The Rest Is Entertainment - Buffy, Michael Sheen & MacGuffins

Episode Date: March 26, 2026

Why was the Buffy reboot cancelled, and who’s to blame? What does the media storm around Zendaya and Tom Holland’s secret nuptials tell us about fame in 2026? What is a 'MacGuffin', and why do legendary filmmakers love them? Richard Osman and Marina Hyde answer your questions about TV remakes, celebrity weddings, screenwriting techniques and more. The Rest is Entertainment is brought to you by Octopus Energy, Britain's most awarded energy supplier. Join The Rest Is Entertainment Club: Unlock the full experience of the show – with exclusive bonus content, ad-free listening, early access to Q&A episodes, access to our newsletter archive, discounted book prices with our partners at Coles Books, early ticket access to live events, and access to our chat community. Sign up directly at therestisentertainment.com For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com Video Editor: Max Archer Assistant Producer: Imee Marriott Senior Producer: Joey McCarthy Social Producer: Bex Tyrrell Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit medcan.com slash moments to get started. At Desjardin, we speak business. We speak equipment modernization. We're fluent in data digitization and expansion into foreign markets. And we can talk all day about streamlining manufacturing processes. Because at Desjardin business, we speak the same language you do. Business. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian.

entrepreneurs who already count on us and contact Desjardin today. We'd love to talk business. Hello and welcome to this episode of the Resters Entertainment Questions and Answers edition. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osmond. Hello Marina. Hello Richard. How are you? Yeah, I'm not too bad at all. Can I start with any other business? Please. Please. Our Oscars chat and my main contribution was working out if more people from Casualty had been nominated for an Oscar than from the Bill. Stuart Ian Burns has written in and said, thank you so much for crunching the numbers. On theville and Casualty's Oscar alumni.

I love crunch. I really genuinely love crunching numbers. But I love crunching numbers. Stuart has crunched the numbers as own. Can I point you in the direction of another BBC stalwart, Doctor Who, which has 15 acting nominations. Oh my gosh. Andrew Garfield, Carrie Mulligan, Daniel Kaluya, again, who has been in all three of these. The centre of our van. He is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Eric Roberts. I was thinking, and of course he was. He was nominated for runaway train, wasn't he? Way back when, best supporting actor. Felicity Jones, Ian McAllen, Amelda Staunton, Jim Broadbent, John Cleese, John Hurt, Olivia Coleman, Pauline Collins, Richard E. Grant, Sophie Ocernado and Mayor Winningham, all nominated for Oscars. I will say this, Stuart Ian Burns, if I may call you,

that. Some of those people were in Doctor Who after they were Oscar nominated because, you know, Doctor Who was a very, very big franchise and nothing against casualty in the bill, but it's harder for them to get Oscar nominated actors in them. So absolutely it takes the crown, but I think has a little asterisk next to that crown. Agreed. I think they have to be, it has to be the stepping stone. Yes. But anyway, I don't want to denigrate the shows at all, but it has to be an early part of the CV. Because it's about the skid of a casting director, which is spotting. It's like if you go back and watch Prime Suspect, and every kind of minor character,

you're like, oh my God. Yeah, I know. Like I was watching one the other day. There's a 14-year-old Danny Dyer in it. Just every time it's someone who you go, like a young Peter Capaldies, stuff like that. So it's about the skid of the casting director. But, Stuart, thank you for crunching numbers as well and keeping me company. And anyone out there, whoever wants to crunch any numbers,

and send me any sort of list. I will, honestly, that is grist to my mill. Shall we start with a question about Buffy? There's so many questions about Buffy, yes. So Jen is asking this. I saw that Hulu has decided not to take up the highly anticipated Buffy reboot. It seems a strange decision given the appetite from the fandom and with both Sarah Michelle Geller and Chloe Jow involved.

How did they arrive at this decision? It is genuinely remarkable this because it got so far. This is the beloved series starring Sarah. Michelle Geller, which ran for seven seasons between, I think, 97 and 2003. That was when, that would have been two seasons these days. But anyway, created by Josh Whedon, who is now in the League of Semi-Cancel gentlemen, so he is no longer part of this. But it was going to be at Hulu, Disney Plus, for our purposes.

