Growing up, Danny McBride didn't see believable rednecks coming out of Hollywood. "Just taking some guy and putting him in overalls and making him into some kind of hick — I don't know a lot of guys like that," says the comic actor, who broke out this year with great turns in Pineapple Express, Tropic Thunder and The Foot Fist Way. Instead, McBride knew guys like Kenny Powers, the coke-snorting, Skynyrd-listening ex-ballplayer jackhole he plays in his new HBO series, Eastbound and Down, arriving in February. Eastbound is the brainchild of McBride and three Southern film-school buddies who are fast becoming the anti-Hollywood "Scrapple Pack": actor-writers Jody Hill and Ben Best, and director David Gordon Green (Pineapple Express). Also on hand is a fringe actor named Will Ferrell, who serves as an executive producer and plays a small part as a car salesman. "The thing Danny does so well is play a lovable asshole," says Ferrell. "And he has a heart the size of David Lee Roth's balls." MARK KEMP

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