Is it important to the story? Yes! Does the audience need to care about it? No! That’s a MacGuffin!
This month we’re celebrating one of film’s great narrative devices — coined by screenwriter Angus MacPhail and popularized by Alfred Hitchcock — see it in action with the unforgettable modern classic that helped cement Quentin Tarantino’s place as cinematic “Royale-ty.”
With a sprawling cast, a whip-smart script, and a stylish visual aesthetic, “Pulp Fiction” helped redefine a genre of films that would follow the movie’s 1994 release.
John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson play two low-rent hit men at the centre of the film’s multi-layered story, with intermingled tales involving their boss’s seductive wife (Uma Thurman), a desperate prizefighter (Bruce Willis) and…a mysterious briefcase (Hello, MacGuffin!).