It was called Buffy New Sunnydale. They had, you know, a sort of great recipe in lots of ways. The showrunners were the sisters, Nora and Lila Zuckerman, who are brilliant, who are the showrunners on Pokerface, who've also worked on lots of other sort of big TV things like Agents of Shield and stuff like that. The pilot was directed by Chloe Jad. The director of Hamnit and Oscar winner and all of this. Nomadland and all these things.

Yeah. And Sarah Michelle Geller was heavily involved. Yeah, she's executive producing. She didn't appear, she appeared a tiny amount actually in the pilot as short, which to me makes sense. Like she's in right at the very end and maybe she just has one line. I think that's cool. Yeah.

And it's the next generation, but she is showing that it's okay. Okay. Yeah. So it felt like it has the, yeah, exactly, the blessing and the bloodline, if you can say that in a vampire show. So Sarah and Michelle Geller's on board. You've got an Oscar winning director. You've got two great showrunners. Okay.

And it's beloved. It's a beloved piece of IP. You would think it was the biggest shoe in in Hollywood history. Yeah. They've pulled the plug on it remarkably late and it's absolutely shocking to everyone involved in it. What they have sort of leaked that the problem is, is that they said it was small in scope. It's more suited to network TV. You know, they're really, I mean, they're really...

I mean, they sort of said it's bad. Yeah, they said it's bad. So, Ray, you hear that. I think what they might mean is, you know, it's costing us a fortune. There's only going to be a few episodes of it. And with these particular heavyweights involved, it took them too long to say no. But I thought I would lay out, because I think it's quite interesting if you don't know this, how something gets to even a pilot being made.

And so what are the stages that it had to get through to the get to this point, which is, and it might, you know, throw into even sharper relief. how late this is to cancel, okay? I don't know exactly how they did this one, but this would be a typical pathway. So you shop a pilot or a commission. You say, I've got an idea. But in this case, it's this beloved IP related.

So they will have had millions of people for a long, long time saying, pitching, saying, I'm interested, even like big names that you've heard of, coming to them, why now, modern takes, etc., etc. Yeah, so if it's not Buffy, and you're someone with a name and with an agent, you have your idea, you will do a deck on that idea of what it might be,

you will then shop that round various of the streamers. And they say, yes or no. In this particular instance, you have got some real heavy weights. It's almost like they are desperate to have the meeting with you rather than the other word. So many people have said to them, I have a really great Buffy pitch if you're ever interested at the, you know, at the Oscar. Usually you are trying to sell to a streamer with something like Buffy and with the people involved, the streamers trying to sell to you, which is, yes, we want this with us.

What can we do for you? Yeah. Anyway, they got a pilot script and Nora and Lila Zuckerman wrote it and Chloe Jow was on board, and they all developed it together. At this stage, when you have a pilot script, there will be masses, masses of towing and froing and redrafts. There will be many redrafts of the pilot script. You know, why now?

What's new about this? Why should we do that, you know, what's the kind of... What's Hulu about it? Yeah. Exactly. All of that stuff. Remind me of what Hulu is again. Yeah.

Basically, yeah, exactly. Because I remember last week you said it was this and now you seem to have changed your mind. But anyway, okay, of course we're going to change it. I mean, I've literally just won an Oscar, but of course. If they go for it and they say they're going to make a pilot, then it's all the way back to the drawing board again because then they will have had a writer's room with lots and lots of writers. Then you would have had world building. You would have said, who are actually the characters?

Do we like what we've done with the script? Maybe not. Then you would map out the season. Everybody's arcs, the whole thing, the how it all ends, right? That's the important thing is if you are doing a, pilot almost always alongside a pilot you would also be doing a series Bible, which is, listen, anyone, not anyone can make an amazing pilot, but you can make an amazing storyline across an hour. You have to then go, oh, by the way, hit here in the next seven, eight, 12 hours, this is the

arc. Yeah, and it ends here. And by the way, of course you're going to get another six seasons out of us. And those, those Bibles are incredibly detailed. And you'll often spend much more time on the Bible than you would on the actual script. Absolutely. And so they will have done that. then they will have said, okay, we're ordering the pilot.

