KARL GETS COOL

“You look so money tonight, you don’t even know it,” says the murderously cool voice spoofing the movie “Swingers.”

“Mmm-hhhmm,” drawls another familiar voice from independent film. Hint: This one is gravelly and laconic and conjures up images of French fried potaters and potted meat.

What would happen if you dropped Karl Childers, the ax murderer from the Oscar-winning “Sling Blade,” into scenes from “Swingers,” the retro twentysomething cult movie that celebrates ice-cold martinis, filterless Camels and a cocktail-lounge lifestyle?

You’d get “Swing Blade,” the brainchild of show-biz aspirants Chris Cox, Matt Sloan and Darren Des Voigne. Cox and Sloan are a pair of struggling performer-writers who specialize is sketch comedy. These days they are the talk of Hollywood, thanks to their three-minute parody of two of last year’s most talked-about low-budget movies.

“Reckon I’m aiming to buy you some potted meat, if you care for it,” drawls Cox in a dead-on imitation of Childers, attempting to entice a young lady sipping a drink in a hip back-alley bar.

The woman demurs with a show of disgust.

The pseudo-Childers is offered the following romantic advice from the pseudo-Trent, one of his swinging pals: “You’re never going to get the pretty babies with that biscuits and mustard vibe.”

“We just tried to think of every little tic from each movie that we could play off of,” said director Nicholas Goodman.

The choice of film subjects, the merging of hipsters and hillbillies, was an inspired one, say most who have seen the short film.

“People are so familiar with both films and both had really defined characters,” said Ruthanne Secunda, a talent agent at UTA, who, after seeing the parody, signed on to represent Cox and Sloan. “They did it at a perfect time, at the end of the run of these two pictures while they’re still fresh in people’s minds.”

“Those two movies had a very strong buzz in Hollywood,” said co-writer Sloan.

“Swing Blade” was shot as an imaginary trailer for an upcoming film to be released by “Miraminor Films” and got Miramax chief Harvey Weinstein chuckling, as well as “Sling Blade” writer-director-star Billy Bob Thornton.

“I loved it,” Weinstein said Friday. “And I showed it to [“Saturday Night Live” executive producer] Lorne Michaels and Billy Bob and they thought it was terrific, too. It was really funny.”

“Just the idea of doing a trailer for a movie that doesn’t exist seemed like a clever and entertaining way of getting our message out there,” Goodman said. “We all giggled when we did it and we’re really glad that people are giggling now.”

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It’s not just giggling going on; in Hollywood comedy is serious business. In the past month or so Cox and Sloan have been busily signing with their new agent, new manager and meeting with numerous television and film executives including Disney, MTV, “Saturday Night Live” and New Line Cinema.

“There’s a real excitement about them, just based on the tape circulating so widely around town,” Secunda said. “People really want to meet them.”

For his part, director Goodman has met with HBO, Paramount production executives and director Chris Columbus, among others.

Their cause is no doubt aided by the fact that the film is only three minutes long. Even the most harried studio executive can take three minutes out of a busy schedule to watch a funny spoof.

“We thought if we had something short and funny and kind of original people would pay more attention,” Sloan said.

“Keeping it short in today’s world of short attention spans is not a bad thing,” said Goodman, who directs short films and edits and produces trailers. “But you have to have a good idea.”

The idea came from Cox, who by day edits trailers. He, Sloan and Des Voigne then developed it into a script. The trio wrote it all on one March day and shot it “with a crew made up of all of our friends” for just under $3,000 over the course of two days in April, Goodman said. The entire process from the first draft to the final cut took four weeks.

Sloan said they had originally hoped to rush it into production before the Academy Awards telecast in late March. That time frame proved too ambitious and they completed the shoot in April.

They were rooting for Thornton to win best screenplay on Oscar night (which he did) and because of their admiration for the film took extra pains to be respectful of the character, Goodman said.

“There was concern that making fun of this character would be in bad taste,” Goodman said. “So we made a deliberate decision to play him straight. . . . We decided to treat the character with respect and put him in an absurd situation and that’s where the comedy comes from.”

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Cox and Sloan--who both trained with the Groundlings and regularly perform their sketches at the Comedy Store--are being groomed to perform and write for television sketch comedy shows with an eventual plan to write for feature films, Secunda said.

“Feature films is definitely the goal, but we don’t know how soon that will be,” Sloan said. “ ‘Swing Blade’ has just been a great calling card. It’s gotten us a lot of exposure. We just hope to keep going and keep writing and performing.”

“We’ve bandied about some ideas and I’m sure it will lead to bigger and better things,” director Goodman said. “But you know how it is. Nothing’s real until it’s real.”