‘Hangover’ stars talk tigers, Mike Tyson

Traveling to Las Vegas for a single night of alcohol consumption and stripper confrontation just… Traveling to Las Vegas for a single night of alcohol consumption and stripper confrontation just doesn’t cut it anymore.

After “The Hangover” — in theaters this Friday — loose tigers, stolen cop cars and Mike Tyson will all become integral components of the perfect bachelor party.

In the comedy, Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis play Phil, Stu and Alan, respectively. They wake up in the city of sin without their friend Doug, played by Justin Bartha (“National Treasure” series), and must locate him before his wedding. The problem: None of them can remember what happened the previous night.

To make the film even more amusing, the script was explicitly written so that the audience will be as confused as the film’s characters.

“You’re in the exact same headspace as the guys are in,” Bradley Cooper (“Yes Man,” “He’s Just Not That Into You”), said.

But to director Todd Phillips (“Old School”), everything makes perfect sense, despite their explanations not being, well, in the movie.

“The chicken they took to feed the tiger. They stole a cop car because they needed the grating in between them to put the tiger in,” Phillips said, in reference to various relics from the previous night.

“I like that people see it as randomness, but I also like that there are reasons behind it.”

Phillips was handed an early draft for “The Hangover,” but decided it wasn’t sinful enough.

“Why would you ever write a movie about a bachelor party in Vegas and make it PG-13?” Phillips asked.

After revising the script with an R rating in mind, Phillips set out to make his movie with a relatively unknown cast.

“Something like this feels realer for me,” he said. “The casting is perfect because it’s so surprising, in a way.”

Both Galifianakis and Helms (“The Office”) are stepping up from the world of television to embrace roles in film.

Galifianakis plays one of the weirder characters in the movie — Doug’s future brother-in-law with an odd affinity for the Jonas Brothers — but he doesn’t mind it one bit.

“I’ve been accused of being weird myself, and I don’t really agree with that, but weird is fun to play because antisocial is funny to me,” Galifianakis said.

Helms spends the entirety of “The Hangover” with an unexplained gap in his front teeth. Interestingly, it’s an actual gap in Helms’ smile.

“We actually tried a few alternatives,” Helms said about the gap. “We tried to black it out, we tried a prosthetic device that made me look like a horse.”

Helms decided finally to remove the implant after discussing the procedure with his dentist.

The real breakout star of “The Hangover” seems to be boxer Mike Tyson, who plays himself.

“It’s very risky,” Cooper said. “He’s not an actor, he’s a boxer.”

In rewriting the script, Phillips decided that stealing a tiger from Mike Tyson might be a good idea during some heavy inebriation.

“We weren’t really making fun of him,” Phillips said. “We were more like f***ing with his persona and the image people have of him.”

Tyson performed beyond expectations, according to the cast, but does he have a future in comedy? Galifianakis thinks so.

“As long as he has someone to punch at the end for the punch line, he would do fine,” Galifianakis said.