of showers for the rest of 1960, just as they avoided going to the beach in 1975.) Another questionable MacGuffin is the red stapler owned and treasured by the goofy employee in Office Space.

      And thanks for reading my story--glad you liked it!

      Delete
  4. I've used McGuffins in my story - the four roasters in "The Four Roasters" is my classic example. Drives the plot, but...
    And I love them. Love them. Great post!

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    1. Thanks, Eve! Sounds as if your MacGuffin also served as your story title. Why not?

      It's a fantastic plot device, one that started long before Hitchcock made the term well-known. (Maybe the Apple was the MacGuffin in Genesis (?).)

      Delete
  5. Replies
    1. Jim -- Sorry I misplaced my reply to your comment. It's below.

      Thanks so much for stopping in at SleuthSayers!

      Delete
  6. Great post, as always. How about the missing money in "It's a Wonderful Life."

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    1. Yep, the money Potter took does indeed drive the plot, and is certainly important to pretty much all the characters. (I've only seen that movie a hundred times, including a re-watch with the kiddos this past Christmas.)

      Thanks, Susan.

      Delete
  7. I am glad you define McGuffin correctly. I hate when people use it as a synonym for plot device. (e.g. a dying-words clue is NOT a McGuffin). One of my favorite McG's was in the TV series PRISON BREAK (spoiler alert). The good guys have managed to escape to Central America with their precious bundle of five million dollars. The bad guy who has been chasing them casually kicks it off a pier, because this ain't about money... BTW, I am reading MiniMart right now. Good stuff.

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    1. Rob, I haven't watched Prison Break, but I will. And yep, a bundle (or bag or case or trunkful) of money indeed makes a good MacGuffin. (Oh, and this'll interest you, as a longtime librarian: it seems there are two acceptable spellings for MacGuffin, one with the a and one without. Mysteries everywhere . . .)

      Sure hope you like my crazy story--you'll see, I think, how much fun this one was for a movie addict to write.

      Thanks for the note.

      Delete
  8. Like Barb, I've used McGuffins without realizing it. Thought they were called MacGuyvers, but that's a TV show. Isn't it? Good article.

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    1. Hey O'Neil -- They seem to show up in my writing too, when I look back at old stories. I guess I knew then what MacGuffins were, but I certainly wasn't consciously including them in stories. I sometimes do, now.

      I guess a MacGuffin that isn't really a MacGuffin could be a MacGyver. (If they provide a way to fix a problem.)

      Thanks for the comment!

      Delete
  9. Good one, Jim. Thanks! I'd forgotten all about that.

    I guess briefcases/suitcases/packages can be especially good MacG's because in some stories we the readers/viewers might not even know what's in there (as in Pulp Fiction).

    Take care!

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  10. Thank you John. I've never really understood what a MacGuffin is. If the following two examples are incorrect then I still don't.

    Inside Man starring Denzel Washington & Jodie Foster, although much of it takes place in a bank vault, the MacGuffin is not the money in the vault!

    In Idiocracy, the MacGuffin is the "Time Masheen".

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    1. Hi Elizabeth -- I've seen Inside Man (I think I've watched pretty much all DW's movies) but I can't remember the specifics. Sure enough, though, the money in most crime stories, whether it's stolen loot, payoffs, inheritances, treasure, or whatever, might or might not be a McG. It sort of depends on whether it's of great value to the character(s) but fairly unimportant in itself (or, as Rob said in his comment, if "it ain't about the money . . ."). I think one of my favorite MacGuffins is the empty glass Coke bottle dropped from a plane in The Gods Must Be Crazy. It sets the plot in motion, gets mentioned occasionally later, and--since the goal is its delivery by the protagonist to "throw it off the edge of the world"), also shows up again at the end of the story/journey.

      As for Idiocracy, I LOVE THAT MOVIE. Almost nobody knows about it! And I guess the time machine could be a MacGuffin, though it probably wouldn't have occurred to me. It was certainly one of the constants of the story, throughout.

      Thanks for stopping in!

      Delete
  11. I don't think anyone has mentioned Hitchcock's story about where the McGuffin's name came from. An old joke. And I love the bare minimalism of the McGuffin in NORTH BY NORTHWEST. "[The villain] is an exporter." "What does he export?" "Secrets." In my novel SUCH A KILLING CRIME a folksinger is killed and the only recording of his original songs vanishes...

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    1. Rob, I'm not sure I've heard that story. Is it the one with the two train passengers, and one asks the other what's in a package and he says, "Oh, that's a MacGuffin" (or something like that)?

      The late screenwriter William Goldman had a lot to say, in one of his nonfiction books, about North by Northwest and Hitchcock's brilliance, there. That movie's a gem.

