McGuffin Sightings

The name McGuffin appears in several spots. None of us knew exactly what it all meant, but thanks to Janis, who took the time to e-mail us, we now know: "It's a word that Alfred Hitchcock came up with. It refers to 'RED HERRINGS' or sub-plots in his films to 'LEAD YOU DOWN THE GARDEN PATH' ie to mislead you."

Chicago Holiday contains the most of them. The store security guard when he drops the matches into his pocket, we get a backwards glance in the mirror. His name tag, backwards reads: M.C. Guffin. The the head maid is named Mrs. McGuffin. Go to the basement and the janitor is McGuff. When he moves his name on the board [before he leaves]it changes from McGuff out to McGuff in. Very clever. Now don't forget the trash itself. A business card reads Niffing C.M. Attorney at Law.

One other episode, as far a I know has a McGuffin. That would be the housekeeper.

Anyone spot any others?

This is from Celeste :

The name McGuffin appears in several spots. None of us knew exactly what it all meant, but thanks to Janis, who took the time to e-mail us, we now know: "It's a word that Alfred Hitchcock came up with. It refers to 'RED HERRINGS' or sub-plots in his films to 'LEAD YOU DOWN THE GARDEN PATH' ie to mislead you." ...but Janis is totally incorrect, well, except the part about Hitch coming up with it.

McGuffins are the thing that people are pursuing to motivate a plot when it really doesn't matter what the thing itself is. It could be a bag of diamonds, or a Maltese Falcon, or a bottle of rare earths, or a matchbook with drug dealers' names on it, as in Chicago Holiday. But the thing itself doesn't mean anything: it could be interchangeable with anything else as a pursued object. It is NOT a red herring or sub-plot, any more than the Maltese Falcon was a subplot to that movie, or the wine bottles of rare earths was a subplot to Hitchcock's Notorious [which is the movie he supposedly invented the word during.]

http://sc.essortment.com/alfredhitchcoc_rvhd.htm

From the above site:
Recently, I was rewatching Chicago Holiday 1 with a friend, Holly, who was watching it for the first time. There comes a point in the episode where the camera follows the matchbook all around the city as it is passed from hand to hand. I took that "useless", at least plot-wise, section of the episode to put my head down and read a few pages of a Due South zine, glancing up only occasionally, as I knew the action meant nothing to the plot: we were just following the matchbook around the city. The matchbook had just gotten to the basement of the hotel where it was tossed on the garbage heap waiting to be tossed into the incinerator, when Holly said, "Hey, why aren't you watching this?" and I told her that it was just the MacGuffin, and as such meant nothing, in and of itself, to the plot.

It was as I was saying this that the janitor pulled the peg from "MacGuff" from the "OUT" slot to the "IN" slot. MacGuff was "IN". ;) She thought that was hilarious. The thing is, I had totally forgotten about the joke from the first time I'd seen the show years earlier, so I laughed in surprise, too.

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