So they will shoot the pilot. And then maybe they will say, okay, in conjunction with that, we'd like to do a script order, not an episode order for the rest of the season. So then all the scripts for the rest of the season will be worked out or rough, or they'll be at a certain draft stage. And you'll have to go back to the writer's room for all of that. If, by the way, this sounds like a pain in the ass, you are absolutely right. God, it takes a long time.

Television is like the, it's so awful. And by the way, in America, with American money, at this point, millions has already been spent on this thing. And it will have been already on this buffy thing. And more to the point, an awful lot of opinions have been put in. So many opinions. Now, Variety have got the draft of the shooting script. So what was actually shot? No one has actually seen the pilot, apart from the people who have seen it, it hasn't leaked.

And they did it last summer. Hulu sources were saying things like it's unsavageable, it's undershot, there's no exposition, there's no coverage. It's underdirected. I mean, this is a mega drive-by on Chloe Zhao. Buffy's just at the end. Anyway, they did a rewrite even after that saying, okay, we could reshoot. There could be more actual original Buffy in it of Sarah Michelle Geller.

And there's an acknowledgement always with, they'd made it quite young that the fandom has aged now. So perhaps you'd have something a bit more for the age group of the fandom. Sarah Michelle Geller has come out completely swinging and said, there's an executive at Hulu, who wasn't even familiar with the original, said he'd never watched it all the way through, didn't even care. She's named him or confirmed that it's him.

I called Craig Irwitch, right? I mean, he'll be having some death threats against him right now, let me tell you. But you know the thing with Craig Irwich, right? Yeah. Who was at Hulu? And so this is made by 20th century television. They pitched to Hulu. Craig Irwich says, do you know what? I'm not a Buffy fan.

This is not for me. By the way, it happens sometimes. The exec is not the right person. What you do then is you go, well, look, it's still Buffy. So we come back as 20th century television. we take this elsewhere. However, Craig O,

which has just left Hulu and has a new job as the head of 20th century television. So the guy who just said no to it is now in charge of should we take this elsewhere? Yeah. That's bad timing.

It's really bad timing and it's really hard and it's got so, I mean, as I say, it's got so messy. It's interesting now because you've always had this in science fiction

but you've got 90s IP is absolutely massive because we live in a reboot world. And so you've got lots of people who were fans of the original thing when they were young and teenagers, like, I don't know,

Phoebe Wallerbridge doing Tomb Raider or Chloe Jowd doing this. And you've always had this in science fiction. You know, lots of Star Trek people came through and lots of, you know, JJ Abrams did the first reboots of Star Wars. So it's difficult. You have got people who are huge names who are suddenly like, oh, well, I would, you know, I want to do Buffy. Well, if you can imagine the amount of projects that Chloe Jow was offered after winning the Oscar.

I mean, the world would have been her oyster and she's just done hamlet. So, you know, everyone wants her to do stuff. Well, maybe she should, I mean, it's difficult. No, the thing I want to do, because it's really meaningful to me, the thing I want to do is Buffy. Well, she wanted to do a Marvel film as well, and she had an absolute nightmare on that. I wonder whether these properties are totally suited to these kinds of directors. But anyhow, it's quite difficult to see what will happen now because she was obviously very, in terms of like, are we going to get another one? It's hard to see how, because Sarah Michelle Gadda was so aligned with this and was so part of it all.

She might be persuaded if you're really clever to go with somebody else, but that is a big talent management job after this now. I mean, this is such a big blow-up. It's quite difficulty. And I think you do need her involved. You're dealing also with very, very difficult fandoms, and they know that from the start. They don't want to put something out, but we'll enrage the fandom. It really helps if Sarah and Michelle Galleries involved. In fact, you definitely need it because it's an obsessive fandom.

But I don't know. I think this is a big blowout, and it should never have got as far as it has. And obviously they've annoyed lots of great talent. And Suckerman's, you know, lots of them. And one of the things about it is, you know, the new economics of television and things do have to get cheaper and cheaper. And they say that the budget for this pilot was about 17 million. And, you know, the per hour cost of the series would not be far off that as well. And 10, 15, 20 years ago, you could have got away with it.