      Delete
  12. Excellent article and list, John. I'd add the diamonds in one of my favorites, A Fish Called Wanda. Might also add the two lions from The Ghost and the Darkness.

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    1. Thank you, Dan. I think EVERYBODY loved A Fish Called Wanda, and yep, I guess the diamonds are the MacGuffin there. As for the Tsavo lions and Hitch's definition of MacGuffins, they were certainly the goal (of the two hunters) and interesting to them and all the other characters, and appeared throughout the tale, but they weren't otherwise insignificant. Who knows? As I said, this whole MacG thing can be vague.

      The thing I remember most about The G and the D is that the story was based on real-life events. Those two lions ate dozens of people before being killed. The kid in me still loves any kind of adventure story, and this one was TRUE.

      Thanks so much for stopping in at SS!

      Delete
    2. The Ghost and the Darkness was terrifying! We watched it with our stuffed warthog (toy, not taxidermy)—warthogs are a prey animal for lions—and it kept hiding its eyes under the pillow. G&D is also probably the only movie in which Michael Douglas got eaten.

      Delete
    3. Liz, I re-watched G&D a few months ago, and liked it as much as the first time. I'd forgotten, though, that many of the victims of the two man-eaters were workers at a bridge-building site. Talk about job-related stress . . .

      As stories go, it's a great example of suspense. You could never relax knowing that the two lions might show up at any second. Douglas was great in the movie, and Kilmer too. I have it (and A Fish Called Wanda too) in my ridiculously huge DVD collection, so I might watch it yet again soon!

      Delete
  13. I alwways think of "The Bird" in The Maltese Falcon as the quintessential McGuffin. There are McGuffins in several of my Mendoza Family Saga stories, though I've never thought about them that way. It's jewelry in "Roxelana's Ring" and "The Cost of Something Priceless" (out soon in Jewish Noir II) and an alleged aphrodisiac made of alleged powdered unicorn horn in "A Unicorn in the Harem." As for other great movies, there was a microchip in The Saint with Val Kilmer as a master of disguises in the title role.

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    1. Liz -- I would bet a powdered unicorn horn is a MacGuffin that hasn't been used anywhere else in the history of literature. And I'd forgotten all about the Saint--I need to watch that again.

      Delete
  14. McGuffins make for top notch stories. Everyone gets to jostle for the same thing but from different motivations and perceptions. Thanks for talking them up.

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    1. Bob, I think this MacG subject is one that's interesting to all writers. As others have said, I've used it in several older stories before I even realized the technique had a name.

      Thanks for the thoughts!

      Delete
  15. Yes, John, Hitchcock used to tell the story of "two train passengers, and one asks the other what's in a package and he says, 'Oh, that's a MacGuffin."

    For those unfamiliar with it, here's how the story continues:

    Passenger 1: "A McGuffin, is it? Well, what's it for?"

    Passenger 2: "It's for shooting elephants in the north of Scotland."

    Passenger 1: "Elephants in the north of Scotland? But there aren't any elephants in the north of Scotland!"

    Passenger 2: "Is that so? Then I suppose it isn't a McGuffin...."

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    1. Josh, I always learn something when I talk to you!

      Delete
  16. In my latest thriller that I just finished and will be out this year ONE LAST BETRAYAL, I use a flash drive that supposedly has incriminating evidence that will bring down a Boston mob. Everyone chases it, but it's not the evidence. People die because of it. I'm a film noir buff so I see McGuffins everywhere. Thanks for this article, John, and the list of McGuffins in movies. And thanks to Josh for the story of "two train passengers." Hilarious! I haven't thought of Idiocracy in ages! Thanks, Elizabeth, for the reminder.

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    1. Valerie -- Thanks for these thoughts. The list of MacGuffins was fun to put together.

      Congratulations on the new novel. Best of luck with it and all your writing endeavors!

      Delete
  17. I enjoyed the article, John and have a better understanding of MacGuffins. I've never willingly written a story with a MacGuffin, but I'm sure I've used them for motivation. A lot of fiction is about characters wanting something and the obstacles they have to overcome. I guess when the journey to desired goal overtakes the plot (or is replaced by something more important) then the object becomes a MacGuffin.

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    1. Travis, I'm sure you and I and almost all writers wind up using MacG's even if we're aren't conscious of it at the time. I've rarely planned to use one, though I think I've gotten better at recognizing them, in my stories AND those of others.

      Thanks as always!

      Delete
  18. John,
    Great article, and fascinating discussion. I've been intrigued with MacGuffins since I first heard of them when I watched the movie The Double McGuffin back in the day. Now I'll have to re-watch the movies discussed here and see how the MacGuffins are used, starting with North By Northwest, which is one of my favorites.

    ReplyDelete

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