My pal Kim "Howard" Johnson — who knows more about Monty Python than any man, woman or child alive — reports on the new Monty Python musical, Spamalot.
While we're talking Python, one of those silly "best ever" surveys was recently held to select the funniest scene ever in a motion picture. Coming in at first place was the scene in the Pythons' Life of Brian about "What have the Romans ever done for us?" Debating these lists is almost as pointless as conducting them but I have to say I not only don't think that's the funniest scene of all time in any movie, I don't even think it's the funniest scene in that movie. I'd pick the scene at the window where Brian confronts the crowd…and maybe one or two others before I'd get to the one the survey chose.
If forced at gunpoint to pick the funniest scene ever in any motion picture, I'd probably select the "Springtime for Hitler" musical number in The Producers, with the audience sitting in abject shock and right in their midst, the author of the play enjoying the hell out of it. And then a number of Python scenes, including the one I mentioned from Life of Brian, would also make my top ten. Some of the others they select would not even make my top hundred.