You can't get away with it now. I mean, now you can get away with 9 million, which still is absurd. But 17 million was a lot. and yeah, you get it. Maybe they'd lift it to the last minute because there were so many powerful people involved and it felt like such a slam dunk. I think it's hard.

They were like, well, surely we can't say no and how do we say no? Who's going to say no to Chloe? Who's going to tell Sarah? And so maybe they sort of chickened out of saying no to it until the very, very last minute. I think they did like two days before the Oscars

and they said, Paul Chloe Zhao, she's just had this news just before the Oscars. You're like, she's all right, she's the Oscars. Yeah. She don't mind. I think it'll be one of those ones that goes on the back burner for a long time now unless they manage to do an unbelievable salvage job with Sarah Michelle Geller, which...

They'll make it one day. I think lots of the publicity around also shows that people really want this reboot to happen. So, you know, they'll be a way. Craig Irwich just needs to take Sarah Michelle get her to lunch. Just some de tauntes needed. Well, anyway, that buffy stuff is interesting, so we'll be carrying on to see how that story develops. But Richard, I have a question for you. From J.P. Jones, he says, Hello Both. I read that the original film of Daphne DiMario's Rebecca was so popular in Spain that the particular cardigans worn by the unnamed heroine are still called Rebecca's there today. Are there other examples where Hollywood or British films left that kind of mark

on everyday life or language in another country? Thank you, J.P. I had not heard that, but yeah, I've looked into it. And that, yeah, cardigans in Spain are called Rebecca's. And it is absolutely because of that. Films absolutely leave their mark culturally all the time we talked before about, you know, the mafia just talk like everyone talks like in Godfather. But my favorite, but my favorite favorite ones, I think, are... So, paparazzi, you know, we know paparazzi very, very well, and that comes from a character in the Dolce Vita, who was a

press photographer and his name was Paparazzo. And so we call them the paparazzi, and it literally just comes from that one character in that one film. And that's a lovely one. I think bucket list, which comes from the film, the bucket list, the bucket list was not named after the fact that everyone had bucket lists. It was just called a bucket list, and now we call

those things a bucket list. This is the Morgan Freeman Jack Nicholson movie from 2007. But my favorite one, very, very well known now, but it comes from a 1944 film. It's about a man who psychologically drives his wife insane, lies to her, Ben's reality, so she has a nervous breakdown. And that film is called Gaslight. That's the best one of all, isn't it?

Strangely, sort of fallen completely out of use, and then in this political era, became a massive word that's used almost all the time. Imagine if people now went to look that up and it didn't exist. Oh man, they'd be furious with me. The whole thing based on a Patrick Hamilton play, but the movie is where that term came into being. So paparazzi bucket list and gaslight would be my three favourites,

but I'm going to add Rebecca to that as well. That's a great fact, isn't it? Rebecca's a cardigans. That is fascinating. Shall we now go to a break? I would love to. Afterwards, I think we've got a question about House of Games. We have.

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at westjet.com slash 30 years. Welcome back, everybody. Marina, a question from Sophie. Sophie says, Dermois are reporting that Zendaya and Tom Holland have tied the knot in secret without any photos leaking. How is that even possible with such high-profile names? Ah, well, yeah, I think they definitely have got married. That's nice.

Yeah, it's lovely. Yeah. It's lovely. And it's sort of been confirmed by, hilariously, by Zen, the only person who actually opened his big mouth is Lor Roach, who is Zendaya's stylist, and he accidentally confirmed it all. Having said that, I mean, she looks incredible at all times. She simply can't lose him over this. He's just too good. He's too good. He's got too much in the bank. But you can keep these things small and secretive,

and many have. Brad and Angelina did it. Beyonce and Jay-Z, Margot, Robbie and Tom Ackley, Rachel Vise, Daniel Craig. I mean, lots of people do it. You can either do it like you're doing it at home or on your vineyard that you're now fighting about in the divorce, in the case of Bradson. Angelina or you can do it, you know, in an apartment. The English countryside is quite a popular one. You know, Cumberbatch did that. But you take people's phones, you do NDAs, or you just, I would have thought they kept it very small, to be perfectly honest.

