The Hangover


The Hangover is a 2009 American comedy film directed by Todd Phillips, and written by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore. It is the first installment in The Hangover trilogy. The film stars Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Heather Graham, Justin Bartha, and Jeffrey Tambor. It tells the story of Phil Wenneck, Stu Price, Alan Garner, and Doug Billings, who travel to Las Vegas for a bachelor party to celebrate Doug's impending marriage. However, Phil, Stu, and Alan wake up with Doug missing and no memory of the previous night's events, and must find Doug before the wedding can take place.
Lucas and Moore wrote the script after executive producer Chris Bender's friend disappeared and had a large bill after being sent to a strip club. After Lucas and Moore sold it to the studio for $2million, Phillips and Jeremy Garelick rewrote the script to include a tiger as well as a subplot involving a baby and a police cruiser, and also including boxer Mike Tyson. Filming took place in Nevada for 15 days, and during filming, the three main actors formed a real friendship.
The Hangover was produced by Legendary Pictures, Green Hat Films and BenderSpink and released by Warner Bros. Pictures on June 5, 2009, and was a critical and commercial success. The film became the tenth-highest-grossing film of 2009, with a worldwide gross of over $467million. The film won the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, and received multiple other accolades. It became the highest-grossing R-rated comedy ever in the United States, surpassing a record previously held by Beverly Hills Cop for almost 25 years.
The film was followed by two sequels: The Hangover Part II and The Hangover Part III. Both were commercial successes, but neither were well-received critically.

Plot

Two days before his wedding, bachelor Doug Billings travels to Las Vegas with his best friends Phil Wenneck, a teacher, Stu Price, a dentist, and Alan Garner, his eccentric future brother-in-law. Sid, the father of Doug's fiancée, Tracy, lends Doug his vintage Mercedes-Benz W111 to drive to Vegas. They book a suite at Caesars Palace and celebrate by sneaking onto the hotel rooftop and drinking Jägermeister.
The next day, Phil, Stu, and Alan awaken, unable to remember the previous night. Doug is nowhere to be found, Stu's tooth is missing, the suite is a mess, a Bengal tiger is in the bathroom, and a baby is in the closet. They see Doug's mattress impaled on a statue outside, and when they ask for their Mercedes, the valet delivers a Las Vegas police cruiser.
Retracing their steps, the trio travels to a hospital, discovering they were drugged with Rohypnol, causing their memory loss, and that they went there from a chapel the previous night. At the chapel, they learn that Stu married a call girl named Jade, despite his relationship with his domineering girlfriend Melissa. Outside the chapel, the trio is ambushed by a gang of men demanding to know where "he" is. Bewildered, they flee and track down Jade, who is revealed to be the baby's mother.
The police arrest them for having stolen the cruiser. To get the Mercedes out of impound and an early release, the trio unwittingly volunteer to be targets for a taser demonstration. While driving the car, the trio discover a naked Chinese man in the trunk named Leslie Chow, who beats them up and flees. Alan confesses that he drugged their drinks to ensure they had a good night, believing the drug to be ecstasy.
Returning to their suite, they encounter Mike Tyson, who knocks Alan unconscious and demands they return his tiger. After Stu sedates it, they load it into the Mercedes and drive to Tyson's mansion. The tiger awakens, scratches Phil's neck and damages the car. They push the car to the mansion and deliver the tiger. Tyson shows them security camera footage of their drunken behavior from the night before, revealing they lost Doug only after returning to the hotel.
While driving back, their car is rammed by a black Cadillac Escalade manned by Chow and his gang from the chapel. Chow accuses them of kidnapping him and stealing $80,000 in poker chips. As they deny it, he tells them he has Doug and threatens to kill him if the chips are not returned. Unable to find Chow's chips, Alan, with help from Stu and Jade, uses his knowledge of card counting to win $82,400 playing blackjack.
They meet Chow in the Mojave Desert to exchange the chips for Doug, only to find that the "Doug" in question is actually a drug dealer who accidentally sold the wrong drugs to Alan earlier. With the real Doug's wedding set to occur in five hours, Phil calls Tracy to tell her they cannot find him. Simultaneously, Other Doug remarks that someone who takes roofies is more likely to end up on the floor than on the roof, causing Stu to deduce where Doug is.
The trio return to Caesars Palace to find a dazed and sunburned Doug on the roof. He was moved there as a joke and forgotten when the roofies wore off; Doug threw his mattress onto a statue to signal for help. Before leaving, Stu arranges to meet Jade for a date the following week.
With no flights, the four drive home in the damaged Mercedes, where Doug reveals he has Chow's original $80,000. Despite their late arrival, Doug and Tracy are married. At the reception, Stu gleefully breaks up with his adulterous girlfriend Melissa after she sees his tooth gone. Alan finds Stu's camera with photos from their Las Vegas night, and they consent to view the pictures before deleting them.

