Cinema: It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad Race

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They ended up with a screenplay that was often inspired but resolutely uncool. "I'm not hip," says Zucker, 51, "so it would be a shock to me to have a hip movie. I'm a fan of Jacques Tati and Buster Keaton and Abbott and Costello, the older comedies where they really set up a situation and then the logical extension became funny, then there was something after that and after that." Case in point: Lovitz not only steals Hitler's car, he discovers a tube of Eva Braun's lipstick in the glove compartment and accidentally smears a small but very distinctive moustache on his lip. A few scenes later, he burns his tongue with the automobile's cigarette lighter, and the ensuing speech impediment sounds an awful lot like a German accent. Finally, he finds himself screaming at a rally of increasingly angry WW II veterans.

"I think it goes back to my training on Airplane! and the satires," says Zucker. "We always viewed the movie as a closet where you could always stuff in one more joke." Now the trick will be stuffing theaters with appreciative audiences. With some desperation, studio executives have been shuffling Rat Race's release date around and staging sneak previews to generate favorable word of mouth. If they succeed, they will have pulled off a truly remarkable feat. More than two decades after Airplane!, Jerry Zucker may suddenly be considered cool. Or as ZAZ might have said it, Jerry Zucker may suddenly be considered cool!