The funniest ‘Seinfeld’ scene ever, according to Jerry Seinfeld
“It’s amazing that the amount of news that happens in the world every day always just exactly fits the newspaper.” – Jerry Seinfeld
Seinfeld ran for 180 episodes, and in that time, it redefined comedy. Whether you laughed at the show or not, its impact was universal. It probed at the world with its observational wit, asking baffling questions like: “What could possess anyone to throw a party? I mean, to have a bunch of strangers treat your house like a hotel room.”
The show now has a legacy status, affording people a dose of nostalgia. As the man who hates everything, Noel Gallagher, once told Rolling Stone: “I still can’t get enough of Seinfeld. It’s still the best thing that’s ever been filmed. It reminds me of the 1990s — good times. I was the only person in England who was watching it! That’s a fact.“
The Oasis brother continued: “Certainly the only person in Manchester who watched it. I identify with Jerry. When I met my wife 15 years ago, she’d never seen it, and I was like, ‘If we’re going to be together, you’ve got to be into this shit because this is important’. Luckily, she fuckin’ loves it.“ Gallagher is not alone in identifying with Jerry, and the scene that he finds funniest of all is suitably Kafkaesque on that front.
Now, if, like Gallagher, you are a dedicated fan of the show, if it has been on a looped repeat for weeks, or if the soundtrack has become the background music for your every waking thought, then you have almost certainly debated with yourself what the funniest scene in the history of the show is.
If you wanted to get the perfect steer on what exactly the most hilarious scene ever shot is, then Seinfeld is a pretty good indication of what should be up for consideration. Seinfeld is a seasoned comic, so he certainly knows what is and isn’t funny, but he has rarely put himself too deeply into the seat of his audience. Instead, he focused on the scene he laughed the most at while filming it.
When asked about the hardest scene to film without laughing, Seinfeld commented that the scene where the irate library cop, Philip Baker Hall’s Lt Bookman, interrogates him about his late copy of Tropic Of Cancer and grows even more infuriated when he finds out there is no instant coffee in his apartment either. The season three episode is imaginatively titled ‘The Library’.
”It was just so ridiculous that he was interrogating me in my own apartment about a book. I just kept cracking up,” Seinfeld told AV Club. “So that scene that you see is made up of about eight different times we shot it. We took the pieces that worked and put it together because I messed that one up a ton.”
Even still, it is quite clear from the finished cut that the whole thing was a struggle for the orange sweatered star.
Spoken with blasted intent, the following quip is a line that will live long in the memory of many fans: ”Well, let me tell you something, funny boy. You know that little stamp? The one that says ‘New York Public Library’? Well, that may not mean anything to you, but that means a lot to me. Sure, go ahead; laugh if you want to. I’ve seen your type before. Flashy. Making a scene. Flouting convention.”