Cast

, the film's director, appears as Mr. Creepy, who appears briefly in an elevator. Professional skateboarder Mike Vallely portrays Neeco, the high-speed tuxedo delivery man. Las Vegas personalities Wayne Newton and Carrot Top appear as themselves in the photo slide show.

Production

Writing

The plot of The Hangover was inspired by a real event that happened to Tripp Vinson, a producer and friend of executive producer Chris Bender. Vinson had gone missing from his own Las Vegas bachelor party, blacking out and waking up "in a strip club being threatened with a very, very large bill I was supposed to pay".
Jon Lucas and Scott Moore sold the original script of The Hangover to Warner Bros. for over $2million. The story was about three friends who lose the groom at his Las Vegas bachelor party and then must retrace their steps to figure out what happened.
It was then rewritten by Jeremy Garelick and director Todd Phillips, who added additional elements such as Mike Tyson and his tiger, the baby, and the police cruiser. However, Lucas and Moore retained writing credit in accordance with the Writers Guild of America, West's screenwriting credit system.

Casting

Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, and Bradley Cooper were all casual acquaintances before The Hangover was filmed, which Helms said he believed helped in establishing a rapport and chemistry amongst their characters. Helms credited Phillips for "bringing together three guys who are really different, but really appreciate each others' humor and sensibilities". Helms also said the fact that the story of the three characters growing closer and bonding forged the friendship between the three actors: "As you spend 14hours a day together for three months, you see a lot of sides of somebody. We went through the wringer together, and that shared experience really made us genuine buddies."
Lindsay Lohan was in talks with Phillips for the role of Jade in the film but was ultimately not cast due to being considered too young for what was discussed.

Filming

On a budget of $35million, principal photography took place in Nevada for fifteen days.
The Hangover was mostly filmed on location at Caesars Palace, including the front desk, lobby, suite, entrance drive, pools, corridors, elevators, and roof, but the suite damaged in the film was built on a soundstage. While the hospital, the police station, Mike Tyson's house and several interior scenes were filmed on soundstages in the Los Angeles area, other Vegas locations included the exteriors of Atomic Liquors and the El Cortez Hotel and Casino on Fremont Street. The Bungalows Hostel featured a facade built by the production team to appear as a wedding chapel. Jade's home was depicted at the Wild Wild West Gambling Hall & Hotel, and Alan is portrayed counting cards while playing blackjack at The Riviera; both buildings have since been demolished. The scene where Mr. Chow jumps out of the trunk of the Mercedes-Benz 220SE and assaults the protagonists with a crowbar was filmed at the intersection of East Mandalay Bay Road and Haven Street, which remains a dirt lot adjacent to the Las Vegas Strip.
Since there was a piano in the real suite, Phillips allowed Helms to improvise a scene with the piano on the soundstage, which became known as "Stu's song" in the film. According to Helms in a 2011 interview on The Graham Norton Show, he had to be tutored on how to use a piano for the scene.
Helms said filming The Hangover was more physically demanding than any other role he had done, and that he lost eight pounds while making the film. He said the most difficult day of shooting was the scene when Mr. Chow rams his car and attacks the main characters, which Helms said required many takes and was very painful, such as when a few of the punches and kicks accidentally landed and when his knees and shins were hurt while being pulled out of a window. The missing tooth was not created with prosthetics or visual effects, but is naturally occurring: Helms never had an adult incisor grow, and got a dental implant as a teenager, which was removed for filming.
Jeong stated that his jumping on Cooper's neck naked wasn't a part of the script, but rather improvisation on their part. It was added with Phillips' blessing. Jeong also stated that he had to receive his wife's permission to appear nude in the film.
Phillips tried to convince the actors to allow him to use a real Taser until Warner Bros. lawyers intervened.
Regarding the explicit shots in the final photo slide show in which his character is seen receiving fellatio in an elevator, Galifianakis confirmed that a prosthesis was used for the scene, and that he had been more embarrassed than anyone else during the creation of the shot. "You would think that I wouldn't be the one who was embarrassed; I was extremely embarrassed. I really didn't even want it in there. I offered Todd's assistant a lot of money to convince him to take it out of the movie. I did. But it made it in there."
The scenes involving animals were filmed mostly with trained animals. Trainers and safety equipment were digitally removed from the final version. Some prop animals were used, such as when the tiger was hidden under a sheet and being moved on a baggage cart. Such efforts were given an "Outstanding" rating by the American Humane Association for the monitoring and treatment of the animals.