But it's quite interesting. When I think of all of these things, I do think that there is a big divide opening up because we live in an influencer culture and we live in a, you know, a culture where there's a new, whole new, massive, massive, massive, middle class of so-called celebrity who are really influencers, who are always on, and they are always sharing everything about their lives. And it's almost as if stars have worked out that the one thing that they have, the clever ones, even someone like Timothy Salome, who, if you're telling me that that guy isn't so online, I can't believe it. That guy is extremely online.

And yeah, he managed to keep his relationship with Kylie Jenner effectively secret for about two years. So it's interesting, there is a divide opening up between people like Zendaya and Tom Holland and Timothy Shalame and people like that, who still think that, okay, the one thing I can have, because I simply can't be always on in the same way because it just, you know, denies my work of all value, is that I can have an air of mystery and I can be secretive and the not knowing can be the always on part. And it's quite interesting. And I definitely see that we're opening up because you're dealing with otherwise, just this entire trying to put blue water between yourself and people who are just a completely different kind of celebrity. So I find it quite interesting that

people are still being secretive and trying to say that secrecy and privacy is a prestige quality. Well, we spoke the other day, didn't we, when we talk about Harry and Megan, about how actually they don't have any actual transferable skills. What they're sending is themselves. Whereas if you're Tom Holland and Zendaya, you don't need to sell who you are because you can just go and do a film to make your money. And so most people, if they got married, who are implements, they're like, oh my God, this is one of the big ones for us. we absolutely have to just hammer this and we have to make as much money as we possibly can whereas those two literally they can just go and do another movie so they can keep that that privacy

yeah and they want and they want to because they realize it's a even it's a the whole class of them think it's a usp in a world of sort of vanishing ideas of stardom this is something that it remains something the not knowing is the prestige quality but also it's not even that is it psychologically it's important to them to have something that is just them when they're so in the public eye to have something where they just go, no, this is just us. And, you know, the normality of that must be, must be lovely. Oh, good for them.

Congrats to Tendaya and Tom Holland. Yeah. Big fans of both. Huge fan of the rest of history. You love it. We've got so many variations of this question that can I just ask it coming from me as well. Is Richard Osmond's House of Games now going to be called Michael Sheen's House of Games? Well, yes, because so we haven't spoken.

about it at all, have we, since that announcement was made, I think it took some people by surprise. Coming at you right out of left field. Coming out of left field. And it's sort of left field, but then at the same time, you kind of get it, because Michael has always done quizzes. You know, he's always done that. And he's doing such an incredible amount of work with the National Theatre of Wales now and really launching that. So, you know, he's having a year of theatre and, you know, giving back to his community. So I imagine had a little bit of time where he could do something interesting and something that's close to his heart and this is it. And he's so personable, likes quizzing, likes human beings,

had a bit of free time. So it sort of makes a lot of sense. You know the thing that you, the minute you told me this, literally the first thing I thought was, oh my God, please can he do the Christmas week and each day be, do it as an impression? Because obviously he is peerless. Tarant on Monday. Tarant on Monday, because he obviously played in quiz. Clarkson on Tuesday. please can he do that. I really hope that he does that. It would be such fun. Yes, it is. So they

haven't started filming yet. So what's it going to be called? I lobbied, you know, for a long time that it should be called Michael Sheen's Richard Osmond's House of Games or Richard Osmond's House of Games, but it's a deal breaker. Yeah, but they won't have it. So yeah, we'll be Michael Sheen's House of Games and his his, you know, avatar will be on all of those prizes. People say, what's happening with all the old prizes? And we tend not to over order with the prizes. Unlike Megan's Jam, which we're talking about on Tuesday, you don't have 10 million surplus suitcases. Yeah, we don't.

I'm afraid. There are very few left. But yeah, one of the things they're currently doing is producing prices with his face-on. So what we call Michael Sheen's House of Games. I'm going to go up and do one final week and do, funnily enough, in the same way that it's important to have Sarah and Michelle Geller and the Buffy reboot. I think we all want everyone to know how delighted we are that Michael's doing it And there's a continuation.

So we'll do, you know, he's not going to be a contestant with me or anything, but we'll do a little handover little kind of something like because I want to welcome him as well because he's got the best team in telly there and he'll have an absolute ball. So yeah, I'm going to do one final week and then he's going to do a hundred of them. So that will be the series that comes on in the autumn. And the other thing people say, would you, would you go on? And I wouldn't straight away is the truth. I think that's too meta.

