Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: MacGuffins

Episode Date: February 25, 2026

What’s a MacGuffin? We don’t know. No one knows. But it has to do with movies and that’s fun to talk about.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to No Grip on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here, too, sitting in for Dave, 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 MacGuffin? Yeah, I think I offered up a definition of my own recently, and I'm not even sure what I said. I think you went with the second definition that we're covering here. All right.

But there's, I mean, even though, so there's a couple 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 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. That wouldn't be the central premise? of the short stuff? I don't know, man. 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 look up anything about the Muguffin, they'll usually kind of point to the Maltese-Falcan film as one of the best examples. It was a novel in then later a movie

where Humphrey, Bogart played Sam Spade, and the McGuffin is the Maltese falcon. It's this 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 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 Mugathan 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 cannot 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 much of the 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 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 going to 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 Dark at the beginning, that little gold head statue that he gets,

if you'd 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 MacGuffin in that movie. They're usually introduced in Act 1, although George Lucas has come out and said that he thinks the actual Ark 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 referenced like the Maltese Falcon having the cure for cancer. If the point of getting the Ark of the Covenant was to open it up and,

um, like just end all of the ills of the world and then they did that at the end. Would that mean it's not the McGuffin then or a McGuff, a McGuffin? Um, 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. Yeah. That movie's 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. Hi, this is Joe Winterstein, host of the Spirit Daughter podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life.

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makes a little more sense to me. In the murder of Roger Acrode, the Agatha Christie book, Have you ever seen it? It's really good. No. It's essentially what Knives Out, the first one is based on. Oh, okay. But in there, the character, the main character, the titular character, Roger Akroyd, he is murdered, and he was murdered 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 Herculo-Roe's investigation to uncover who murdered Roger Ackroyd. So in that sense, that blackmail or letter is the McGuffin. How about that one? Yeah, I mean, it seems like a Mcuffin 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 Mcuffin is. It's that I can't understand why some things that are Mcuffin's are called. McGuffins and other things that aren't considered Mcuffins aren't Mcuffins. 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 R2D2 was a MacGuffin in Star Wars he said I think the audience should care and specifically like if the audience doesn't care as much about R2 as Luke does in finding him then like the emotional tilt will be off yeah for sure but Hitchcock was able to pull off what he was saying in that, say, like, the microfilm or whatever, you don't really care if the bad guys get it or Carrie Grant gets it. You want to make sure that Carrie Grant and, was it, Grace Kelly, who was 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 Bates 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. Yeah. Where Janet Lee, the reason she goes to the Bates Motel is because she's on the run after stealing 40 grand for her, from her employer. And that 40 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 lamb. 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 MacGuffin is. So I think I'll leave it to you, but it's the one-time Hitchcock tried to explain the origin of the McGuffin or what it is, I think.

Yeah, he credits a writer that he worked with name, a Scottish guy named Angus McPhail, and one of the theories is this, 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, a 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 MacGuffin. You 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. 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 in 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 weenies,

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 Pleasance as the president, and, you know, he's trapped on the prison island

of New York and Snake Pliskin 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 MacGuffin. Similarly, another John Carpenter movie that had a great MacGuffin was the thing with Wilford Brimley being the MacGuffin from my understanding. standing of mcuffins. Yeah, that's a great movie.

You said R2 is the McGuffin in Star Wars Episode 4. 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 muguffin. And that one is, I mean, I love Pulp Fiction, but that one definitely seems like,

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. I know. 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 50s 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 hit 54, 55, then you're safe?

Yeah, 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 on. 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 cinefiles,

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 Iheart Radio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.