FLOP SWEAT

Sally Field and Tom Hanks aren’t just playing aspiring stand-up comics in writer-director David Seltzer’s “Punchline”--they’ll be taking real acts on the road, getting in character before shooting begins in March.

They’ve been surrounded for weeks by what Seltzer calls his Comic Bodyguards--top (and top secret) comics who are teaching the pair delivery, timing et al. before they set out to make surprise visits to L.A. and N.Y. comedy clubs in about three weeks (they’ll work individually). Field plays a housewife-comedienne who meets a “neurotic, unstable but brilliant comic” (Hanks) and the two try to help each other “down the road to Oz.”

Seltzer’s auditioned more than 150 professional comics for supporting parts, discovering so much talent--male and female--”that I’m casting some in roles that have nothing to do with comedy.” But he’s no longer a good audience: “I don’t laugh at all (now). I should be auditioning them through a two-way glass, because I’m death to them in a small room. It’s tough to surprise me at this point.”

Seltzer developed his own stand-up routine two years ago while working on the script (the drama’s being produced by Field’s Fogwood Prod. with IndieProd for Columbia) and was set to debut at N.Y.’s Catch a Rising Star. But Seltzer became “terrified three feet onto the stage”--and walked off without delivering a word.