And also you have to let someone get their feet under the, the table. But one day I'd love to. That's a come and get me, but a few years, like a Christmas week or something like that. Um, yeah, I would, because, you know, I play along with that show all the time. I never, I never know the answer. So I, I, you know, I do get to play a lot, but I'm never allowed to buzz in. So yeah, it'd be nice to watch it and buzz in. I'd love to see you at that thing when that was, yes, that would be very, very, very kind and, and, and, but then when he's announced, everyone was like, listen, Richard, we will still miss you. We will still miss you, but That's not bad.

You think, okay, that's nice. But listen, I've wished him such luck. It's such a, I've messaged him the other day. I said it's such a fun show to do and such a lovely gang. You'll have an absolute bull. And I think it's a great show for him and he's a great host for it. That's Michael Sheen's, Richard Osmond's House of Games. Here's a question.

I think both of us will have a view on this. Nerius Frye asked. What a great name. I know. It's really good, isn't it? Narayas Frye. Either way, it's great. She or he says, The manga One Piece celebrated 600 million copies being sold by having its author write down the identity of the One Piece, which is the series of Mysterious McGuffin, put in a chest and then sent the chest to the bottom of the ocean.

Can I get your top three favourite film and TV Macuffins? Shall we start by explaining what MacGuffins are for people who don't know? Yes. Now, this is a term coined by Hitchcock, and it's an object or a person or a secret. that drives the plot because all the characters are motivated to pursue it in some way. But it doesn't actually, it's not actually that important to the overall narrative. It was actually coined by one of his screenwriters, Angus McPhail, who did Spellbound and did Whiskey Gador and stuff like that. Hitchcock always said that.

No one knows where the phrase comes from other than sort of like a watcher-callet, an Ujim a thingy, like a Macuffin. It's like a little bit of business. Yeah, he said it's the thing that the characters on screen worry about, but the audience doesn't care about. I always find this a really used to analogy for things in real life when you think, oh, we're not actually arguing about this.

This is about something completely different. This is just a sort of plot device. But George Lucas later changed it and he said, oh, I think it's as important to the audience as to the characters. But I think that's very much a kind of filmmaker he is. But classical versions would be the golden fleece, the Holy Grail, just the thing that starts the quest.

And actually, you sort of forget about what that might be. And it's actually when you really start, because I saw this question, thinking quite hard about it. And it's quite hard sometimes to go, no, hold on it, is that a Macuffin? Because I think that... Yes, well, the Lucas definition is different, as you can see. And, you know, some people will say that the one ring in Lord of the Rings or something.

But the Maltese Falkan would be a very good example. So the Maltese Falken would be not going to put it on my... I'll put it in my... I'll put it in... I love it. If we're both in top threes, it's going to be impossible. We've just got to talk around this. So the Maltese Falkin is something that's sent by the Knights Templar of Maltor to the King of Spain,

pirates steal it. Everyone wants it back and one of the greatest films ever is written. But the thing itself is, it's sort of meaningless. It's just the prompt for the action. That's a really classic one. I have to say that another film, which is kind of, lots of these films, people don't watch them so much, but Spanish Prisoner, David Mamet's Spanish Prisoner, is so good.

And if you haven't ever seen it, watch it because you'll absolutely love it. It's got something called The Process in that, which is they're all trying to get their hands on The Process. I wouldn't put those in my top three. I would say three, Rosebud, the dying word and Siddson K, which ends up being the framing device, that is deliberately something that they just thought we have to find a framing device for this, so it's whatever. Number two, I would put the Ark of the Covenant from Raiders of the Lost. These are all from films, by the way, I watch on repeat.

So the Ark, I think, is okay, because it is something. Whereas the Holy Grail and I quite knows what the Holy Grail is. Yes, I agree. But the Ark is sort of, and it's difficult. I won't turn this over and over in my mind, because it is kind of, kind of, kind of like, okay, it's really, really important, but also we don't really know what, no one particularly knows who it is. It's not like, you know, the Turin Shrad or something that's even more obvious. And also the ability to, you know, to put it into that great warehouse in

that amazing iconic shot right at the end where it's like, obviously it doesn't really, but equally I'm, you're thinking, and that warehouse, my God, what else is in there? So it does seem like it's important. Before we get to number one, are you aware of the concept of plot coupons? Yeah. Which is a sci-fi writer called Nick Lowe came up with it. And it, and it's a version of a McGuffin, but that is split into lots. So the hawkrucks is sort of, it's a series of plot coupons. You have to collect all of them. Yeah.

