Movies have become what director Alfred Hitchcock called a "MacGuffin" — a red herring that triggers a plot but has no other inherent value. Like MacGuffins, movies have little inherent purpose except to be talked about, written about, learned about — shared as information.

Movies just don't matter
Los Angeles Times, July 31, 2005

http://snipurl.com/gmaz

Interviewed in 1966 by François Truffaut, Hitchcock illustrated the term "MacGuffin" with this story:

It might be a Scottish name, taken from a story about two men in a train. One man says, 'What's that package up there in the baggage rack?' And the other answers, 'Oh that's a McGuffin.' The first one asks 'What's a McGuffin?' '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 McGuffin!' So you see, a McGuffin is nothing at all

From Wikipedia

http://snipurl.com/gmb1