![]() Hitchcock's view of a MacGuffin was an object around which the plot revolves but about which the audience does not care. Hitchcock also said, "The MacGuffin is the thing that the spies are after, but the audience doesn't care." George Lucas He also related this anecdote in a television interview for Richard Schickel's documentary The Men Who Made the Movies, and in an interview with Dick Cavett. In a 1966 interview with François Truffaut, Hitchcock explained the term using the same story. 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. ![]() It might be a Scottish name, taken from a story about two men on a train. Hitchcock explained the term MacGuffin in a 1939 lecture at Columbia University in New York City: ![]() Alfred Hitchcock ĭirector and producer Alfred Hitchcock popularized the term MacGuffin and the technique with his 1935 film The 39 Steps, in which the MacGuffin is some otherwise incidental military secrets. It has been posited that "'guff', as a word for anything trivial or worthless, may lie at the root". The name MacGuffin was coined by British screenwriter Angus MacPhail. In the 1930 detective novel The Maltese Falcon, a small statuette provides both the book's title and its motive for intrigue. The World War I-era actress Pearl White used the term "weenie" to identify whatever object (a roll of film, a rare coin, expensive diamonds, etc.) impelled the heroes and villains to pursue each other through the convoluted plots of The Perils of Pauline and the other silent film serials in which she starred. The "Maltese Falcon" statuette from the film of the same name The Holy Grail is the desired object that is essential to initiate and advance the plot, but the final disposition of the Grail is never revealed, suggesting that the object is not of significance in itself. The Holy Grail of Arthurian legend has been cited as an early example of a MacGuffin. The use of a MacGuffin as a plot device predates the name MacGuffin. Multiple MacGuffins are sometimes derisively identified as plot coupons. It can reappear at the climax of the story but may actually be forgotten by the end of the story. Usually, the MacGuffin is revealed in the first act, and thereafter declines in importance. The MacGuffin technique is common in films, especially thrillers. The term was originated by Angus MacPhail for film, adopted by Alfred Hitchcock, and later extended to a similar device in other fiction. In fiction, a MacGuffin (sometimes McGuffin) is an object, device, or event that is necessary to the plot and the motivation of the characters, but insignificant, unimportant, or irrelevant in itself.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |