Why Barry Pasternack From Hot Rod Looks So Familiar

"Hot Rod," the cult classic 2007 comedy movie starring Andy Samberg, Isla Fisher, and Ian McShane that everyone's loving on Netflix, is the closest anyone who isn't Adam Sandler has come to recreating the anarchic, relentlessly silly feel of Sandler's early movies like "Billy Madison" and "Happy Gilmore." Samberg stars as Rod Kimble, an aspiring stuntman who believes in his ability to become the next Evel Knievel despite a mountain of evidence that he's not good at his job, starting with the fact that every stunt he attempts ends with him crashing and getting injured. According to New York Magazine, the script was originally written for Will Ferrell, but it never got made, and years later Samberg and his friends got it and added a bunch of really weird jokes to it, like the "cool beans" scene.

The movie features a murderer's row of hilarious supporting cast members, including Samberg's Lonely Island bandmate Jorma Taccone as Rod's half-brother Kevin, and Bill Hader and Danny McBride as his loser friends Dave and Rico. But the funniest, most scene-stealing supporting character in the movie is Barry Pasternack, the King of AM Radio, a guy who seems normal and kind of square until he lifts up his shirt to reveal that he has a tattoo of a kid peeing on an FM radio and a TV. 

Pasternack is played by an actor who is an absolute genius at turning small supporting roles into some of the funniest things you've ever seen. He's Chris Parnell, Hollywood's Best Supporting Chris, as he was called by TV Guide. Here are just a few of the many places you've seen him be his hilarious self.

Chris Parnell rose to prominence as a cast member on "SNL." He was on the long-running sketch comedy show from 1998 to 2006 and has the distinction of being let go from the show on two different occasions, according to Vulture. He was an integral part of two of the most famous bits in the show's history, the "More Cowbell" sketch and the groundbreaking "Lazy Sunday" digital short alongside his "Hot Rod" co-star Samberg, along with countless other sketches. 

His nickname on the show was "the Ice Man" because he never broke character, even when everyone else around him was cracking up. In the famous "Dr. Beaman" sketch, for example, his scene partners Will Ferrell and Molly Shannon both completely break, but Parnell is stone-cold through the whole thing. He explained to Looper that right before that sketch he had just done another one as Tom Brokaw and had to wear contact lenses, which he had a bad reaction to. "Even though they had been taken out, they left my eyes burning for some reason," he said. "So my eyes were on fire during that sketch, and that's what made it very easy to not break."

Parnell has stolen scenes in many movies, but one of his most memorable moments is in director Adam McKay's classic 2004 comedy "Anchorman," where he has one of the most quotable lines in a movie full of dialogue that's burned in people's brains. He played Garth, an employee of the San Diego news station where Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell) works. Garth idolizes Ron and is hurt and disgusted when the anchorman says the F-word live on the air when his teleprompter is sabotaged. He's crying when he asks Ron why he said the bad, stinking word. "Poop," Garth says, breaking down in tears. "You poop mouth, with poop out of your mouth." It's an unforgettably ridiculous moment that shows off Parnell's uncanny ability to commit to taking silliness very seriously. He really makes you feel Garth's pain and disappointment. There's a lot of pathos in that "poop."

He returned as Garth in the sequel, "Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues."

For most of Parnell's tenure on "SNL," Tina Fey was the head writer, and after his time on the show came to an end in 2006, she hooked him up with a recurring role on her "SNL"-inspired sitcom "30 Rock." He played Dr. Leo Spaceman, pronounced "Spuh-Che-Min," a lunatic general practitioner who was incompetent at every aspect of the medical profession. He couldn't inject anything into a comatose man's heart because "we have no way of knowing where the heart is. See, every human is different." That's just one of many classic Spaceman-isms, which can be seen in this YouTube compilation.

Parnell told Looper that Dr. Spaceman was loosely inspired by "SNL" creator and executive producer Lorne Michaels' personal doctor, who Parnell actually saw one time when he got sick during his first season on the show. "My experience was relatively normal with him," the actor said, adding that "he was kind of a showbiz doctor in a way. Definitely the seeds of Spaceman were there in him."

One of Parnell's most ambitious roles was in the stress-relieving cult classic musical comedy "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story," director Jake Kasdan's parody of musician biopics like "Walk the Line" and "Ray" and rock star tropes in general. He played Theo, the bassist in Dewey Cox's (John C. Reilly) band. He actually learned how to play the stand-up bass a little bit for the role, he told The A.V. Club.

"I remember one of the final numbers of the movie, being up onstage when we're all old," he said. "We were at some auditorium in, I think, downtown L.A. shooting, and they were playing the track, and we were just playing along to it, but it was fun, because I was actually playing the notes for real, and matching the song. I was up there, kind of pretending to be a rock star for a little bit. I get to do that every now and then in my weird acting career."