And when you add them together, they become a MacGuffin. The Infinity Stones and, yeah, all of this sort of stuff. Yes, I agree. But number one, as I say, I've just chosen them for movies I've watched on repeat, is the rug, the dude's rug in the Big Lobowski, which is genuinely an object of no value, except it really tied the room together. I end up using that line a huge amount just in normal life. It really tied the room together.

They worked so well, particularly in noir Mcuffins, because they've got to make all these people. And obviously, the multis forklund is a real example of that. What are we all chasing after? Yeah, what are we all? Comedy noir, the Big Labaski, one of my favorite movies of all time. So, yeah, the dude's rug in the Big Lavaski, I'm going to put it number one. How about you?

Well, I'll just mention a couple of Hitchcock ones because he did popularize the term. So the military secrets in the 39 steps, we never know what they are. We forget, it sort of doesn't matter because we're watching. a different movie. Equally, you know, if you think about psycho, you say, okay, what's psycho about? Nobody says it's about the fact that Marion Crane steals $40,000. You know, and that's the Mcuffin of that movie. And even at the end of that movie, it's sort of, you know, it's buried in a bog and

I suppose we could dig it up. But by then, it doesn't matter because we watched this extraordinary film that was about something else entirely. But the McGuffin there is $40,000. I say, is it my number one? The one that is most obviously a MacGuffin and made by a filmmaker who knows this film history is the suitcase in Pulp Fiction. Yeah. Where all the way through, they open the suitcase and it's glowing gold, but you never know what it is.

You never know what's in it. But the entirety of that film, you know, despite how well it's put together and the kind of the way that it's told, is based around that one suitcase, which we have no idea at any point what it is. So that I'm going to put as my number one. I love, when I'm writing, I love a Macuffin. I was trying to think about, when I was trying to define what a Mcuffin is, it is quite hard because it sort of is something that we don't care about or has no intrinsic worth, but at the same time, the characters do. Yeah.

You know a MacGuffin when you see one. And in The Last Devil to Die, which is the fourth Thursday Murder Club book, I have a box full of heroin, which is an absolute 100% classic MacGuffin that I was very, very proud of for the reasons that people who've read that. book will know, but it's, you know, screenwriters, writers love a mcuffin, just this thing that's that everyone goes, I must have that. Yeah. I must have that thing. It's like, you know, characters that are off stage that, you know, we never meet. You know, there's all these, those are kind of character mcuffins. Some people say that, um, private Ryan and saving private

Ryan were kept as a mcuffin. I don't know so much. It's disrespectful. I read something saying that, can I always a sozee as a mcuffin? I don't agree with that. No, that's not, that's a misunderstanding of it. That's something completely different. This is just one for people at home because I was thinking about it. The Lavender Hill Mob. Oh. The golden Eiffel Towers. Are they a MacGuffin?

In the end, I decided they weren't a MacGuffin. No, I think I would go with, I agree with you. Maybe the gold when it's gold is a MacGuffin. Go and watch some of these if you haven't seen them because all of these is such great. There's a lot of, there's a few obscure, more, more, more, have become more obscure movies now. Yeah. But watch them because they're all brilliant.

Thank you so much for that question. also if you have not come across the term, McGuffin before, it's a really lovely term. Speaking of movies that probably have McGuffins in, but have a load of other stuff, we are doing a special for a bonus for our members about mockbusters. Which is this huge sort of sub-industry.

You used to call them B-movies of films that directly copy big blockbuster films. Armage, Richard. Amage. And our pretty big business. There's some amazing stories in it. So, Restorsentestainment.com, if you want to sign up for that,

after you're listening, all of that malarkey. Thank you for your questions. That was fun. I feel like we got through a lot. We did. Yeah. And we'll see you next Tuesday. See you next Tuesday.